fusing horizons

remembering martin luther king jr.

2012-01-16T20:18:00.002-05:00

In all of our doings, in all of our deliberations whatever we do, we must keep God in the forefront. Let us be Christian in all of our action. And I want to tell you this evening that it is not enough for us to talk about love. Love is one of the pinnacle parts of the Christian faith. There is another side called justice. And justice is really love in application. Justice is love correcting that which would work against love. Standing beside love is always justice.

- mlk

various thoughts on jack

2012-01-10T10:30:00.000-05:00

for awhile i've been thinking that i'd do some really awesome blogging while on my paternity leave/winter break, especially on jack. that hasn't happened, in part because i haven't written regularly in a few years and in part because i now always get less than six hours of sleep a night. i'm like uncle rico trying to mount a comeback and it isn't going so well. so rather than trying to toss the pigskin over that mountain over there, here are a few shovel passes to try and get things going.

1. jack is so stinking cute. he's little and has more hair than all the infants and pastors at my church combined. i love that hair. shannon and i sometimes will say "he's so stinking cute" five or six times in a very short period of time while staring at him, eyes glazed and hearts warmed. some people would barf if they knew how often we said this. but cuteness really helps at 4am.

2. people love babies and anything related to babies. you put a baby in front of anyone and they just melt and start saying "he's so stinking cute" like fifty times. we went to a christmas party about two weeks after jack was born, leaving him with a baby sitter. shannon was instantly surrounded by about ten people, men and women, while she told the birth story. this is a story that includes the words "dilation," "pain," "cervix," and "i wanted to kiss the anesthesiologist on the mouth." everyone was ecstatic.

3. the support of family and friends has been incredibly life giving over the past 6 weeks. their constant love has been amazing, simply amazing. it's been wonderful to see them wrap jack into their lives, not as some accessory but as a focal point of their love and care, one for whom they will bend the shape of their lives to fit him in.

4. jack has been on twitter since he was two weeks old. 140 coherent characters has been about as good as we've been able to pull off.

5. i've discovered that grandparents are addicted to their grandchildren. they must at all costs find the easiest ways to satisfy their cravings. jack is forcing my mom, who is basically afraid of the internet, to get on facebook. she's learned that this is the quickest and most consistent way to get her jack fix. shan's parents have driven to cville at least six times in the six weeks he's been alive, even though we spent a week down there over christmas. my parents have driven the six hours from asheville twice and are doing it again in a couple weeks and then again at least a couple more times this spring.

6. i've talked to a number of dads who had only a week or two off before heading back to work, but i've had so much time with jack and shannon. uva's academic calendar is designed, apparently, to prepare its students for life in a country i'm not quite familiar with, possibly france, where you take every friday off and get a six week break for winter holidays. it's a strange system, but we've benefitted from it.

7. jack received more christmas presents than shannon and me combined. and it wasn't even close. like west virginia vs. clemson not even close.

8. it took four weeks before all three of us got up before nine am. i've slept til ten more times in the past six weeks than in the last six years combined.

9. i've been reflecting a bit on the hope we have through the incarnation and how children are very real signs of that hope. children aren't meant to be a reflection of their parents, carefully molded into whatever their mom and dad dream them to be. rather they are a reflection of the image of god, which can never quite be captured or make predictable, but manifests itself in innumerable delightful ways.

on one level, jack's existence is the consequence of parents who weren't too good at math and got a surprise baby as a result. woops!

but on another, deeper level, jack is here because there is hope for this world, dark though it may be in many ways. children are a testament that jesus has not left this world alone and that new birth and new life are here and are real.

best of 2011

2011-12-31T17:18:00.000-05:00

one of my favorite online happenings is the best of lists that come out in december. it helps me realize how much pop culture i missed out on. but since i like them so much, i tried to make my own.

here are some best of 2011 lists, given in nor particular order:

books
1. the death and life of the great american school system, diane ravitch
2. the letter to the philippians, paul
3. random family, adrian nicole leblanc
4. surprised by hope, n.t. wright
5. all the devils are here: the hidden history of the financial crisis, bethany mclean and joe nocera

music
1. love and war & the sea in between, josh garrels
2. the whole love, wilco
3. helplessness blues, the fleet foxes
4. torches, foster the people

songs
1. "home", edward sharp and the magnetic zeroes
2. "love on top", beyonce
3. "whole love", wilco
4. "barton hollow", the civil wars
5. "the idea of growing old", the features

articles
1. "trapped in tbilisi", paul barret, business week
2. "do illegal immigrants pay taxes?", roy germano
3. "the myth of charter schools", diane ravitch, ny times review of books
4. "form one city out of two", brian fikkert, chattarati
5. "beware of greeks bearing bonds", michael lewis, vanity fair
6. "heightening the republican contradictions", andrew sullivan, the daily dish
7. "the ends didn't justify the means", matt welch, reason
8. "'psychic benefits' and the nba lockout", malcolm gladwell, grantland
9. "the shame of college sports", taylor branch, the atlantic
10. "occupy the classroom", nicholas kristof, ny times
11. "dish check: who caused the financial collapse", various, daily dish
12. "when an adult took standardized test forced on kids", marion brady, ecology of education
13. "kim jong-il's golfing accomplishments will never be repeated", cam cole, vancouver sun
14. "‘global commission’ of former officials says war on drugs has failed", eric lach
15. "teach for america: the hidden curriculum of liberal do-gooders", andrew hartman, jacobin

videos
1. "symmetry", radiolab
2. "asset", chalmers center
3. "barry sanders ultimate highlight video"
4. "now is the time for action", herman cain campaign
5. "share the joy"

sports moments i loved
1. first nfl game - texans vs. jaguars
2. abby wambach's header
3. cardinals comeback in game six
4. 2011 nba playoffs
5. going to see nc state beat uva in football

texts from the babysitter

2011-12-28T21:06:00.000-05:00

"All's well! Stats: 1 diaper change, 3 small spit ups, 1 additional diaper change false alarm, 1 sneeze, 1 mini nap, 16 sock losses, 154 floor squirms."

walker percy on his choice of religion

2011-12-26T10:17:00.000-05:00

‎"This life is too much trouble, far too strange, to arrive at the end of it and then to be asked what you make of it and have to answer 'Scientific humanism.' That won’t do. A poor show. Life is a mystery, love is a delight. Therefore I take it as axiomatic that one should settle for nothing less than the infinite mystery and the infinite delight, i.e., God. In fact I demand it. I refuse to settle for anything less.

