Month: November 2005

Too Cool

After losing his bid for a third term as president, Teddy Roosevelt led an expedition to explore and map the 1,000 mile long River of Doubt. Three men died on the journey–one from the river and two from the actions of others on the team–there’s a book about it. The preacher in me can’t help pointing out that when you journey down the river of doubt it’s not the doubt itself that is most likely to kill your spiritual health–it’s how you respond to it.

Our Dog Died

I’ve held off on posting this for a few days because I’ve been on the busy side. As my brother mentioned, our family dog died last week back in Louisiana. Her name was Missy, and she was one of the best dogs ever.

She was a pretty funny dog. For instance, she used to try to herd my parents as though they were sheep. Quite comical.

It sounds as though she died very peacefully, but I know it’s a hard blow to my parents. They both loved her very much. I did, too, but I’ve been living a few thousand miles away from her and so it lessened the blow.

My dad says he doesn’t want another dog, but he’s a big softie. Some pathetic looking animal will turn up on his doorstep sooner or later, and he’ll adopt it.

But it will never replace Missy.

With Visions of Wild Geese Honking in Her Head

Dana is a source of unenending amazement to me. This morning when she woke up we had the following conversation:

Me: “Dana, did you have any dreams last night?”
Dana (in a little 19-month-old just-woke-up voice): “Dream?”
Me: “Dreams are the pictures you see when you’re sleeping and your eyes are closed.”
Dana: “Goose.”
Me: “You had a dream about a goose?”
Dana: “Ya.”
Me: “What did the goose do in your dream?”
Dana: “Honk honk.”

I was melting.

I had been trying to get her to understand the concept of dreams off and on for a few weeks now, and while she’s always seemed interested she’s never actually answered my question with anything other than “ya”.

In case you’re skeptical, I’m pretty sure she understood my question and did actually have a dream about a goose. She hasn’t seen a goose in weeks (not even in her picture books). If one was on her mind it arrived there somehow other than a recent real-world experience.

Besides which, she told mommy the same story, “Dream. Goose. Honk honk.” when we went to get mommy up a few minutes later.

Chris Rock gets it…

In 2 Corinthians 6:14, Paul explains why Christians shouldn’t get romantically entangled with someone who doesn’t share their deepest values. Every year it seems that I have to hammer this into students’ heads. They’re involved in foolish relationships and they just can’t get (or refuse to get) why it’s a bad idea.

So I was thrilled to stumble upon Chris Rock’s Bigger and Blacker special on Comedy Central. He had a bit that expressed the underlying logic beautifully (if you are familiar at all with Mr. Rock’s work you will be unsurprised to hear that I have edited the text slightly for family-friendliness):

Whatever you into, your woman gotta be into, too, and vice versa… or the [thing] ain’t gonna work. lt ain’t gonna work.

That’s right. lf you born-again, your woman gotta be born-again, too.

lf you a crackhead, your woman gotta be a crackhead, too… or the [thing] won’t work.

You can’t be like, ”l’m going to church, where you going?” ”Hit the pipe!”

That relationship ain’t going nowhere.

Two crackheads can stay together forever.

Students take note. When stand-up theologians and stand-up comedians make the same arguments you know your position is indefensible.

When Ratty Comes Marching Home Again

Grandparents are rat magnets. At least, that is the conclusion I am rapidly coming to. As faithful readers no doubt recall, we had rat problems when my in-laws last visited (crisis, climax, ambiguous conclusion).

Anyway, back to the present: my mother is visiting and we have another rat to contend with. We saw evidence about a week ago but we set out some poison in a child-inaccessible location and the rat consumed a lot of it. We assumed it was dead, but today we saw its tail while preparing lunch.

We were minding our own business when my mother noticed a humongous rat tail sticking out from beneath the dishwasher. It was larger than a very large worm and smaller than a small snake. Probably about 7 inches long. Assuming it wasn’t mooning us I’ll assume a tail length of around 8 or 9 inches total.

Paula is less than pleased. I think she views it as a personal insult to her homemaking skills. I prefer to think of it as part of a larger ecological issue involving our apartment complex, the weather, and the impossibility of creating a hermetically sealed apartment.

But Paula is on the warpath. To delve further into cliche, it’s on.

updated 11/7/2005 to soothe the savage beast that is family

Hello, Dalai!

I got to hear the Dalai Lama speak at Stanford on Friday. I was actually a few minutes late because I was walking up from a non-standard direction and so I was trapped on the other end of his motorcade and the accompanying security detail. At one point I was about 15 feet from him.

A few thoughts in no particular order:

  • A student asked me why in world I would want to hear the Dalai Lama speak since he’s a leader of a rival religion. And then I read an article describing how some scientists are having the same reaction to the Dalai Lama’s scheduled appearance at a neuroscience convention: This merger of serious neuroscience with a particular religion is a practical joke because the very recognition of the Dalai Lama relies on the belief in reincarnation,” said Yi Rao, a neurology professor at Northwestern University. (source). I always find it funny when I see a scientist getting all fundamentalist. This is the flaw in that criticism: to say someone is wrong about one thing is not to say that they are wrong about all things. Of course I think the Dalai Lama teaches a lot of absurd ideas. That doesn’t mean none of his ideas are good ones. Plus, I figured I’d probably get a sermon illustration or two out of the mix. I was right, too–check out the next bullet point.
  • The talk was about nonviolence, and the Dalai Lama is a well-known pacifist and a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, so I was fairly shocked when I heard him say that the jury was still out on whether or not the Iraq war was justified. I am not taking this out of context at all–this was in direct response to a question whether or not war was ever moral. I don’t think the audience knew what to do with that at all. I was laughing pretty loudly on the inside.
  • He has a wonderful lack of decorum. In the midst of one question he took off his shoes, rubbed his feet, and tucked his legs underneath him.
  • He contradicted himself quite a few times, but it could have been a byproduct of not being fluent in English. He was talking about some subtle things and he may have used a few words imprecisely.

update 11/7/2005: the Stanford Daily just released an article about his visit echoing many of my points above (including the Iraq war thing).