Category: Personal News

Feeling Tired

I’m quite tired.

We had our final Chi Alpha wor­ship meet­ing of the quar­ter last night. It went awe­some. Wor­ship was phe­nom­e­nal, I think the mes­sage was well-received, and we got to hang out and talk for a while after­wards. Plus we actu­al­ly end­ed the year with more num­bers than we began the year with. That’s rare in cam­pus min­istry. If you aver­age the first three weeks of the year and mul­ti­ply by about 80%, that’s a more typ­i­cal num­ber to end with. The growth has been great — but a larg­er min­istry means more peo­ple to meet with, which means less flex­i­bil­i­ty in my sched­ule.

So I’m tired from the aca­d­e­m­ic year.

I’ve also been teach­ing an exten­sion class for AGTS in Sacra­men­to every Thurs­day this month. Tonight is the final course. It’s a 2 hour dri­ve there, a four hour class, and then a two hour dri­ve back. It’s been very fun and I’ve learned a lot through teach­ing the course (which I’ve heard is the expe­ri­ence of most teach­ers).

But it’s pret­ty drain­ing. That’s an extra 8 hour day every week. And that’s if traf­fic behaves.

And I’m serv­ing on a task force for the Assem­blies. We had a video chat this morn­ing which last­ed about 2.5 hours. It was reward­ing, but also drain­ing.

Final­ly, I’m sup­posed to be doing a lot of web stuff for Chi Alpha. I just haven’t been able to pri­or­i­tize it late­ly. Yeek. Lots of low-hang­ing fruit, but no time to reach out and pluck it.

All in all, I’m very much look­ing for­ward to the change of sched­ule that comes with the sum­mer. I’ll still be busy, but at least I’ll be busy doing dif­fer­ent things. 🙂down­load shut­tle ter­ror by night down­load

down­load pigs dvd

Congratulations, Greg

My broth­er just got engaged. There are rumors of a YouTube video of the pro­pos­al wait­ing to sur­face, but for now you’ll have to be con­tent with the writ­ten sto­ry down­load the gold­en com­pass

.

Con­grats, bro. Wish you both the best.

It's Been One Of Those Days

Before start­ing the work­day this morn­ing, I fin­ished online traf­fic school (you can do that in Cal­i­for­nia) due to a speed­ing tick­et from the end of last year. One of the more pro­found lessons I learned — and I quote — “do not dri­ve with nails in your tires.” I guess I was speed­ing because I lacked that knowl­edge. Good thing I got that cleared up.

After fin­ish­ing traf­fic school I head­ed for the show­er. Upon emerg­ing, I dis­cov­ered that Dana had very near­ly bro­ken Xan­der’s fin­ger by slam­ming the door on it. His pinky was com­pressed to about 1/4 of its nor­mal diam­e­ter and was a dull gray in col­or. Even after it returned to its nor­mal size and col­or, we were still a lit­tle wor­ried. For­tu­nate­ly, he had a sched­uled doc­tor’s appoint­ment and the doc­tor con­firmed that his fin­ger was A‑OK. And then gave him three shots. Poor guy.

On top of all that, Paula was sick.

And I got around to answer­ing a let­ter from my dis­trict ask­ing me to serve on the Par­lia­men­tary Com­mit­tee at Dis­trict Coun­cil. That’s right — the Par­lia­men­tary Com­mit­tee. I am offi­cial­ly that guy. I told them yes. If you’re invit­ed to serve then you’re already that guy

bride wars down­load ace ven­tu­ra when nature calls divx whether you own up to it or not. It’s like going bald — you might as well embrace it.

Good stuff hap­pened, too. For instance, I got to talk with a Ph.D. can­di­date about faith. She came to the Fran­cis Collins lec­ture and want­ed to fol­low up with some ques­tions. We had a great con­ver­sa­tion. I hope I was help­ful to her. She seemed quite touched when we prayed at the end of our time togeth­er.

But on the whole, it just felt like one of those days.

We Just Felt Our First Earthquake

We just felt our first earth­quake!

It only took us 5 years liv­ing in the Bay Area.

Appar­ent­ly it was this one mys­tery alas­ka movie down­load .

Things My Students Have Said About Me

Actu­al com­ments my stu­dents made about me on a recent sur­vey:

  1. the balder the bet­ter
  2. exu­ber­ant, zany, wacky, over the top
  3. Unique, John Stew­art meets the apos­tle Paul.
  4. prone to shout­ing in high pitched voic­es
  5. ped­a­gog­ic con­nois­seur — appre­ci­ates good teach­ing and apt quotes.
  6. occa­sion­al diar­rhea of the mouth
  7. …uncon­ven­tion­al
  8. won­der­ful­ly inap­pro­pri­ate­ly humor­ous, great at com­ing up with math­e­mat­i­cal-sci­en­tif­ic analo­gies for facets of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty (bal­loons and 2nd deriv­a­tives any­one?), best at rep­re­sent­ing Jesus on film

It’s great to feel loved. And mocked.