I don’t see why anyone should settle for less than Jacob, who actually grabbed aholt of God and would not let go until God identified himself and blessed him."

- walker percy

the gift of giving: reflections from the middle of the night

2011-12-19T12:15:00.000-05:00

a few nights ago, around midnight or one, as i rocked jack to sleep i turned on the kindle that a friend had let us borrow, hoping to find something that would help me pass the time and take my mind off the fatigue washing over every part of my being.

fortunately our friend likes good books and i spotted free of charge: giving and forgiving in a culture stripped of grace by miroslav volf in her table of contents, or whatever its called on a kindle. i've admired volf ever since i read exclusion and embrace about five years ago.

volf introduces free of charge by telling the story of the adoption of his first son. through this unparalleled experience volf learned that his son's biological mother, and most mothers giving their children up for adoption, wasn't giving him up because she was selfish or didn't care about him. quite the opposite in fact. she was giving him away because she cared so deeply about him. she knew that putting him into the loving arms of volf and his wife was best for him.

later as he reflected on the beauty of what had happened, volf came across a passage from aristotle on friendship:

"witness the pleasure that mothers take in loving their children. some mothers put their infants out to nurse, and though knowing and loving them do not ask to be loved by them in return, if it be impossible to have this as well, but are content if they see them prospering; they retain their own love for them even though the children, not knowing them, cannot render them any part of what is due to a mother."

this is the true nature of love: loving and giving for the sake of another, not for our own sake. this is how god loves us, not for his good, but for our good. this is how he revealed himself through his son jesus, giving of himself so the world might be made new and we might flourish.

volf suggests that this generosity is the glue which holds society together and without which society begins to crumble:

"left unchecked, the slide away from generosity ultimately robs us of significant cultural achievements, on which our flourishing as individuals and communities depend."

as i read, my heart melted. loving jack came naturally to both shannon and to me. he's so beautiful after all!

but sustaining that love and care over time is not always a picnic. giving isn't what comes naturally to me or to any of us really. it is a way of being that has to be practiced, pursued, and learned. parenthood is, i am finding out, the ultimate classroom for selflessness.

the introduction closes as volf examines how his boys are like little roses, asking their parents, "would you tend to me?"

this is our common condition:

"like our sons, all of us were a gift when we were born - a peculiar yet most beautiful of gifts, a gift that at first only receives, a gift that gives back only the joy parents might feel in giving and the delight they might experience in the child's flourishing."

then he hit the nail on the head of my existential state at the moment as i read:

"often enough, tiredness chokes up joy, and worry extinguishes delight. but still most parents do their best to give, and they do so knowing well that their gifts will never be returned in full, but perhaps will be paid forward, that children will give their own children or to others they encounter on their life's journey."

amen.

texts from our first babysitter

2011-12-12T13:04:00.000-05:00

7:47 pm - we are doing great

7:48 pm - he has pooped twice

7:55 pm - i felt like i was in a movie...as i was changing him, he peed...sprinkler style

8:45 pm - hes sleeping in my arms :)

welcome baby jack!

2011-12-03T12:39:00.004-05:00

jack carter gillikin
8 lb. 9 oz.
20 in.
12/1/11
7:42 pm
martha jefferson hospital
charlottesville, va

being present in your place

2011-10-29T09:25:00.003-04:00

"‎Be truly present in your place. Walk as much as possible. Use your sidewalks and public spaces. Meet people unlike yourself. Go out of your way to befriend those who've lived in and served the good of your neighborhood longer than you. Listen to them - then listen some more. Allow your values to be shaped by the hopes and loves they have - loves... you have overlooked, but may come to share. And while not all of us can guarantee a lifelong commitment to a particular place, we can usually stay rooted longer than we'd planned, even when it means sacrifice. And more importantly, it is possible to engage in sanctified imagination and live as if you'll be present there forever, for the sake of your neighbor."

- jamison galt

the second test

2011-07-10T08:10:00.000-04:00

shannon and i found out that we were having a baby just before going on a trip to see our families in various southern locals - chatty, asheville, and lynchburg. the timing was fantastic - we got to tell my sister and her fiance and both sets of parents in one swoop.

on our way from chattanooga to asheville shan called the ob-gyn to make her first appointment. they asked if she had taken two pregnancy tests. she had only taken one and they wouldn't give her appointment until she had taken two. we were like "well, these things are supposed to be 97% accurate, but whatever." so we pulled off to an ingle's grocery store about thirty minutes from my parents house in madison county, nc.

while madison county is not the most backwards place in the world, it's not the most forwards either. think big pick up trucks, windy roads, and one high school to serve a population spread out over 450 square miles of mountainous terrain.

we walked into ingle's in search of a pregnancy test. we wandered around the pharmacy section, nonchalantly looking for what urbandictionary.com defines as "the magic wand that can make a man dissappear." i think "dissappear" is the same thing as "disappear."

we kept wandering, walking past the deodorant, tylenol, and cotton balls numerous times. after about five minutes we decided their magic wands must have been hidden somewhere, cause we saw no sign of them. we realized we were going to get to let someone else share in this moment.

i tend to approach such "biological" purchases with confidence, while shannon tends to avoid them, electing instead to go pick up some bread or hold a place in the checkout line.

so i walked up to an ingle's worker who was walking by. at this moment shannon, knowing that i was about to discuss reproductive health with a forty year old stranger, turned the other direction and hid in the diaper aisle.

the conversation went as follows:

me: hey where are the pregnancy tests?

ingle's worker: oh, they're locked up in that cabinet over there with the condoms.

