"It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness, to think that a thousand square miles are a thousand times more wonderful than one square mile . . . That is not imagination. No, it kills it. . . . Your universities? Oh, yes, you have learned men who collect . . . facts, and facts, and empires of facts. But which of them will rekindle the light within?"  (E.M. Forster, Howard's End, p. 30)

1.  Read Augustine.
   
2.  Read paper by T. Erdel.
   
3.  Ate three eggs and toast.
   
4.  Walk in the woods with Sydney and Morgan–Sydney saw and correctly identified a blue heron.
   
5.  King Gyros.
   
6.  Pumpkins at the pumpkin patch.
   
7.  Watched two episodes of American Colony Hutterites.
   
8.  Workout: (Bike 30 mins; tabata sets of push ups, sit ups, renegade rows; bike 15 minutes)
   
9.  Tigers baseball and ND football
   
10.  Blog
    
    

Strained or pulled or–who knows, maybe tore?–a calf muscle playing basketball yesterday. Nothing major, just a little painful pushing off and landing.  Gonna go easy on it a little while.  Still, there’s a lot of other body parts to exercise, so tonight’s workout will be:

P90X Chest and Back + ab ripper X

Shouldn’t cause any problems for my moderately sore calf.

We make up our own workouts patterned after actual crossfit workouts.  This was Tuesday’s backyard workout for Jeanie and me.

Homegrown Filthy 50

50 wall ball shots
50 box jumps
50 push ups
50 squats
50 pull-ups (d.b. heavy pants for J)
50 double unders (100 regular jump ropes for J)
50 kb swings (25#/15#)
50 burpees
50 situps

J’s time= 22:02  R’s time= 17:24

By now Penelope, Icarius' wise daughter,
Had set her chair across from the suitors
And heard the words of each man in the hall.
During all their laughter they had been busy
Preparing their dinner, a tasty meal
For which they had slaughtered many animals.
But no meal could be more graceless than the one
A goddess and a hero would serve to them soon.
After all, they started the whole ugly business.

Did p90x workout tonight–shoulders and arms.

Played basketball at noon for an hour.  Won 4 lost 1.

Today’s physical exercise included:

14 mile bike ride in what I can only describe as perfect weather.  (Ok, it was a little windy at times, but who cares, really?)

“Helen”
3 rounds of
400 meter run (3 laps in my back yard)
21 KB swings (30# dumbell for me, 20# for J)
12 pullups (12 chair dips for J)

My time: 7:15 (shaved 41 seconds off my time from 8/2)
J’s time: 8:30 (shaved 49 seconds off her time from 8/2)

“Perfect you are, beyond all change, and today does not reach its end in you, yet it does end in you, since all days are in you, nor could they have a course of transit not defined by you.  But your years never run out, your years are a single today; and our days, no matter how many–not only our own but those of all before us–run their course through it, with their own being and identity, while you alone are identical with yourself, so every tomorrow to come, every yesterday gone, is made in your today."

Augustine, Confessions, 1.II (Garry Wills, trans.)

“A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.”

Spent fifteen minutes scrolling through Facebook feed, reading status updates and comments–something I almost never do.

What a colossal waste of time.

Being the day when we celebrate wordiness, redundancy, and general wastefulness in an effort to purge it from our souls and go back to living simple, economical, and celebratory lives.  This would be the only day of the year Fox News and MSNBC would be allowed on the air, for instance.

And then someone went completely mad and decided to cut down all the trees that gave wonderful shade to the parking lot of the Bittersweet Library branch.  Tragic.

Child's Play

“The Missionary Church is a fascinating blend of five traditions–Anabaptism, Pietism, the Weslyan-holiness movement, the Keswickian-holiness movement, and evangelicalism.  It could be argued that the fifth one, evangelicalism, entails the other four.  But evangelicalism also includes many other traditions, some of which were historically opposed to the first four.  For example, if other evangelical traditions going back to the Reformation no longer persecute Anabaptists or burn them at the stake, they may still be antithetically opposed to Anabaptist viewpoints.  So evangelicalism both includes the four traditions, and yet also affirms other traditions that would strongly oppose them and, at a minimum, push them to the margins of the evangelical life and thought, if they could.

Within the United States, the evangelical movement faces a particular danger, that of confusing national identity with political interests with the Christian faith.  Traditions such as Anabaptism and Pietism have resources to illumine such matters and bring evangelical responses into line with biblical teachings on church and state.  But if other, self-proclaimed evangelicals effectively silence voices from their Anabaptist and Pietist wings, they risk an enormous loss of biblical insight.

So several questions remain for the Missionary Church.  Will she genuinely affirm those traditions which gave birth to her and shaped her for many decades?  Will the richness and insights of each tradition be celebrated?  Or will she cut herself off from her own roots in exchange for new ties with alien traditions from within the larger evangelical family?  Will the Missionary Church be driven primarily by biblical categories, or by the social, political, and cultural ones that have sometimes overtaken the evangelical movement in the United States?  The temptation may be to exchange the hard teachings of the first four traditions for a softer, generic evangelicalism.  The suggestion here is that it would be a tragic mistake for the Missionary Church to exchange her birthright, which is a richly flavored stew of thoroughly biblical traditions, for a bowl of bland baby pablum that bears the consumer-oriented “Made in America” brand of generic evangelicalism.”

(Timothy Paul Erdel, “The Evangelical Tradition int he Missionary Church: Enduring Debts and Unresolved Dilemmas” in Reflections, Vol 13-14, 2011-2012).

Tonight, I am proud.

Jeanie did p90x “chest & back” with me tonight, and did a great job attempting the six sets of various kinds of pull-ups that workout calls for.  No, she can’t yet do a pull-up, but with assistance and jumping she did at least five “negatives” for each of the six sets.  Impressive.  Additionally, she surprised herself by getting off her knees for the push-ups and doing real ones.

There’s no way she could have done anything like this in June.  Get your tickets for the gun show now.

"Sometimes when a student tells me that being on campus is painful, that a course is too difficult, that an idea is too upsetting, that a program is too offensive, I respond by talking about my friend Jesper. Were Jesper to follow the easy, painless path with massive pieces of mountain, were he to limit his activity merely to the exterior, then the forms inside never would be revealed. To release the treasures hidden in a twenty-ton block of marble, Jesper has to break through the surface, cut into the interior, saw, strike, and gouge. It is only after that brutal, even savage process has been completed (during which a beautiful form gradually emerges) that Jesper can refine the work by burnishing its surface. It seems to me that the hard treatment Jesper inflicts on those rough blocks of freshly quarried stone is analogous to what happens to some of our most successful students as they learn. Students who take the familiar route, who choose to follow the path of least resistance, who avoid the difficult course or stay away from the controversial lecture, who never feel tension or pain, who never test the ideas or challenge the beliefs they carried with them to college not only miss the very point of education but also diminish their potential. For those willing to push themselves, to dig deep rather than skim along the surface, the rewards (at least in retrospect) can be profound. But while the heavy excavation is in progress, they may feel a lot of pain. 

