Author: Glen

Understanding Today’s Students

Pres­by­ter­ian col­lege min­is­ter Rhett Smith has a pret­ty lengthy essay about today’s stu­dents.

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).

Kyle Lake Died

Some­time last year I read a help­ful lit­tle book called “Under­stand­ing God’s Will.” I googled up the author, one Kyle Lake (pas­tor of the church David Crow­der attends–Uni­ver­si­ty Bap­tist in Waco), and emailed him a short note thank­ing him for tak­ing the time to write the book. He wrote back to me and said thanks, which I thought was pret­ty classy of him.

So I was pret­ty shocked this morn­ing to read about his death. He was about to bap­tize some­one and he reached to adjust the micro­phone which then sent a cur­rent through his body, killing him in the bap­tistry.

Wow. He was about my age and he just dropped like that while doing a fair­ly rou­tine part of his job.

My heart goes out to his fam­i­ly and his church. This has to be an incred­i­bly hard time for them. And that poor woman who was get­ting baptized–I won­der how she’s pro­cess­ing all this?

Paula’s Grandfather Died

Paula’s mater­nal grand­fa­ther died ear­li­er this week. He died very peace­ful­ly and com­fort­ably, as far as any­one can tell. It was one of those expect­ed things–he was 80 and had been ill for quite a while. He’s sur­vived by his sev­en chil­dren and his wife.

I only met him a few times, but I liked him. He was a very kind man and very skilled at mak­ing things. Also, I think it’s cool that he spoke Cajun French at home to his fam­i­ly. A lot of peo­ple from south­ern Louisiana seem just like peo­ple from Gener­icville, USA, but he was the real deal. He was like all those Cajun chefs you see on tele­vi­sion, except he made bird­hous­es instead of meals.

He’ll be missed.

For­tu­nate­ly, he had such a large fam­i­ly that his wife will be well-looked after. Almost all their chil­dren live with­in a few miles of the fam­i­ly home.

Tired of Bumper Sticker

I’m a lit­tle tired of see­ing that bumper stick­er that says, “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” If I’m not mis­tak­en, it actu­al­ly leaves two peo­ple with no depth per­cep­tion. 🙂

They Look The Same

Yes­ter­day Dana was sit­ting on the toi­let attempt­ing to wipe her bot­tom with tis­sue paper. After she felt that she had accom­plished her mis­sion, she lift­ed the paper to blow her nose into it. Log­i­cal from a cer­tain van­tage point, but dis­gust­ing nonethe­less. Need­less to say, I laughed like a mad­man.