okay, brief interruption. maybe madison county is a bit more backwoods than previously suggested. clearly there is a correlation, and (duh) a causal effect, between access to birth control and the need for pregnancy tests. spend a second imagining what the management meeting must have looked like at ingle's when they made the decision to lock up the condoms and the pregnancy test. i'm sure it involved the phrases "damn teenagers," "customer loyalty," "we ain't social services," and at least three dirty jokes.

back to the conversation:

me: well i need a pregnancy test.

ingle's worker: alright i'll get the key.

as he walks off to get the key, he calls out over his shoulder: hoping for that negative huh?!

another time out. it was a priori obvious to the ingle's worker that anyone taking a pregnancy test would be hoping for a single line rather than the double line. and it was obvious to him that this is the sort of thing a complete stranger would enjoy talking about.

when confronted with the bizarre conventional wisdom of another culture, typically the head nod helps the moment pass. but this was my child we were talking about!! i want that baby!! i love that baby!!

i responded modestly: no . . . actually we're hoping for a positive.

he got the key. i got test. we got out of there.

thirty minutes later we were at my parents house, shan quickly took the test, just to be sure, then let my very surprised and very happy parents know the good news.

success comes from the inside and outside of the classroom

2011-07-08T23:12:00.002-04:00

"Families are children’s most important educators. Our society must invest in parental education, prenatal care and preschool. Of course, schools must improve; every one should have a stable, experienced staff, adequate resources and a balanced curriculum including the arts, foreign languages, history and science.

If every child arrived in school well-nourished, healthy and ready to learn, from a family with a stable home and a steady income, many of our educational problems would be solved. And that would be a miracle."

- diane ravitch, in an op-ed in the ny times

the ramifications of an exciting spouse

2011-06-30T21:42:00.004-04:00

sweet video from my bro-in-law to be's company Fancy Rhino. great song name, even if the music isn't your style. i look forward to more fancy rhino produced music videos.

tv time

2011-06-21T16:45:00.002-04:00

people gasp when we tell them that we don't have a tv.

neighborhood children ask if we are rich when they hear only two people live in our duplex, but then recant and ask if we are poor when they find out that there is no television here.

while part of me would like to have a tv somewhere in our house, the reality is that our place doesn't really set up well for a decent one (and by decent i mean something like this unless we are content to either put it into our bedroom, thus hitting age 53 before even turning 28, or by rearranging our living room such that three people can actually get a good view of the screen. that'll make for a sweet super bowl party.

additionally we have netflix and laptops, so we aren't totally shutting ourselves out from modernity and its old 30 rock episodes.

so we don't have a tv. ergo when we went on vacation last week to a house with multiple flat screens and cable, it was time to veg out big time.

in no particular order, my five favorite shows from the week:

sportscenter: always and forever my all-time classic.

food network stars: a reality-show where the winner gets their own food network show. shannon and i got hooked our first night at the beach and spent the rest of the week scouring the tv guide trying to find out when it came on again. cooking shows make for the best reality shows, in my opinion, since they're actually doing something that is 1) tangible 2) is genuine and 3) matters, plus you get all the usual petty drama.

storage wars: the story centers around a successful douche bag, a jack nicholson look alike, the destined-to-be-insecure young white guy with a shaved head/goatee combo, and a gambler who has channelled his addiction into buying storage lockers. add in a guy who does that real auctioneer voice (though not as good as this guy) and you've got a great treasure hunt through the . . . self-storage units of los angeles.

law and order: true confession - i once watched 6 and 1/2 episodes of law and order in a row. on a friday night. by myself. and i wasn't sick or anything. i maxed out at 1 and 1/2 last week. i always love that show.

swamp people: just when you thought the world was flat, you run into some pretty solid evidence it isn't. the louisiana bayou: where gator hunting is alive and well and english isn't. i love it.

a parent's view of his child with autism

2011-05-17T19:37:00.004-04:00

i'm finishing up autism's false prophets by paul offit. it focuses mainly on the vaccine-autism controversy, pointing out the lack of good science proving a link between vaccines and autism and the ways in which the perseveration on this issue has distracted from the more important task of figuring out how to improve the lives of people affected by autism.

in the final chapter he was a great quotation by roy grinker, taken from his book unstrange minds (my review of this excellent book here). he says, in reference to his daughter:

Isabel has taught me that the unexpected, even the beautiful, can emerge from the undesirable, like a lotus growing out of the mud, its beauty and purity unsullied by its origin. The beauty can be found in a single person, inside of whom there is something - no, not something 'normal,' but a brilliant light or an inner truth struggling to blossom.

So, when people pity me for my daughter, I don't understand the sentiment. I work hard for Isabel, but I don't regret it or feel sorry for myself. At the end of the day when I tuck her in, she's not a case of autism, or even a child with social deficits and language delays. She's simply my daughter. My job is to clear the land for whatever growth is to come, even if, sometimes, no one else believes it will happen.

what a beautiful picture of beauty out of brokenness. both of these books are worth reading if you're interesting in understanding autism.

30 for 30 in 60: #4 - jordan rides the bus

2011-05-15T08:32:00.000-04:00

in 1994 michael jordan announced that he was descending from the peak of his basketball powers into the drudgery of minor league baseball. ultimately this film is about what it was like for us to experience his airness playing baseball. decent effort, but the narrative is choppy at times and needed to have some jordan talking about being jordan.

sweet potato quesadillas

2011-04-29T20:30:00.003-04:00

this is one of our staple dishes - it's tasty, cheap, simple and filling. the recipe is from simply in season. it makes 8 quesadillas. we also do a variation where we use black beans instead of sweet potatoes. yum.

ingredients

olive oil
1 1/2 cups onion - minced
2 cloves garlic - minced
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 1/2 teaspoons each of dried basil, marjoram, chili powder, ground cumin
pinch of ground red pepper or to taste
4 cups sweet potatoes (shredded with a food processor)
8 tortillas
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar
salsa
sour cream
fresh cilantro

directions

1. preheat oven to 400

2. sautee onions and garlic in large frying pan in 1 tablespoon oil until translucent

3. add spices to pan and cook for another minute

4. add sweet potatoes and cover, cooking til they are soft, stirring semi-regularly. add salt and pepper to taste

5. spread about 1/2 cup of the filling and 2 tablespoons cheese on half of each tortilla, leaving a 1/2 inch border on the side. fold tortilla in half. place on oiled baking sheets. brush tops with oil.