On my wall hangs a small photo of an elegant, slender sculpture that Jesper named after me.When advisees tell me they are uncertain or confused, or that learning hurts, I reach into a cabinet to retrieve a picture of the artist standing next to the block of freshly quarried marble from which “Aaron’s Rod” may have emerged, note that students can be at once both sculptors and sculptures, and suggest that we get to work." (Aaron Shatzman, "When Learning Hurts")

trees hang limp in the sultry August mid-morn
damp from last night’s showers
and I feel like they look

"If you understand your own place and its intricacy and the possibility of affection and good care of it, then imaginatively you recognize that possibility for other places and other people, so that if you wish well to your own place, and you recognize that your own place is a part of the world, then this requires a well-wishing toward the whole world. 

In return you hope for the world’s well-wishing toward your place. 

And this is a different impulse from the impulse of nationalism. This is what I would call patriotism: the love of a home country that’s usually much smaller than a nation." (Wendell Berry)

"His mother decides that she wants a dog.  Alsations are the best--the most intelligent, the most faithful--but they cannot find an Alsatian for sale.  So they settle for a pup half doberman, half something else.  He insists on being the one to name it.  He would like to call it Borzoi because he wants it to be a Russian dog, but since it is not in fact a borzoi he calls it Cossack.  No one understands.  People think the name is kos-sak, food-bag, which they find funny.

Happy birthday, Jorge Luis Borges.

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."

"Nothing has any value but the love of God and doing His will.  There is no happiness outside of Him.  The joy born from giving yourself totally to Him no man can take from you.  My only desire is to completely give myself up into the hands of God without any idea of turning back or of fear of what may happen to me."  (Jeanne Guyon, Intimacy With Christ, p. 13)

Smalltown Fastpitch ended its season last night with a victory in the league tournament championship over the Twin City Gray Sox, 10-9.  With two outs in the bottom of the seventh, our pitcher took a hard one hopper off the face. While he split blood, we looked for the tooth, but didn’t find it.  His brother came into the game to strikeout the final batter for the win.  Just before we snapped a picture, I asked B if the tooth was knocked entirely out or just broken off.  He said, “I don’t know,” proceeded to show me.

“Your tooth isn’t missing,” I said.

It was still very much there in his mouth, but there was a much larger gap than normal.  I suspect the tooth is pretty loose and may be fractured below the gum line, but no wonder we didn’t  find the tooth in the dirt around the pitcher’s mound.

In the last five days we took home a lot of hardware.  Church league tournament champs, NAFA world series A consolation bracket champs, NAFA world series AA-major 3rd place.

Final season record was 28-26.  The Gray Sox finished their season 25-2 and as the MASA D-state champions.  Not bad for their first season together to say the least.

They call this one “Jared."

800 meter run (6 laps around back yard)
40 pull-ups
70 push-ups

4 rounds

My time: 29:39

Jeanie substituted/scaled and did four rounds of 800 meters, 40 situps and 40 push-ups (on knees).  Her clock failed, but I would estimate her time to be 34 minutes.

I’ve never been to an actual Crossfit gym (or I guess its “box” not “gym”).  I’ve only ever done one workout with the Pilot Crossfit  club at my college.  And I only occasionally do “official” Crossfit workouts from thee main website.  But I think I can fairly say that I do “crossfit” (lowercase).

One of the things the Crossfit cultists rave about is the “community” aspect.  I’ve never been that fond of working out with a bunch of other people, and have always preferred to grit it out on my own.  That’s why I like P90X a lot.  You go to the basement, pop in the dvd, push play, and let er rip.  I’ve been doing these P90X workouts off an on for five years now, and they are still great.

This summer, J decided she wanted to get fit.  So we’ve been doing my own brand of “crossfit.”  The other day, for instance, we did Chelsea, which is 5 pullups, 10 pushups, 15 squats, every minute on the minute.  It’s good workout.  We scaled it for J, since she still doesn’t do pullups (it’s one of her goals–be able to do actual pullups), substituting “heavy pants” (a bent over back fly with dumbells) for the pullups.  Had I given her this workout two months ago I would have heard a series of “I can’ts” come out of her mouth.  But not anymore.  She’s motivated.  Every day she asks me, “so what’s my workout today.”  I’ve enjoyed it this summer–working out in this fashion with J.  I’m proud of her.

So here’s today’s workout.

4 rounds
One lap sprint (in the backyard–roughly 130 meters)
30 squats
One lap sprint
30 sumo high pulls
One lap sprint
30 chair dips
REST one minute

She may complain, but less than she used to.  She’ll do it.  Tomorrow she’ll ask me for a new workout.  We’re going to keep right on doing these workouts we make up or rip off from the Internet (here’s a really cool website called  “WOD shop”) for as long as we are physically able. I feel great–maybe the best shape of my life.  She feels great–maybe a little sore.

Get your tickets.

“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.”

― Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

This week was my week again to mow the grass at church.  We have an enormous property, and it typically takes five to six hours to mow it all on a very good industrial riding mower.  Of course, today and tomorrow will likely be the hottest days of the summer, which makes mowing miserable.  So rather than wait for things to warm up, I got started at 6:45 this morning. 

I remind you, we’ve not had much rain, and no one irrigates the lawn at church, so it’s pretty much a parched wasteland of dead brown grass with enormous green weeds every so often.  It looked to me like last week someone didn’t mow an acre or so behind the pond and another acre in the back of the property–my clue was not that the grass was long, but that those parts had been overwhelmed by deep purple clover.  So I mowed them, in the process awakening a zillion tiny bugs from their peaceful slumber to swarm my face, mouth, eyes, ears, and hair. 

Normally, I very much enjoy mowing. But today’s experience was an exercise in frustration.  Between the ever increasing heat, the swarms of deer flies, those stupid shoot like weeds that were the only thing I was actually cutting–and even so, only about one in three of them actually cuts when you ride over them with the mower–I gave up after a couple hours and called it good enough.

We need some stinking rain.

This fall I will begin my 14th year of teaching English at Bethel.  I don’t know where the time goes other than to say that the present has a way of becoming the past very quickly.That will be fourteen years worth of essays I’ve read.  Sometimes I wish I would have kept some stats.  Here are some estimates.