The Big 1–0

I remem­ber see­ing a ser­mon series once titled “Mar­riage: Clos­est Thing To Heav­en, Clos­est Thing To Hell.” Bril­liant title.

Ten years ago at this time I had just fin­ished hid­ing my car from my grooms­men to pre­vent any unto­ward pranks and was at First Assem­bly of God in Lafayette, LA get­ting ready to be mar­ried under the aus­pices of Eric Treuil (who was using the author­i­ty invest­ed in him by God and the state of Louisiana).

Three quick mem­o­ries:

  • Paula was very beau­ti­ful in her bridal dress.
  • I began fid­get­ing with my ring while still in the sanc­tu­ary, a habit I’ve con­tin­ued to this day. I don’t know why, but when­ev­er I’m thinkig about some­thing I’ll either spin it around on my fin­ger or take it off and put it back on a few times. What­ev­er the cause, you can see me doing it on the wed­ding tape as we recess out of the sanc­tu­ary.
  • I had a pile of eclairs as my grooms cake cour­tesy of high school bud­dy George Byron Noel. He’s a real­ly good chef and my cake was deli­cious (as my broth­er can attest, since he ate approx­i­mate­ly half of it 🙂 ).

We head­ed out on a hon­ey­moon that includ­ed a stop in New Orleans and cul­mi­nat­ed in a stay at South­ern SALT (now known as the Upris­ing) where I will be preach­ing in just a few days. It’s fun­ny how things seem to come full-cir­cle some­times.

10 years. Much clos­er to heav­en than hell by my reck­on­ing.

Hap­py anniver­sary, Paula. I’d mar­ry you again in a heart­beat.

Introducing Alexander Davis

Alexan­der Davis was born 11/17/2006 at 12:24pm after a very quick labor (from the time Paula began to push until the time he was com­plete­ly out­side was four min­utes). He weighed 6lbs and 7oz and was 19.75 inch­es long.

Our plan is to refer to him as Xan­der (instead of the full Alexan­der or the briefer Alex). We’ll see how it takes. Dana seems to like it, so that’s a plus.

We’re still decid­ing about the mid­dle name. We’ve got it nar­rowed down to three and we want to sleep on it before mak­ing our choice.

I’m too wiped to type much more now, check back lat­er for more details. Until then, enjoy the pho­to gallery.

As The World’s Number One Speaker On The Subject of Humility…

Off-Road Disciplines: Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders (J-B Leadership Network Series)As the world’s num­ber one speak­er on the sub­ject of humil­i­ty, I’d like to draw your atten­tion to a book in which I am a recur­ring char­ac­ter.

Earl Creps has just writ­ten Off-Road Dis­ci­plines, a book for church lead­ers try­ing to nav­i­gate all the change our cul­ture keeps throw­ing at us.

I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to dis­cov­er that I am quot­ed many times through­out the book. If you have nev­er read your­self quot­ed in a book before, let me assure that it can be dis­con­cert­ing.

There’s no way I can be objec­tive about this book. It’s writ­ten by a friend and almost all the recur­ring char­ac­ters are friends.

So I will sim­ply say that I enjoyed it and I think I would have enjoyed it whether or not it was by a friend. It’s just filled with fas­ci­nat­ing lit­tle snip­pets.

The His­to­ry Chan­nel recent­ly offered me part of the answer in a doc­u­men­tary about the researchers who devote their lives to dis­cov­er­ing Atlantis. These pas­sion­ate and sin­cere peo­ple con­sid­er them­selves con­sum­mate pro­fes­sion­als in their field. They employ expen­sive, high-tech equip­ment and sac­ri­fice the respect of main­stream sci­ence to live on the per­pet­u­al verge of one of the great­est dis­cov­er­ies of all time. Spurred on by an ancient text (Pla­to, in this case), they spend years sur­vey­ing vast stretch­es of ocean in a quest to assem­ble clues to cat­a­clysmic events in the dis­tant past. The dis­dain of their sci­en­tif­ic peers only increas­es their fer­vor by mak­ing these faith­ful into pro­fes­sion­al mar­tyrs. Some­time before the last com­mer­cial on the TV pro­gram, I grasped the par­al­lel to the post-Chris­t­ian expe­ri­ence of the Church: ancient texts, out­ra­geous the­o­ries, huge expense, per­se­cu­tion com­plex, and a pas­sion­ate devo­tion to things that mat­ter only to insid­ers. (page 21)

I have to believe I would find that grip­ping no mat­ter who wrote it. Or con­sid­er this sim­ple evi­dence that demon­strates a truth I have long believed but been unable to show data for:

…in a sur­vey of mag­a­zine indices I found that the first ref­er­ences to post­mod­ernism in Chris­t­ian peri­od­i­cals did not appear until four to thir­teen years after the first ref­er­ences are indexed in sec­u­lar jour­nals.