6. bake in oven at 400F until brown, around 15 minutes.

7. serve with sour cream, salsa, and fresh cilantro.

the great american school system

2011-04-25T16:27:00.006-04:00

i recently finished reading the death and life of the great american school system by diane ravitch. it is an engaging and critical look at some current trends in our education system.

ravitch is a historian of education at nyu and she speaks as someone who knows how educational fads have tended to impress many but help few. she herself used to support many of the methods and trends she now considers harmful. her tone is moderate and hopeful and she provides historical context for many of the current trends as well at data that analyzes the effect of different ways of reforming the school system.

a defender of both teachers and children, she is particularly critical of no child left behind. it's a horribly conceived policy that shows the extent to which those making the major decisions about our nation's education policy have no idea what they are doing.

some of the areas she addresses are:

charter schools - (if they are truly focusing on the neediest children and viewed as a supplement to the public school system, then great. otherwise they aren't helping out overall and probably aren't doing a great job either.

the testing movement - (testing is fine, but it isn't a comprehensive measure of improvement and success. typically perseveration on testing has let good curriculum and any subject other than math and reading slide into the background)

school choice - (if competition amongst public goods breeds success, why aren't choice advocates also supporting competitive police and fire departments?).

no child left behind - (which will, allegedly make every child proficient in math and reading by 2014. but it lets each state decide what that means and then craft its own test how well its students are doing. and its punitive measures have little positive effect on struggling schools. in short it's horrible.).

linking teacher pay to test scores - (test scores vary yearly with both good and bad teachers. there's no real way to determine, through testing, who the good and bad teachers are).

corporate sponsorship - (the gates foundation has thrown up some hugely expensive air balls in the education arena).

teacher's unions - (there is not really any evidence to show that states with teachers union do worse educationally than states that do not have them).

letting non-educators run schools and school systems - (would you let a goldman sachs executive be the foreman when building your new home?).

in short, ravitch thinks that education is hard work that does not come through quick fixes, radical changes in teaching methods, testing, or promises. she says in the final chapter:

"the most durable way to improve schools is to improve curriculum and instruction and to improve the conditions in which teachers work and children learn."

huh, that actually makes sense.

i appreciated getting a broader picture of what is happening in our nation's public schools and i learned a lot.

this is a great book and i hope that many others will read it too. if you want to have well informed opinions on school policy issues, this seems like a great place to start.

also, if you've seen waiting for superman, definitely read ravitch's response to the movie. it's so helpful.

pink and blue

2011-04-17T08:50:00.000-04:00

from ladies home journal in 1918:

"The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl."

huh. interesting. liberals!

dreaming of december madness

2011-04-02T14:36:00.016-04:00

the big non-surprise this week was that one of the major bowls, the fiesta bowl, turned out to be full of corruption, including illegal campaign contributions and using fiesta bowl money to pay for visits to strip clubs and country club memberships.

imagine there were no bcs. and a 16 team playoff. where we got to decide a real national champion in college football. it's easy if you try.

based on the final regular season bcs standings, we would have had the following teams this past year:

1 Auburn
2 Oregon
3 TCU
4 Stanford
5 Wisconsin
6 Ohio State
7 Oklahoma
8 Arkansas
9 Michigan State
10 Boise State
11 LSU
12 Missouri
13 Virginia Tech
14 Oklahoma State
15 Nevada
16 Alabama

yes that includes four sec teams. the sec is the football corollary to the big east's eleven teams this year. the difference is that the sec knows how to win, while the big east knows how to let other teams win, which is generous of them.

it also includes a school from idaho (boise state), nevada (nevada), and lets ohio state continue to pretend like its football program matters!

so the first round would include iron bowl 2 (!!!), an intriguing virginia tech/stanford matchup (how good are each of those teams really?), and lsu against ohio state (the unraveling sweater vest vs. the mad hatter).

(yes i will take two stabs at ohio state in two sentences).

now imagine it went something like this year's ncaa hoops tourney.

the vcu of this group? alabama. the butler? boise state of course. the uconn? wisconsin. the kentucky? arkansas.

so would be our final four if things went the way of the hoops tourney: alabama vs. boise state and wisconsin vs. arkansas.

crimson tide vs. blue turf. cheese vs. pork. and the possibility of an all sec championship.

down with the bcs! long live the playoffs!

30 for 30 in 60: #3 - no crossover: the trial of allen iverson

2011-03-05T16:55:00.004-05:00

director steve james returns to his hometown of hampton, va to learn more about allen Iverson’s 1993 trial stemming from a bowling alley brawl, a trial that threatened to ruin a budding career and rip a community apart. the story telling is brilliant and james does a magnificent job showing the complexity of the town’s racial and economic tension.

ta-nehisi coates on labor

2011-02-12T09:26:00.006-05:00

in a moving post about his son's mother's health troubles near the end of her pregnancy, ta-nehisi coates concludes with these thoughts about birth in historical and gendered perspectives. i don't agree with his "pro-choice" views, but i like the bit of framing he does for the debate of that issue. this is a bit long to quote, but check it out - it resonates with me on a number of levels:

"For reasons beyond me, childbirth--in the popular American mind--is swaddled in gossamer, gift-wrap, and icing. Beneath the pastel Hallmark cards and baby showers, behind the flowers, lies a truth encoded, still, in our wording, but given only minimal respect--the charge of shepherding life is labor. It's work. And you need only look to the immediate past, or you need only look around the world, or you need only come close to losing the love of your small, young life to understand a correlating truth--pregnancy is potentially lethal work.