Essays read/graded: 25,000
Portfolios graded: 1400
times reading the Odyssey: 25
add/drop forms filled: 120
student drop in office visits: 4200
committee meetings attended: 260
lunch time basketball games played: 4680
photocopies made: enough to wipe out a forest
number of times I’ve worn a tie: 0
number of times I’ve taught Lolita: 2
number of  Speech (COMM 171) sections I taught in 1999-2000: 5
number of sections of COMM 171 I’ve taught since 2004: 0
Office moves: 1
Office rearranges: 16
times I’ve wanted to quit and become a peach farmer who writes nature poetry:13
plagiarism cases I reported: 30
plagiarism cases I dealt with myself: 200
Bethel softball games attended: 45
chapel speeches: 7
faculty retreat presentations: 5
dissertations completed: 1
number of visits Morgan has made to my office: 23
humanities major graduates: 6
humanities major graduates prior to 2010: 0
days of class missed due to sickness: 13
snow days: 3

“For when she was hardly more than a girl, Miss Minnie had gone away to teacher’s college and prepared herself to teach by learning many cunning methods that she never afterward used.  For Miss Minnie loved children and she loved books, and she taught merely by introducing the one to the other.”

-Wendell Berry, “A Consent”

I was fitted for contact lenses last Thursday and have been wearing them a bit each day since then as prescribed.  I have two complaints.

First, my eyes are a little gummy.  I don’t want to say dry, even though I’m sure that is how they will want me to describe it when I have my follow up visit this Thursday.  Dry is what the lawns in my neighborhood are.  Dry is dusty.  My eyes feel more like mud and less like dust.  It isn’t intolerable, and I’m sure the right kind of eye drops would make this minor complaing ever more minor in time.  If this were the only complaint, I don’t think I’d be complaining.

Second, they don’t help me see any better.  As a matter of fact, for things like reading, I see considerably worse than without them.  I don’t have particularly bad eyes.  Slight astigmatism and a bit of near-sightedness.  Things at a distance aren’t as sharp as they might be.  When I put on my glasses, I can see the individual grass blades at a distance or the leaves in the tree tops much more sharply.  I wanted contacts because I didn’t want to wear glasses to play basketball or softball.  But now I’m thinking my eyesight is not that bad afterall, especially considering that it is obviously worse with the contacts. I will be telling the doctor this on Thursday.

There may well be something wrong with me. Yesterday I was one of roughly 75 people watching a men’s fastpitch softball game between the Argentina national team and the Hill United Chiefs of Kitchener, Ontario streamed live online. And all the while wishing I was playing. I suspect at least a few of the others watching were wishing they were playing as well.

Next weekend.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOAH2XWkhEc&w=560&h=315]

This morning we did a “family workout”–Sydney, Jeanie, and me.  Here’s what it consisted of.

I’ve been to so many chapel services at Bethel over the years and heard so many speakers that they all start to sound the same.  Occasionally someone says something that stays with me for a long time.  What tends not to stay with me is who said it.  So, somebody sometime at some Bethel Chapel service in the last fifteen years or so said this:

“We don’t read the Bible to finish; we read the Bible to change."

I always liked that.  Even though I’m kind of fond of the “read the Bible in 90 days” or “a year” or other Bible reading plans, the problem with them is this: I don’t want to get to day ninety and say, “DONE! Yay me.  Now I can get on with life now that I’ve read the Bible in 90 days."

Occasionally I tweet about some “P90X” workout I’ve done.  I like this workout program, even though I have never really committed myself to strictly following the program for 90 days.  I’ve been doing the workouts semi-regularly for almost five years now, and they’re terrific.  I didn’t want to get to the end of 90 days and say, “DONE! Yay me.  Now I can get on with life after P90X."

Which is why I like crossfit. It just sort of goes on forever and ever with constant variety with no end in sight.  But I’ve sort of used the Tony Horton workouts that way anyhow, so I was predisposed to liking crossfit before I even knew what it was or tried one of the workouts.  What I also like about the crossfit workouts is the insanely high level of intensity they typically ask of you and how short they are.  Most workouts are 15-20 minutes, but some incredibly great workouts take less than ten. 

So here you go, exercise lovers.  Try one of the P90X workouts “crossfit” style.  I recommend the legs and back workout.  Instead of following the video (which you don’t need once you’ve done the routine a few times; you can remember–and if you can’t, it takes a whole two minutes to write the names of the exercises down on a little piece of paper), set your stop watch, say 3-2-1 go, and crank out the workout for time.  Here’s how I do it.  Each pull-up set is 12 reps (96 pullups total for the workout).  Each leg exercise is 25 reps.  You do the wall sits for the time Tony prescribes.  And you complete the “sneaky lunge” sequence at a reasonable pace.  And when you finish the workout, you record your time.  Next week you try to beat the time.  It’s fun and it reduces the workout to–well, lets say if you’re in decent shape you can crank it out in less than 25 minutes.  It would be nearly impossible to do it in less than 20, but some stud might surprise me here.  When I do it this way I use 20# dumbells–and if that’s too much for any of the exercises, I only use one of them instead of both.  Saves the trouble of figuring out how much weight is just right for the workout, since the goal here is not merely building strength but cranking your heartrate way the heck up.

You can do the same thing with the chest and back workout or the shoulders and arms workout.  Suddenly they become both strength and cardio workouts–in other words, more like crossfit.

I’ve also found that doing PlyoX “tabata” style (20 seconds of work followed by 10 seconds of rest; this will leave you in oxygen debt very quickly) while it shortens the workout–really increases the intensity.

I keep looking at the P90X2 videos on youtube and I’m tempted, but it’s expensive for all those medicine balls and other crap you gotta buy.  The beauty of P90X was how minimalist it was in terms of equipment.  Pull-up bar and dumbells.  While the stability and core strength you’d get from this kind of training looks impressive to me–it looks like the kind of training professional athletes (NBA players, even) would do–I’m cheap.  What can I say.

So here’s to one of the best things about summer vacation for a college professor: exercising.

Tomorrow, tune in  for my rant on the relationship between exercise and remaining semi-productive as a “scholar” (gosh, I hate that word).

p.s.  Today’s workouts were P90X chest and back; ab ripper x. 

Rhetorical question (which means I have a pretty definite answer in mind):

Is there something seriously wrong if on Sunday, May 27, 2012, everyone in your congretation knew that Monday (May 28, 2012) was Memorial Day and felt somehow that it was a Christian duty to celebrate America’s military might, but in the mean time, no mention was made that it was Pentecost Sunday?

For some reason, most men’s fastpitch leagues and tournaments refuse to use those easy to see neon yellow softballs they use in the women’s games I’m watching hour after hour on television this weekend.  When they make me president of the world of men’s fastpitch, I will declare that forever more these easier to see balls will be used. 

Having played in a few tournaments where these balls are used, I can say that major difference comes during the twilight hours in the field when it can be very difficult to see a batted ball.  And that’s where the game is most potentially dangerous with third basemen and pitchers exposed to rocketed line drives. 

When I write my book about men’s fastpitch softball, there will be a chapter dedicated to the ball itself, its evolution, its varieties, its color.  It will be a substantive chapter.  I’m serious.

Sydney is six now.  Yesterday was her “Fancy Nancy” birthday bash with friends.  Let’s consider the sugary things they ate.