That’s the most con­crete, data-based illus­tra­tion I’ve ever seen of the cul­ture lag in which the church is trapped.

Plus he coins two phras­es that I love: “over­churched under­achiev­er” (so busy with church stuff they have no time for real stuff) and “ortho­doxy creep” (a ten­den­cy to doc­tri­nal­ize every opin­ion).

Any­way, on to the impor­tant stuff: me.

My first appear­ance in the book is on page 45:

After hear­ing a talk sup­port­ed by Pow­er­Point, Glen (half my age) said polite­ly, “I thought you had a degree in com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

Ouch. The words hurt Earl the first time and me the sec­ond.

I am fea­tured again five pages lat­er: “Glen helps me with tech­nol­o­gy and the Inter­net.”

My best role, how­ev­er, comes in the chap­ter on humil­i­ty.

No, real­ly.

A [min­is­te­r­i­al] life rep­re­sent­ing an atti­tude of “I know!” “You’re wrong!” and “You need me!” serves as what my friend Glen calls a “block­er,” stand­ing in the way of the spir­i­tu­al­ly hun­gry rather than moti­vat­ing them to inves­ti­gate Jesus fur­ther. (page 83)

At last, I am por­trayed as the hum­ble sage I know and love.

So I’ll stop quot­ing from the book before I paint myself in an unflat­ter­ing light again. 😉

Oh, You Have One Of Those…

Dana has been pot­ty train­ing late­ly and she’s get­ting quite good at it. She’ll be play­ing with her toys, mind­ing her own busi­ness, when all of a sud­den she will leap to her feet and sneak/bolt towards the bath­room. After suc­cess­ful­ly deposit­ing sol­id mat­ter she will emit a tri­umphant cry: “I went poop!”

It’s quite charm­ing, real­ly.

Yes­ter­day one of our friends, Jen, vol­un­teered to take Dana in for the day while Paula was on bedrest. Things were going just fine until Dana pooped in her pants with­out show­ing the slight­est inter­est in Jen’s bath­room.

Dana need­ed some clean­ing to pre­vent a rash, and when Jen brought Dana to the bath­room Dana stared at the toi­let and then said slow­ly to Jen, “Oh, you have one of those.” 🙂

Assump­tions. As my friend Fras­er used to tell me in high school, the word assume makes an ass out of you and me.

For the record, I am assum­ing the ety­mol­o­gy of that com­ment traces back to don­keys and not to sphinc­ters, oth­er­wise it might be con­strued as a vul­gar­i­ty. My thoughts on curs­ing, vul­gar­i­ties, and exple­tives are a lit­tle com­pli­cat­ed, but the bot­tom line is that I try to avoid offend­ing peo­ple with the words I choose with­out becom­ing bound up in sil­ly rules (such as eras­ing the word ass from the dic­tio­nary because one of its uses is a syn­onym for pos­te­ri­or). Plus the ensu­ing pun (result­ing from the jux­ta­po­si­tion of poop and hiney) would be too awful even for me.

Back to assump­tions: Dana assumes Jen has no pot­ty and so she excretes wher­ev­er she hap­pens to be. I assume God has no opin­ion about my deci­sions and so I don’t pray to receive guid­ance.

Bad assump­tions lead to stinky sit­u­a­tions.

Paula in Hospital, Everything OK

Yes­ter­day Paula began to feel con­trac­tions, and her doc­tor decid­ed to put under obser­va­tion in the hos­pi­tal.

She gave Paula some med­i­cine to stop her con­trac­tions, and so far it seems to be work­ing. She esti­mates there’s still a 60% chance that our baby will go full term.

In any event, it looks as though Paula will be on bed rest right up until Baby Davis appears some­time in the next few weeks. Or days. 😉

We’re already at the point where Paula can deliv­er with very lit­tle dan­ger to the baby, so this is more about opti­miz­ing con­di­tions rather than try­ing to pre­serve the life of our child.

Bot­tom line: Paula is fine, baby is fine, Dana is con­fused, Dad­dy is fraz­zled.