Over the past few weeks, I've been studying the seminary movement in the South during the mid-19th century. In these all-female boarding schools, women found a security and friendship that would elude them for the rest of their lives. Their parting notes to each other are filled with foreboding hints of early death. It's not very hard to imagine why. As recently as the 1930s, the maternal death rate in this country was 900 per 100,000 births.

It's been some time since I read "What Hath God Wrought," but my recollection is that in the mid-19th century men actually lived longer than women. As a society, the Western world has obviously made significant strides in reducing maternal deaths. (In Afghanistan some 1,400 women die per 100,000 births.) This is excellent news. But it can not obscure perhaps the most specific and nameable species of male privilege--of all the things that may one day kill me, pregnancy is not among them.

This is the era of internet intellectuals, mostly dudes, who excel at analogizing easily accessible facts to buttress their points. It's a good skill to have, and one I employ myself. But it isn't wisdom. Like most people, I have deep problems with the termination of life--and that is what I believe abortion to be. Still a decade ago, I learned that those problems were abstract, and could not stand against something as tangible and imposing as death.

My embrace of a pro-choice stance is not built on analogizing Rick Santorum with Hitler. It is not built on what the pro-life movement is "like." It's built on set of disturbing and inelidable truths: My son is the joy of my life. But the work of ushering him into this world nearly killed his mother. The literalism of that last point can not be escaped.

Every day women choose to do the hard labor of a difficult pregnancy. Its courageous work, which inspires in me a degree of admiration exceeded only by my horror at the notion of the state turning that courage, that hard labor, into a mandate. Women die performing that labor in smaller numbers as we advance, but they die all the same. Men do not. That is a privilege."

30 for 30 in 60: #2 - the two escobars

2011-02-01T17:24:00.000-05:00

the two escobars tells the story of pablo escobar and andres escobar. one a bloodletting drug lord, the other a pious soccer star, their intertwined lives dictated not just the rise and fall of columbian soccer, but the joy and sorrow of a nation. directed by jeff and michael zimbalist, this brilliantly crafted film is not to be missed.

abortion in racial perspective

2011-01-27T20:32:00.012-05:00

last month new york city released it "Summary of Vital Statistics 2009." towards then end of the hundred or so page document is a section on birth and pregnancy rates. the new york times pointed out that nearly 40% of pregnancies in nyc ended in abortion in 2009, a shockingly high percentage. the times points out that even those who are pro-choice are troubled by these numbers. but in a state where abortion is more readily available and affordable than almost anywhere in the nation, it kind of makes sense

i scrolled through the study looking to learn a bit more, particularly to see if there was any information on race or economic status. what i found was quite eye opening, to me at least, and i'm a bit surprised that the times didn't spend more energy on the racial dynamics of abortion, instead focusing on how many people come from out of state for abortions (a significant number, but not a large percentage).

in nyc in 2009 there were 225,667 pregnancies. of those 126,774 (or 56%) resulted in live births, 87,273 (39%) resulted in induced terminations (abortions), and 11,620 (5%) resulted in spontaneous termination (the baby died in utero without outside interference).

i was blown away when these stats were further broken down by race. first the stats on children born.

hispanic (including puerto rican) women gave birth to 40,286 children, or 32% of children born.

white - 38,438 children (30%)

black - 27,405 children (22%).

asian (and pacific islander) - 17,729 children (14%)

about 84% of the mothers were single, 14% were married, and for 2% their marital status was unknown.

when abortions are broken down by race, the proportions are staggering.

hispanic women had 28,364 abortions, or 41% of pregnancies of hispanic women (not factoring in spontaneous terminations) ending in abortion. hispanic babies accounted for 32% of all abortions performed in the city.

white - 9,853 abortions, 20% of white pregnancies. 11% of total abortions.

black - 40,798 abortions, 60% of black pregnancies. 47% of total abortions.

asian - 5,212 abortions, 22% of asian pregnancies. 6% of total abortions.

what immediately jumps out is the very high and disproportionate percentage of black children that are aborted.

in nyc in 2009, a black child was about one and a half times more likely to be aborted than to be born alive.

a black child was twice as likely to be aborted as a white or asian child and fifty percent more likely than a hispanic child.

let that settle in for a minute.

i think the word on these stats has started to spread. african-american leaders, including alveda king, the niece of martin luther king jr., have started to make noise about this disparity. alveda king's blog mentions a stat i've seen elsewhere: "More black children have died by abortion that the seven leading causes of death in the African American community combined." Wow.

by and large, i'm guessing most people, even if they are pro-choice, don't think any abortion is in and of itself a good act, the sort of thing that is desired in a society, the way things ought to be. at best it is the means to some good end, whether the woman's health or freedom from an unwanted child.

but when you look at abortion from the perspective of the de facto ways in which it works its way out, it doesn't seem to me like it primarily functions as the ugly but necessary fruit of sexual freedom and women's liberation. no, in the majority of cases, at least in new york city, it is a key player in the continuing degradation of the african-american family.

the ideas supporting legal, safe, and easily accessible abortion will continue to be debated, i imagine, for a long time in our country. people can argue all day as to whether or not there are cases in which abortion is permissible, whether in cases of rape or due to a threat to the mother's life. but i highly doubt that it is the case that most of the abortions committed in new york city in 2009 were due to those factors. the reality is troubling, and more sickening than even most pro-life groups have typically recognized.

in light of all this, people on all sides of the debate need to take a reality check and realize that 1) in some places we are terminating nearly as many pregnancies as we are allowing to go to term and 2) the circumstances of black women are resulting in the aborting a high, very high percentage of their unborn children.

abortion isn't an issue i perseverate on, but the racial angle really needs to be put at the forefront of discussions on the issue.

30 for 30 in 60: #1 - straight outta l.a.