1.  Fancy rainbow jello
2.  Fancy frosted sugar c ookies
3.  Fancy pink pearl chocolates
4.  Fancy chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting
5.  Fancy pink lemonade
6.  Fancy dippin dots ice cream

Needless to say there was not shortage of energy, which the little girls expended in the kiddie pool, the bouncy jump house, dressing up fancy, and painting their very own ceramic tea sets.

Tomorrow is opening night for the Smalltown Fastpitch season.  We play in Bremen.  I look forward to seeing you all out at the ballpark supporting us this season.  Additionally, I look forward to monkeys flying out of my rear end, the day when Bethel College has a 5 billion dollar endowment, and a world where no one on the Fox News network ever says anything bombastic and asinine.

We’ll have fun playing whether you show up or not.  I’ve been taking batting practice in my backyard since mid-March, and I got new batting gloves.

p.s. Morgan responded well to the 24" chicken wire and has lived to chase wiffle balls another day.

When your dog can no longer jump at all (aged hips and arthritis in the hind legs) and when your real concern is not really with the rabbits or deer that might destroy your garden, the chicken wire need not be more than 24" tall.  You do not want your marigolds, watermelons, peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, beans, scallions, cantaloupe, or cucumbers destroyed, nor do you want to have to send your beloved almost 11 year old dog to an early grave, so you spend a few extra dollars on chicken wire and stakes to prevent unnecessary deaths. As an expense, it seems well worth it to you.

I’m grateful that I live in a time and place where dentistry is practiced by trained doctors and not by quacks.  That I live in the age of ibuprofrin, vicodin, and antiobiotics.

I’m grateful, though I’m sure I will miss the healthy version of it, that next Friday I will be rid of this infected, fractured tooth forevermore.

I’m grateful that one bright day I will either have no need of teeth anymore OR that I will have teeth restored to resurrected perfection.

Pain is relative.  But there is no pain quite like tooth pain.

"Gratitude ... goes beyond the "mine" and "thine" and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy."

-Henri Nouwen



Sydney likes playing the opening riff of this song on the piano.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YdQBkxf4kU&w=420&h=315]

Bolgia 10: Falsifiers.

Where the plagiarists are punished.

"The act of knowing is an act of love." 

"The known seeks to know me even as I seek to know it; such is the logic of love . . . I not only pursue but truth pursues me. I not only grasp truth but truth grasps me. I not only know truth but truth knows me. Ultimately, I don't not master truth but truth masters me." (Parker Palmer, To Know as We Are Known)

"When we want to be something other than the thing God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy." (C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 46)

2/27 - 138
2/28 - 151
2/29 - 140
3/1 - 223

to be continued

“…the original and authentic meaning of the word “professor” is “one who professes a faith.”  The true professor is not one who controls facts and theories and techniques.  The true professor is one who affirms a transcendent center of truth, a center that lies beyond our contriving, that enters history through the lives of those who profess it and brings us into community with each other and the world.” [113]

-Parker Palmer, To Know as We Are Known

Some people enjoy a coffee break.  I, myself, cannot stand coffee, its aroma, its effects on my stomach (I’m guessing here, since I never drink the stuff–but other high caffeine beverages have a “flushing” effect on my system that is more violent than I tend to like), its price. I suppose I could take up smoking and take smoke breaks.  One of my housemates when I was a student at Drew took up pipe smoking during his comprehensive exam year. He had no classes and it gave him a reason to go outside and have a smoke every couple hours to interrupt the endless monotony of study.

I have, from time to time, been in the habit of taking a “free throw break.”  I stop what I’m doing, go outside (or to the gym), and shoot some free throws. 

Today, for the first time in many weeks, I took a free throw break.  Made 48 in a row and 64/67.  Wearing gloves. 

The breeze was at my back.

1.  30 minute bike interval (while watching “X-Files”, of course)
2.  5 minute medicine ball (10#) ball handling drills
3.  10 minute speed rope intervals (50 seconds of jumping, 10 seconds of rest, 10 intervals)

Sydney’s lunch order:

• Peanut butter and jelly sandwich
• apple slices
• carrots and dip
• and, if you happen to stop at McDonalds, some french fries would be nice.

I’m a relatively consistent crossfitter/P90x-er.  I’m not a fundamentalist/legalist when it comes to these workouts, so I don’t really do everything exactly as prescribed or when prescribed, but I have followed Tony Horton fairly consistently (at leas the workouts–screw the diet; eating “whey” is for commies) through a couple of almost 90 day sessions.  I almost never do Kenpo.  I rarely do the entire YogaX workout.  But I like the program and the workouts work.

I started attempting some of the named crossfit workouts last summer and fell in love the high intensity of crossfit.  I’ve never fallen in love with Olympic lifting, mostly because Olympic lifting and I haven’t really had a first date. Nor do I have the equipment at home to do them.

I know crossfit is designed to be done as a community, but my problem is the crossfitters at BC crossfit right when I’m playing basketball, and the reason I would do crossfit is to maximize my enjoyment of basketball, not because I have some desire to become a superstar at the crossfit games.  Excuses aside, I actually enjoy working out alone.

All that to say I did the P90x chest and back workout plus ab ripper x this morning.  I wonder if I’ve done this particular workout fifty times yet?  I wouldn’t be surprised. I did it for the first time back in August of 2007.    I bet I’ve done it at least a dozen times a year since then.  If you follow the 90-day program you do this workout five times in 90 days.  I have not been through the 90 day program ten times, of course, but this is probably one of my favorite of the routines, thus my wondering about the 50 times in a little less than five years.

So what does tomorrow hold?  Were I following the 90-day program, tomorrow would be Plyometrics.  It’s a great workout.  But I think I’m going to to a 15 minute interval set on the jump-rope and maybe some yoga and then shoot some hoops.  Maybe watch an episode of the X-Files on dvr while riding the stationary bike.

See–not a legalist.

1.  Someone named Adele won a bunch of Grammy awards the other night.  I did not watch the show.  I had never heard of this person until the next morning when they mentioned she won a bunch of awards. 

2.  I am a professor of English.  Consider the so-called “classics” I’ve never read.  This is not an exhaustive list. 

• Every novel written by Charles Dickens except A Tale of Two Cities.
• Every play by Shakespeare except for Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Much Ado About Nothing .  (Note: I have a prejudice here.  I think Shakespeare wanted people like me--who cannot act--to see his plays performed.)
• Moby Dick.
• To date, I've never been able to finish a novel by Jane Austen.  I've tried.  She's funny, but after awhile I just don't care about the characters anymore and would rather watch X-Files reruns.
• Paradise Lost.  I know what it's about and I read "excerpts" in college.  Reading excerpts usually helps convince me that I don't really care to read something.
• The Faerie Queen.  Ditto.
• The Brother's Karamazov.  Once again, I tried more than once.  Then I read what Nabokov said about the author and agreed.  Here is what he said in an interview:

Interviewer:  Dostoevski, who dealt with themes accepted by most readers as universal in both scope and significance, is considered one of the world's great authors. Yet you have described him as "a cheap sensationalist, clumsy and vulgar." Why?