2011-01-25T19:54:00.003-05:00

i've started to watch, via netflix, espn's 30 for 30 documentary series. for its thirtieth birthday, espn got thirty different directors to each make a movie about a sports story that interested them. espn didn't want simply the thirty greatest moments of the last thirty years; instead, much to their credit, they just wanted thirty great stories. so with topics ranging from jimmy the greek to len bias to june 17, 2004 to the yugoslavian civil war and much more, we get a bunch of high quality films made for the fans.

as i watch them i'm going to try and write up a review for each of them. i thought i'd try to do each review in thirty words, but that's just a bit too short, so i'm going for sixty. you know, thirty plus thirty. so here is my first:

straight outta l.a. is about the intersection of the bad boy l.a. raiders with the rise of gangster rap in the 1980s. the history of the team, the music, and the city fascinate. but seeing al davis age unsettles everyone and director ice cube is no movie maker - the pieces don’t quite fit and the interviews felt strung together.

curried butternut squash soup

2011-01-22T17:04:00.007-05:00

we made this soup this week. it's tasty, easy to make, and another thing to add to the list of "the five hundred things we need in order to get through winter without turning into terrible people," which also includes heated mattress pads, the nfl playoffs, nostalgia, pre-nostalgia, snuggling, and mittens.

shan's mom passed the recipe on to us. i'm not sure exactly where it came from, but i think it's from bon appetit.

i can't handle really spicy food, but i'm finding that most of the indian-influenced recipes we use have been americanized into relative blandness. ergo we put in an extra bit of curry powder, which worked out well

curried butternut squash soup

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 cups chopped onions

1 1/2 teaspoons curry powder

1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

6 cups butternut squash (about two squash) - peeled and cut into 1/2 to 3/4 inch cubes

3 1/2 cups low-salt chicken broth

plain yogurt (optional)

fresh cilantro

Directions

heat oil in large pot over medium heat. add onions. cover; cook until soft, stirring often, about 5 minutes.

add curry powder and 1/8 teaspoon cayenne; stir 30 seconds.

add squash and broth; bring to boil. reduce heat to medium-low. cover; simmer until squash is very tender, about 30 minutes.

puree soup in batches in blender until smooth. return to same pot.

season with salt and pepper, adding more cayenne if desired.

ladle soup into bowls; top with dollop of yogurt, if desired, and cilantro

food, etc.

2011-01-18T17:19:00.004-05:00

for awhile now i have been rethinking and redoing my relationship with food. prompted by michael pollan's onmivore's dilemma, which i read awhile ago, i became aware that i, and the rest of america, eat in a way unique to world history. to a good extent, we are completely cut off from our food production, as well as the rhythm of seasons. blissfully ignorant of what our food contains or where it came from or what was done to get it into sellable condition, basically all we do is buy and eat our food. sometimes we cook it, but more often than not we simply reheat it.

pollan talks about how corn is essentially the foundation of our food supply. that seems fine on some levels (after all, how could the products of indiana, iowa, and nebraska be anything other than pure?), but when i learned that corn prices are kept artificially low by government subsidies, that staggering amounts of fertilizers is used to produce the corn, that farm animals (especially cows) are made to eat corn when it their bodies are not designed to digest it, that lots of diesel fuel is consumed to move the corn and its food descendants around the country, and that obesity and diabetes rates have skyrocketed since we have switch to a corn-based food economy, i started to have some serious second thoughts about ever eating a burger king or taco bell again. and about buying any processed food period. and my suspicions of indiana only deepened.

hence i started to turn in pursuit of real food. the farmer's market came onto my radar. i started buying organic milk. eating fast food now generally leaves me feeling unwell. and now that i'm married i eat out far less and plan out all of my meals ahead of time, rather than the piecing together of each meal that comes with single life in a college town.

when shan and i go on our weekly grocery shopping trip to kroger, we skirt around the edge of the store, hitting the produce section, gathering a some meat (typically organic/all-natural), sweeping into the middle aisles primarily for canned and frozen veggies, get our dairy goods, and scoot on out. in contrast to the trend towards producing food that keep longer, i'm guessing that eighty percent of what we buy goes bad within one to two weeks of purchase if not consumed.

i'm a realist about all of this. most of the food available to us doesn't come to us in the most desirable of ways. therefore it takes a fair amount of work, even detective work, to figure out what is best to eat.

even though we spend a bit more to get food at the farmers market and to buy fresh produce, financially it is a squeeze to eat only organic or all-natural foods. on the social level, if someone wants to make me dinner, i'm not going to start interrogating them about whether or not their produce is the product of the industrial food complex. i'm just going to be thankful and enjoy being with them. and i certainly don't want to be someone that people feel in any sense like they have to cook around (that's what shannon, and the fact that cows hate her stomach, is for).

however, i think that making choices about what you're going to eat is a significant matter. good companies respond to an increase in demand for any product, and it's quite clear that a lot of people want better (aka real) food. shannon and i try to eat well and we are developing habits that will help us to be healthy for the long haul.

for the christian, theological issues are shot through all of this. christians have spent a lot of time over the last hundred years huffing and puffing about the correct interpretation of the opening chapters of genesis. yet relatively little time has been spent actually living out what it means for us if the world is the creation of a loving god. the earth is good, but why do christians do so little to defend it and encourage its well-being? it's like complaining that your neighbors use the wrong trash service while ignoring your own overflowing garbage cans.

this isn't white persons's concern. besides the negative effects on creation, our food system is bad for our health and additionally works out the worst for the poor, who have the highest obesity rates in the country. fifty percent of minority children will develop diabetes. fifty percent!! and the working conditions of many of those who work for the meat-packing industry are less than ideal, and often predicated on the use of undocumented immigrants who have limited ability to defend themselves against unjust practices.

so yes, there are serious issues at stake: the environment, loving our neighbors, affirming the goodness of our bodies, and tending to the poor. there's a theological ball of yarn to untangle, all within the question, "what are we going to have for dinner?"

towards the beloved community

2011-01-17T09:38:00.001-05:00

"But the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men.

- martin luther king jr.

on obama's speech last night

2011-01-13T20:59:00.006-05:00

from a reader of the daily dish (readers of the dish contribute as much of interest as sullivan himself):

"So while Obama's words were more condemning of the Democratic discourse of the past few days, the speech itself was a ringing rebuke of all the Republican delusions, the delusions that the Democratic government is evil, that it's full of Manchurian candidates and sleeper agents and gran'ma-smotherers, that it's on the verge of turning America into the Union of the Third Reich of Kenyanistan.