VN:  Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoevski as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. I admit that some of his scenes, some of his tremendous, farcical rows are extraordinarily amusing. But his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment-- by this reader anyway.

• War and Peace.  Someday maybe.  Someday.
• Any novel by Faulkner or Hemingway.

I do not understand “gaming.”  At all.  And I don’t care.

Perhaps that’s how they–the obsessive gamers–feel about literature, sitting in the back of the classroom daydreaming about the gaming they are missing out on while they’re stuck in class.

1.  Playing shortstop in a fastpitch game on a 70 degree Saturday in June.

2.  Eating a giant brisket and sausage sandwich and washing it down with a monstrously huge coke.

3.  Walking in the woods with Morgan–his legs restored to perfection.

Instead, I’m grading.  Nothing that horrible about grading.  It’s just not as much fun as the above, or about three hundred other things I could list if I didn’t need be grading.

A Meeting
by Wendell Berry

In a dream I meet
my dead friend. He has,
I know, gone long and far,
and yet he is the same
for the dead are changeless.
They grow no older.
It is I who have changed,
grown strange to what I was.
Yet I, the changed one,
ask: “How you been?"
He grins and looks at me.
“I been eating peaches
off some mighty fine trees.”

One thing I appreciate about the prayer is that Merton doesn’t make bold promises to God; instead, he says “I hope."

I think I will continue to pray this prayer.  I hope my student’s will, too.

My students seemed to deeply appreciate this prayer from Thomas Merton’s “Thoughts in Solitude.”  It is sometimes called the “Prayer of Abandonment.”  I like it, too.

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain
where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and that I think I am following your will
does not mean I am actually doing so.
But I believe
the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire
in all I am doing.
I hope
I will never do anything
apart from that desire.
And I know if I do this
you will lead me by the right road
though I may know nothing about it.
I will trust you always
though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear,
for you will never leave me
to face my perils alone.

"My Lord Alcinous, what could be finer
Than listening to a singer of tales
Such as Demodocus, with a voice like a God's?
Nothing we do is sweeter than this--
A cheerful gathering of all the people
Sitting side by side throughout the halls,
Feasting and listening to a singer of tales,
The tables filled with food and drink,
The server drawing wine from the bowl
And bringing it around to fill our cups.
For me, this is the finest thing in the world."
                                     -Odysseus, Odyssey Book 9

In my top ten coolest reggae songs of all time.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rb13ksYO0s&w=420&h=315]

Gosh I miss Jamaica sometimes.

At Bethel we have what are called “FYE” (Freshmen Year Experience) blocks–two courses blocked in a single time slot on Tuesday and Thursday of the fall semester that two professors teach teach. Cristian and I teach FYE together.  FYE is a sort of a misnomer because it only runs the first semester.  Nevertheless, since the program was begun eighteen years ago it has had a fairly dramatic impact on student retention and has enriched the overall Bethel experience.  While it is not a unique program–there are many similar across the country–it is one of the things that makes the Bethel experience unique. 

Often at the end of the semester our students have expressed their sadness that the block experience ends with the semester.  More times than I can count, students have told me during second semester that they “miss block."

We’ve been thinking a lot about SYE (Sophomore Year Experiences) that might build upon the FYE.  There are many things that could be done, but lets just say that at our institution curricular changes don’t come easy.  One day driving into school I had a brainstorm about a way to “reconnect” with my block during second semester that wouldn’t require any curricular change.  All it would require would be permission to meet one day per week during chapel (for chapel credit) during the second semester of sophomore year.  The VP for Student Enrichment liked the idea and gave our block permission to give it a trial run.

So yesterday Cristian and our two “block mentors” (Karli and Cassie–the best FYE student mentors in the history of the program) started brainstorming together about what this thing might look like.  We set a launch date, came up with a name (“B7 Reconnect”–FYE Block 7, reconnecting on many levels), talked about how to generate excitement about it, and discussed themes and topics that might be most helpful to sophomore’s in college–something in the general neighborhood of life calling or vocation and our identity in Christ without using such tired and over-used lingo as that.  Anyhow, I’m looking forward to the many layers of “reconnection” that may be possible in a setting that is as “un-classlike” as possible.

I love my work.  It’s the place God has called me–as Buechner says, it’s the place where (my) deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

p.s.  This song just started on my Last FM reggae station, and I’ve been singing it to my wife. :-)

[youtube www.youtube.com/watch

Free to good home:  two knees afflicted with mild patelar tendonitis from years of basketball.  As a bonus, I’m willing to throw in two achilles heels with chronic bursitis and two arthritic ankles. Left heel has noticable haglund’s deformity.

Sometimes in the middle of the day I have to break the monotony of checking things off my “to do” list, take a walk over to the gym, and make 150 shots. 

And then I can go back to checking things off my “to do” list and it doesn’t seem so tedious anymore. 

Just finished making 150 shots.  Just checked “write blog entry” off my “to do” list.  Next item on my “to do” list: “Make new ‘to do’ list.”

I’m considering the pros and cons of a standing desk or stand-up desk.

Pro: No more sore rear end.
Con: Potentially sore feet.

Pro: Novelty. First person in my office wing to have one.
Con: Weirdo.  First person in my office wing to have one.

Pro: Apparantly standing is better for your back.
Con:  My back is in relatively good shape compared with my ankles and achilles heels.

Pro: Might be able to get rid of my current really ugly desk.
Con:  Current really ugly desk weighs slightly less than a dump truck.

Pro: I like to read and write standing up.
Con: I would have to purchase ($) and assemble the stupid thing.

Pro: Would have to reorganize office.
Con: Would have to reorganize office.

Decision:  Undecided.

The best thing about crossfit is that you can invent your own crossfit workout and call it a crossfit workout.  Here’s the one I invented and then did today.

100 rep. jump ropes
10 wall ball shots with 25# ball
10 pull-ups
10 jump-knee tucks (a move borrowed from p90x)
10 sumo high pulls with 30 pood kettlebell

As many rounds as possible (AMRAP) in 15 minutes.

Exhausting.  Felt great!

I read this short story–very short story, really–by Raymond Carver yesterday, and now I can’t get it out of my head.  It is quintessentially minimalist, and yet it managed to grab me at a gut level with its raw emotion.  The story is called “Little Things” (read it now!!).  It is getting dark outside, and inside, too–where a couple fights as he packs his bags. He wants to take the baby. She refuses him. They struggle physically, pulling at the baby, trying to pry the child from one another’s arms.  The story ends ambiguously: “But he would not let go. He felt the baby slipping out of his hands and he pulled back very hard. In this manner, the issue was decided.”  As I read, Carver managed to make me feel for this couple, even though I’ve no idea what “little thing” has caused them to be so furious with one another.  And I felt for this little thing–this child caught in the middle, pulled two directions, somehow certainly harmed by the actions of these two wounded people. 

I guess I am reminded that there are little things that, over time, become–or will become–big things.

Ya, I’m the guy who listens to “Keane” radio while he tries to think of something to blog about.  At least today I’m that guy.

It’s not really working for me. In fact, all it’s really doing right now is delaying me from what I could be doing: shoveling the drive, riding the stationary bike and watching a rerun of the X-Files (ya, I’m the guy who watches reruns of the X-Files 3 or 4 times a week while riding bike), or grading some papers.

So what I’m saying is that “Keane” radio on Last FM isn’t really “muse” music–it doesn’t much inspire creativity, as you are plainly witnessing right now.  Allow me to change the channel and let’s observe what happens.

There. “Elton John” radio.  “Your Song.” 

Kind of makes me feel like writing a blog entry called “Your Blog."

“I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind
that I put down into words
how wonderful life is
while you’re in the world."

That didn’t really inspire anything much after all, I guess.  Next song…

“Maggie May” by Rod Stewart.

That reminds of a summer job I had after my freshmen year of college.  I cleaned the floors at the Kroger at Broadmoor Plaza in South Bend, six nights a week from 11 p.m. - 5 a.m.  I would dust mop, then scrub, then buff, then dust mop again.  It didn’t take six hours, usually, but my boss wanted me to put in six hours.  So I did.  Once a week they would shut the store down for three hours and I would wax the floors.

One of the night cashiers there was named Maggie–maybe thirty, thin, light brown hair, pretty smile.  Nice.  I remember one night this song came on the radio that softly played throughout the store all night.  One of the guys who stocked shelves started singing, and before long, all five of the guys who stocked shelves made their way to the front of the store, belting the song at the tops of their lungs at her, to her great embarrassment.  Only two of them really knew the lyrics, and none of them could sing. 

It was beautiful.  I scraped stickers off the floor in the produce section, and smiled to myself.  Smouched (Huck Finn’s word for “stole”) one of those ginormous gumballs from the bulk food section, and hummed along.

Thank you Last FM.  I’d forgotten.

It’s “Gold Rush” time. 

I’m not the biggest TV buff I know, but I do kinda dig Discovery Channel’s reality show, “Gold Rush.” Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment, but each week I watch the show hoping these guys hit the motherload somewhere deep in the bowels of Quartz Creek, Alaska.  Instead, I watch for an hour and discover that when it comes to gold mining, if it can break down, fall apart, or go wrong–it will.  The show could be called “A Series of Frustrating Events.”  So why do I like this?

I’ll never be a gold miner.  I’ll never know what it is really like to rough it in the Alaskan wilderness.  I’ll never drive gargantuan dump trucks, dozers, or front end loaders.  But the show does give the impression that its showing us a little of what it might be like to mine gold.  It’s intoxicating.  It’s maddening.  It’s enough to make you thankful that no matter how bad of a day you’re having, you probably didn’t have as many things go wrong as these guys did in any one hour show.

Yesterday I quoted from Rasselas. Might as well go for it again, since it seems relevant here.  Prince Rasselas is bored in the Happy Valley–bored because he has everything he wants. While it might seem like happiness is getting everything you want, the prince points out that he is unhappy precisely because he has nothing to struggle for, nothing to strive after, nothing to desire.  Rasselas says, “I fancy that I should be happy if I had something to pursue."

I like this TV show because these guys are relentlessly pursuing gold. I’m not all that interested in relentlessly pursuing gold, myself.  But I do know that we all need something to pursue.  Every week I watch them endure disappointment after disappointment, and only occasionally a small triumph or a glimmer of hope.  And yet they press on.  They seem happy.  I think it’s because they have something to pursue.  I need something to pursue, too.

So I keep on the lookout for little things that might awaken me from my contented slumber, and I pursue them.  A hundred free throws in a row.  Thirty unbroken pull-ups.  A doctorate.  A new humanities major. 350 blog entries in a year–one a day with a reasonable assumption that there will be a dozen or so days when I’m somewhere with no Internet connection. The entire Bible in 6 months.  That sort of thing.

There is that inevitable let down once you’ve reached some goal.  If these guys strike it rich by the end of the mining season, the show won’t be quite the same for me any more.  I hope they do, but I also know that if they do, that’s the end of the show.  I’ll make a hundred free throws in a row again someday soon. Then what?  Do it again.  Hit 50 3 pointers in a row.  Who knows.  I just know I’m the kind of person who is happiest struggling and striving my way towards something.  Kind of like the guys on “Gold Rush,” I guess. Call it restlessness if you want, but it beats the boredom of happy valley.

"Nothing," replied the artist, "will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must first be overcome." (Rasselas, by Samuel Johnson)

Every semester I have to come up with some new idea for a literature seminar. Every semester I agonize over this decision–over choosing a topic to spend fifteen weeks with, over finding something that I’ll be energized enough by to enjoy and to facilitate, and something that maybe a few students will find interesting enough to want to explore together. I’m not as successful in my choices as I’d like to be, and sometimes I’m surprised by the responses. There have even been times when I’ve feltl like something wasn’t going so well, but it turned out by the end of the semester the students were expressing much more appreciation than I could had sensed throughout the term.

• Post-modernist literature
• Myth and Archetype in Literature
• Nobel prize winners
• Nietzsche and the novelists
• Clashes of culture
• Survival literature
• Love and friendship
• Literary Friendships
• Bringing life to literature
• Modern European masterpieces
• The Sermon on the Mount and Story
• C.S. Lewis, Samuel Johnson and the Great Conversation

1 small bag of doritos
4 miniature reeses peanut butter cups
1 half glass of pink lemonade
9 baby carrots with ranch dip
Two thirds of a miniature ice cream sandwich
and… some baked goldfish crackers

She has put in a request for for mama to pick her up a “slurpee” on her way home from her meeting.

Ok. So am I a good papa for insisting that she eat some carrots–as if they would counterbalance all that garbage and ease my conscience a bit? Don’t answer.

I do remember the feeling of being half starved at the end of a school day. I remember in middle and high school going home finally after a practice close to dinner time feeling woozy, grumpy, with a splitting hunger headache far too many times. I can’t imagine that as the healthiest way of existence, either. I don’t feel so bad that a famished little girl ate a bunch of junk food this afternoon. I suppose a peanut butter sandwich on whole grain bread, an organic apple, and some of those baby carrots might be a snack Dr. Oz would want my daughter eating, but I also don’t think she’s taken any years off her life today by eating all this junk. And she’s happy as a lark. :-)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHcP4MWABGY&w=420&h=315]

I’ve seen them perform this song in concert five times, now, and every time its felt like the Kingdom was upon us.