In one fell swoop, Obama pulled his entire party away from the brink of confrontation with a weaponized political lunacy and stood, alone on a stage, staring all the hordes down, like Wyatt Earp at the OK Corral, daring them to draw their guns and aim their sights and try to take him down, that no cross-hair or brandished gun can stop the power of love and hope, that no bullet can defeat the strength of the human spirit to open its eyes, and that there is no hate that cannot be washed away by rainpuddles.

I am glad that this man is our President.

wow. hopefully our political discussions will take on a new tone, like the one obama demonstrated last night.

The world's first street art disaster movie

2011-01-11T21:08:00.006-05:00

part documentary on street art, part commentary on pop culture, part not comprising a whole, i really enjoyed this film and learned some stuff as well. there's too much irony, but i suppose that's the point. it all comes to a head when one french guy seriously out-ironizes them all.

unlocked by karen kingsbury follow up

2011-01-08T22:10:00.003-05:00

earlier this week a friend mentioned autism: the musical, which i had totally forgotten about when i read unlocked. it is a documentary on a musical production that was put on by children with autism. so if you want a better picture of what kids with autism would look like on the stage, as well as a picture of the ways autism affects families, definitely give it a look.

the trailer, which i've posted here, mentions the rates at which autism occurs has skyrocketed. i highly recommend reading unstrange minds. the father of a girl with autism and an anthropologist, roy grinker gives a history of autism as a medical condition and offers some very interesting cross-cultural looks at autism in places like south korea and south africa.

the risk of parenting

2011-01-06T18:09:00.005-05:00

money quote from a reader contributing to a discussion on andrew sullivan's blog on whether it is riskier to adopt than to have your own biological children:

"No matter how you become a parent, there is risk. Autism, retardation, injury, learning disorders, addiction, or maybe your biological kid is just a perpetual dumb-ass who disappoints you on many levels throughout your life. . . . To assert that adoption is somehow profoundly risky, while biological parenthood is not . . . is tragic and disappointing. But I suppose that is just the biological drive we all have to propagate our lines. We believe deep down in our DNA that our biological children will be perfected versions of ourselves, while strange children are a threat.

We have to move beyond that. Go adopt. Everyone. You will find wonderful children. Sometimes they will be broken, just like our own biological children, and you will make your lives harder than they need be. But it will be worth it."

let that soak in.

i work all day long with kids who did not turn out how their parents, and the rest of us, thought they would turn out. think about it though, who among us turns out just as society thought we should or would? and furthermore who would want their life to be like that anyways? my students are challenging in many respects, but they are a joy that we cannot do without.

narcissism in parenting is bad bad bad. in each of god's children is good good good.

skiing in vermont

2011-01-04T21:24:00.015-05:00

me, shan, dillon, cody, and galen (who skinned a softball himself to make that hat). i was wearing four layers of pants, two pairs of gloves, two long sleeved shirts, and two jackets. it's cold up in that joint.

i'm taller

beautiful

the views from the top of okemo were amazing

cousins. on the mountain dillon and cody are the white northern ski version of lebron and dwade.

michael and me with shannon, aka the michelin woman

sweet shot of galen at the top of the south face

my big fat greek brother

2010-12-27T13:27:00.001-05:00

while shan and i experience the real vermont, which includes skiing, a blizzard, gratuitous use of the word "charming," and cabot sharp cheddar, my brother is couchsurfing in greece. more specifically in kalamata, greece. and more realistically he is living it up with a relatively well-to-do greek family he met over the internet that has given him his own bedroom, bed, and an invitation to come back in the warmer months.

i don't like being in other countries, but i enjoy living vicariously through others. so i appreciate my bro's perspectives on the greeks, a culture i once spent eight semesters studying but know nothing about, at least nothing that has happened in the last twenty four hundred years:

brian on olives: "i know so much about olive culture now that i'm willing to eat olives. . . . they're not too bad when freshly picked from someone's backyard in a place world famous for having the best olives in the world."

on his body: "the grandmother announced that i was too thin and since then it's been non-stop food."

on lunch: "i had two plates and three different beverages in front of me."

on beverages: "oh, and coffee. good grief. the drip is normal, but this family has an espresso machine and i think i had four cups yesterday. and two cups of greek coffee so far today"

on the locals: "i hitchhiked today back from the mountain. first time i'd ever hitchhiked. got picked up by a guy who lived in boston for 15 years."

on his body (part 2): "my knees aren't going to work tomorrow"

give us your heavenly peace

2010-12-25T16:41:00.002-05:00

"O sweet Child of Bethlehem,
grant that we may share with all our hearts
in this profound mystery of Christmas.
Put into the hearts of men and women this peace
for which they sometimes seek so desperately
and which you alone can give to them.
Help them to know one another better,
and to live as brothers and sisters,
children of the same Father.
Reveal to them also your beauty, holiness and purity.
Awaken in their hearts
love and gratitude for your infinite goodness.
Join them all together in your love.
And give us your heavenly peace. Amen."

- pope john XXIII

unlocked by karen kingsbury

2010-12-22T09:42:00.008-05:00

a few weeks ago my grandmother handed me a book and said i should read it: "it's about autism." i was a bit skeptical as i looked at the cover of unlocked, by karen kingsbury, which seemed to be a poppy christian novel. not exactly my genre of choice, but since my grandmother gave it to me and since it was about autism (honestly, mainly because it was about autism), i breezed through it during thanksgiving break.

unlocked is the story of holden harris, an eighteen year old with autism. typically developing until he was three, holden suddenly developed autistic symptoms soon after receiving a bunch of vaccinations at once time. he stopped speaking, singing, and socializing. as he retreated into an inner world, his parents lost their best friends and their marriage became strained to the point that holden's dad dan left to be an alaskan fisherman because he couldn't stand to have a son he couldn't interact with, stuck in his autistic "prison." he hoped that he would learn how to win the war against autism while he battle the seas on the fishing boat. autism had stolen every good father-son memory they might have.