"My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death." (Mt. 26:38)

"Through the prism of my tears I have seen a suffering God.  It is said of God that no one can behold his face and live.  I have always thought this meant that no one can see his splendor and live.  A friend said perhaps this meant that no one could see his sorrow and live.  Or perhaps his sorrow is his splendor."  (Nicholas Wolterstorff)

In blog entry #11, I commented on “Visigoths” and the visigothian idea of grades. See that entry here. http://robbyprenkert.blogspot.com/2012/01/11-on-visigoths.html

We asked the class whether they thought–considering their graduating class–the Athenians would outnumber the Visigoths. I suppose the value of a question like that isn’t so much in the answer we get to the specific question, but to the discussion the question sparks and the perspectives it reveals.

I think it would be fair to say that most of them felt that the majority of their classmates were in the Visigoth camp, and seem to show few signs of relocating themselves.

Taking a bit longer view, I remain hopeful. My teaching partner and I think that seeds do get planted, and that sometimes–maybe even years later–students and former students slide on the scale and become a little less “V” and a little more “A.”  Of course, the two categories are not Christian, but a robust faith will always push one toward the “A” and away from he “V.”  t

Sadly, a superficial faith may very well slide a person deeper into visigothian territory.  But that’s a thought for another time.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdKa9bXVinE&w=560&h=315]

The first reading assignment in every class I teach is the syllabus. The first thing I do the second day of class is take questions students have about the course after they’ve (supposedly) read the syllabus.

Sometimes, I feel like the guy in the video. Not all the time. Not even most of the time. But every once in a while.

Not necessarily this semester. :-)

Here is, by far, the best insight from class on Tuesday.

We read Neil Postman’s “My Graduation Speech” for class, a speach where he contrasts two groups that come to be metaphors for important ideas–the “Athenians” and  the “Visigoths.”  It’s a fantastic little piece and will only take you five minutes or so to read.  You should read it now if you never have.

http://www.ditext.com/postman/mgs.html

We asked the class think about their own (future) graduating class at Bethel, and then to speculate whether they thought the Athenians would outnumber the Visigoths.  One student suggested that a barrier to being an Athenian was actually “grades.”  My teaching partner chimed up right away and said, “That’s great!  Grades aren’t a value of the Athenians–grades are a value of the Visigoths."

I was reminded of Phaedrus' proposed university without grades in Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  But that’s an entry for another time.  (btw, You should read that book, too, but not right now.).

So grades are a visigothian idea–I like that. Some of our supposedly “best students” are Visigoths in their approach to education. And who do we have to thank for that?

It wasn’t students who invented the idea of grades.  It took a group of Visigoths called “professional educators” to up with that one.

My Monday’s are tough.  It’s all relative, of course.  A high school teacher would look at my schedule and go, “big woop–I do that every day.”  So I’m not complaining. 

I thought if I scheduled my Monday heavier, the rest of the week would be smooth sailing.  But there could be a downside to having four classes spread out over 12 hours, with a back-to-back-to-back from 3pm till 8pm.  Let me borrow a term from fitness: “recovery.”  The rest of the week may be so much lighter and easier, but I’m so spent from the marathon Monday that I’m worthless for a few days.

Or maybe that’s all just over-reacting, because yesterday was worse than most Mondays will be because somebody scheduled a two hour meeting in the middle of the day that ended up being emotionally exhausting.

I’m not worried.  But I will let you, my two readers, in on a little secret.  Listen: Usually I write my blog entry the day before I post it. I didn’t have time yesterday to write today’s.  So this is how bad I write “first draft.” 

Speaking of a blog about “nothing”–eh?

She knocks at my office door, enters.  She is the student who shows up far too infrequently to class, and in what little writing she has submitted, she gives just a glimpse of a life teetering on the brink of chaos. 

“I wanted to recite psalm,” she says. 

It is an assignment–memorize and recite ten psalms over the course of the semester.  This is her first–somewhere at the midpoint of the semester, and considering her lack of work and attendance thus far, and our recent interventions to encourage her to come to class and to do the homework, I take this as a positive sign that she is making an effort to turn her semester around. 

“Which one?"

“Psalm 6.”  She is pretty and extremely bright.  But her eyes have an omnipresent, weary sadness about them.

I flip to Psalm 6 in our textbook–The Message–so I can follow along as she recites. 

^1-2 Please, God, no more yelling, no more trips to the woodshed.
Treat me nice for a change;
I’m so starved for affection.


^2-3 Can’t you see I’m black-and-blue,
beat up badly in bones and soul?
God, how long will it take
for you to let up?


^4-5 Break in, God, and break up this fight;
if you love me at all, get me out of here.
I’m no good to you dead, am I?
I can’t sing in your choir if I’m buried in some tomb!


^6-7 I’m tired of all this—so tired. My bed
has been floating forty days and nights
On the flood of my tears.
My mattress is soaked, soggy with tears.
The sockets of my eyes are black holes;
nearly blind, I squint and grope.


^8-9 Get out of here, you Devil’s crew:
at last God has heard my sobs.
My requests have all been granted,
my prayers are answered.


¹⁰ Cowards, my enemies disappear.

Disgraced, they turn tail and run. 

She does not stumble.  She does not pause awkwardly searching for the right word.  She recites flawlessly, as if she has written the words on her soul, and allowed me for just a moment to peer into it.  It is beautiful.

“Wonderful!” I say, and she manages a half smile.  I pause.  “I like this psalm.  Why did you choose it."

The sad eyes mist over, she glances at the floor, and then quickly back up.

“Because it’s exactly how I feel."

I take it she means especially the first seven verses.  Now I fight back tears.  “You keep praying that prayer,” I say. Then, as if to set her free from what must feel like confinement–the office of her professor–I say, “Thank you, for this. I needed to hear this psalm.” And she’s gone.

She does not make it to the end of the semester at my college, and I do not know where she is now.  It wouldn’t be all that hard to find out, for we live in a world with Facebook, a world where virtually no one disappears forever anymore. I have thought of that day from time to time since then, but I had forgotten the psalm until this morning when I read it again and remembered and wanted to say to the sad eyed one, “I remember you, I have thought of you, I will pray for you."


And “Thank you.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j8mr-gcgoI&w=560&h=315]

He slips out the backdoor of his office and into the movable stacks.  Most employees have but one way in and one way out of their offices.  His office, in the bowels of Bowen, has a second doorway out and directly into the literature section of the library–into a large room with the highest concentration of books of anywhere on campus.

Were he a poet there might be a metaphor to work here.  Sometimes he likes to shut the main door to his office and crack open the door into the library to let in its cooler air.  Perhaps in a magical realist story, more than just cool air would work its way into his modest, windowless office when he opens this door to another world. 

Libraries have always enchanted him.  He walks past a stack of books a hundred times without noticing, then the hundred and first time some book title captures his eye, and if he is not careful (and why should he be?), he finds himself standing for a half hour cracking open a book cover, inhaling its cooler air, transported to another world.

One day the library will likely claim the faculty offices in the northeast corner of its building, and the English department will be relocated elsewhere.  This will be a sad day for him–the day he loses his windowless office with its secret passageway into a world of worlds.

Or not so much on cars in general, “On My Car.”  Or, “On My 1999 Blue Ford Escort.”  The one that is just about ready for the graveyard, I think.  It’s served me well. I don’t drive it all that much–back and forth to work, in the summer to softball tournaments and games, occasionally to the store. It hasn’t even made it to a  hundred thousand miles yet, but it runs like it’s a lot older. The kind of miles I put on it all these years are the hardest kind of miles on a car.  A mile or two here, eight or nine miles there.  Hardly gives the poor thing a chance to warm up.

I hate the very thought of buying a new car.  And I vowed after I bought a new care ten years ago that I would never buy another “new” car.  That’s not what I mean.  I hate the thought of buying any car.  I don’t trust people who sell cars, I don’t trust myself to not get ripped off when I buy a car, and I don’t like spending money in such large sums.  Leaves me depressed for days.  And cars–a car is just something that takes you from one place to the next without your having to sweat or breathe heavy. 

If there were decent bike lanes or even if I could trust the rest of the idiots who drive cars all over the place, I’d bike to work most days and maybe find a way to eliminate my reliance on the car.  But there are no decent bike lanes from where I live to where I work, and experience biking that route has given me no reason to place my trust in idiots.

I could buy a house somewhere closer to where I work, a thought I entertain nearly every day driving home.  But remember what I said about big purchases leaving me depressed?

So, I will buy a car.  Or maybe, J. will buy us a car.  She actually seems energized by the wheeling and dealing and excitement of car buying.

[youtube www.youtube.com/watch

• I turn 42 today.
• Jackie Robinson wore #42.
• One time in a summer league basketball game in Bourbon, I scored 42 points.
• 42 days into 2012, I will have written 42 new blog entries.
• My world literature class will meet 42 times this semester--41 classes and a final exam period.
• Volume 42 of the Great Books of the Western World includes the major works of Immanuel Kant. I've never read it.  I don't plan on wasting my 42nd year doing so.
• Psalm 42 begins, "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God."
• 42 feet is a perfect distince between home plate and the pitchng rubber in wiffle ball.
• "Cholly was beyond redemption, of course, and redemption was hardly the point--Mrs. Breedlove was not interested in Christ the Redeemer, but rather in Christ the Judge." (p. 42, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison--a heartbreakingly beautiful novel of lost innocence you should go to the library right now and get).
• Say "Tea for two" really fast about 10 times and I bet you'll almost say 42.
• I've always found Matthew 5:42--"Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you"--harder to follow than I would like to admit.
• 6 x 7.  Also 41 + 1.
• 24--the number I wore in basketball most of the time--backwards is 42.
•  A Double Quarter Pounder from McDonald's contains 42 grams of fat.
• If gained 42 pounds--perhaps by eating 42 Double Quarter Pounders a week for the next 42 days (6 weeks)--I would weigh 225 pounds.
• I just did 42 push-ups, so I could say that I just did 42 push-ups.
• Apparantly this guy http://youtu.be/tRe1wFIACw8 has a 42 inch vertical.  He definitely has a really cool Alfalfa hair thing going.
• I would bet 42 dollars that fewer than 42 people will actually read this blog entry.

She makes things.  She makes things all day long.
I consume things.  I consume things all day long.

I read books.
We read books together, too, but then she surrounds herself for an hour or two with a million markers and crayons and paper and glue and staples and scissors, and she makes her own book, which she gives away to someone as a gift.

She delights in making the cheesy scrambled eggs and toast…
that I will eat, while I channel surf.

I plug my new headphones into the computer and listen to my favorite station on Pandora or Last.Fm,
while she sits down at her keyboard and hammers out another song she’s taught herself to play.

In the beginning, God created…
And all day long, so does Syd, bearing His image with gladness.

Life is a journey.
All journeys quests.
Every quest has the same purpose–that purpose is to deepen the self-knowledge of the quester.
Self-knowledge is never merely additive; it is always transformative.

Maybe?

The Spirit intends to investigate our whole life history, layer by layer, throwing out the junk and preserving the values that wer appropriate to each stage of our human development . . . Eventually, the Spirit begins to dig into the bedrock of our earliest emotional life . . . Hence, as we progress toward the center where God is actually waiting for us, we are naturally going to feel that we are getting worse.  This warns us that the spiritual journey is not a success story or a career move.  It is rather a series of humiliations of the false self.  (Thomas Keating, Intimacy with God: An Introduction to Centering Prayer, 82-84).

Two dogs—both medium sized mutts of indistinct breed—live in a cage behind the house a couple backyards over.  They are too far away for me to read the expressions on their faces when Morgan and I play ball in our spacious fenced backyard, but they sit on the roofs of their homes inside their kennel and stare our direction.  Sometimes they bark.

I’ve never seen anyone take them on a walk. I’ve never seen anyone throw them a ball.

I’ve only ever seen them in that kennel. 

I don’t understand why anyone would want to keep a dog—never mind two dogs—penned up 24-7 in the far reaches of their backyard.  The dogs apparently are not starving, for they have been there well over a year now.  But surely they must be depressed.  All that open space, so many smells, so many free creatures roaming the woods and trees and yards just outside their pen, yet there they sit.

When all creation is one day redeemed and made new, I have a strong suspicion that those two dogs will be there, too, and that there will be no more cages, and that they will run free, and not grow weary.  

My prayer is that I would be as heartbroken for my caged human neighbors, whose lives must be no less tragic.

Considering how many words have been written–especially in recent years–on leadership, it is striking to me how precious few truly wise words have been written on the subject. Apparently there’s a market out there for books on leadership, when most of what you need to know could be learned by reading very old books that don’t have “Leadership” in the title (i.e. The Bible, The Iliad and The Odyssey, etc.). Spend your time with them, and if you have any imagination at all, you’ll learn more about leadership than any hundred modern books. We don’t need “leadership” seminars. We need to read the Great Books.

And, maybe, we need to read Parker Palmer.

Everyone who draws breath "takes the lead" many times a day. We lead with actions that range from a smile to a frown; with words that range from blessing to curse; with decisions that range from faithful to fearful . . . When I resist thinking of myself as a leader, it is neither because of modesty nor a clear-eyed look at the reality of my life . . . I am responsible for my impact on the world whether I acknowledge it or not.

So what does it take to qualify as a leader. Being human and being here. As long as I am here, doing whatever I am doing, I am leading for better or for worse. And, if I may says so, so are you.