holden is beautiful, with striking blue eyes. he is non-verbal, but he is able to think and pray to himself in complete, coherent sentences and paragraphs. his freshman year of high school he was introduced to pecs, which is short for picture exchange communication system. his seventy or so pecs cards are his only way of communicating, but he's not particularly good at using them.

holden has limited social skills or interactions; he doesn't have any friends. he likes music and is quite good at math. whenever he get overstimulated and/or upset he stems, typically by folding his hands up to his chin and flapping his arm, or does push-ups. he doesn't seem to display any aggression or tantrums. he gets an hour and a half of therapy every day after school. he watches the same dvd every day that contains thirty minutes of videos and pictures from before he got autism.

generally, holden is perceived by others in a negative light. the cool kids at school make fun of him. the special-ed teachers have low expectations for him. his mother sees some hope in an interaction with his little cousin early on in the book, where holden begins to dance with her while watching the video he watches daily after school. however in general mom is regularly saddened every day and prays continually that he would return. at one point she prays for a miracle because school and therapy weren't working, even though his school had the best special ed program in the area. taking care of him has worn her down physically and emotionally.

in the midst of all this, along comes ella reynolds, a popular girl who saw how poorly other students treated holden and reached out to him. she noticed that he showed interest in music and arranged for him to sit in on a musical performance class where she and others were preparing to perform beauty and the beast. it turns out holden and ella had been best friends when they were little before holden got autism and ella's parents decided they couldn't be friends any more. holden had always shown some interest in music, and, suddenly, through the power of music (and god) he begins to open up and speak some for the first time since he became autistic. and then, miraculously, he begins to sing, and not just sing, but sing amazingly well, on perfect pitch with a beautiful and powerful voice. to everyone's amazement, he ends up having the lead role in the play as the beast/prince. his father returns from alaska. his parent's marriage is restored. he begins to relate to his father. he gains friends and is affirmed by his community. his parents renew their friendship with ella's parents. the future is bright.

you're probably either crying or gagging right now.

what interested me most about the book, of course, was the way autism was presented. karen kingsbury explains in a letter to her readers at the end of the book that she was inspired by the story of a boy with autism that attended drama camp with her children and was, to the surprise of everyone, able to participate in camp's production. i'm guessing she did a fair amount of research into autism. but by and large i found her portrayal of autism distorted, negative, overly sentimental, and riddled with false hope.

five reactions to holden and how he was perceived:

1) autism takes on myriad forms (the spectrum is more 3-d than 2-d), but holden's general profile is a bit hard to believe. his communication abilities are a bit far-fetched. if holden were going to the best public schools in the atlanta area and receiving an hour and a half of therapy every day, he would have started using pecs at a much younger age. we use pecs with four year olds at my school. plus if he were capable of forming such well-formed thoughts and prayers, he should have done pretty well with pecs and other more complicated communication devices. in short, based on holden's profile and the level of instruction he seems to be receiving, he should have been able to communicate better.

i find it very, very hard to believe that someone could go from non-verbal to singing an entire musical part for beauty and the beast in perfect pitch in just a couple weeks time. that seems like, well, a miracle. or just impossible.

it's fair to say that holden, like many autistic kids, has a limited number of friends. also it's not surprising that he watched the same video every day. his stemming is fairly normal. what i don't care for is how it turns out that he's actually also praying for people while he's stemming. but more on that in a sec. i've never heard of push-ups as a stereotypy, but whatever.

2) an autism diagnosis will change a family forever. it presents a formidable set of challenges. and it would be especially hard for holden's parents, and the parent's of the 15-20% of kids with autism who have the regressive type holden did, where they start out typically developing and then decline. parents in that situation need a lot of support from their community. a lot. the parents that i have seen deal with the children's autism the best are the ones who are realistic, hopeful, determined, and surround themselves with others.

something to be considered when analyzing how a parent views their child's autism is to what extent the problem is the autism or the parent's expectations. if the child doesn't sleep at night, screams all day long, and is aggressive and breaking things, then the autism is probably the primary issue. if the child if like holden, who does none of those things (and yet is described as being severely autistic?), then the issue may be more on the side of the parent's expectations needing to be recast.

we shouldn't have children in order for them to turn out the way we expected. christians have children as a sign of hope in a broken world. and we usually don't know what that will look like.

3) kingsbury should be ashamed of herself for suggesting a connection between vaccines and autism. holden's mom implies a number of times that she thinks his autism was cause by a battery of vaccinations he received after his third birthday. however, the evidence for a link between autism and vaccinations is more or less non-existant. the original study claiming a link was debunked and a cdc study this year showed no link. people not vaccinating their children is resulting in a spike in illnesses such as measles in britain.

4) holden is portrayed as both a "beast" and a "prince." consequently he falls into the ditches on both sides of the road of a good anthropology for people with developmental disabilities (and more generally everyone else). people tend to have two initial reactions to the disabled, both of which are mistaken. one is fear and loathing, aka "the beast." people with developmental disabilities are seen as curse or a source of shame and consequently are ignored, hidden away, grieved over, and at worst eliminated.

holden's mother seems to hate the fact that he is autistic and lament the day that it ever happen. she thinks of his autism as a prison. she has no confidence that he'll get "better" short of a miracle. his dad thinks it stole away every good moment they could have had.

the other reaction, call it "the prince," is treating people with developmental disabilities as if they are beings who are practically from out of this world whose purpose is to bless the rest of us with their sweetness. there is often a sort of detached, patronizing sentimentality accompanied with this view, which includes lines like "he's always smiling," "i've never heard her complain," "he's always praying," and "it makes you thankful for what you have."

holden is perceived this way as well. he is thought of as having special skills and abilities that are unique to him and his autism. he is physically very attractive. he prays while he stems. he loves everyone. there is an expectation that if the real holden could be let out there would be something beautiful inside.

at one point point a friend says, "god has a plan for the boy yet," which sounds like a hopeful statement, but is a staggering theological miscalculation. god does have a plan for holden and other people with autism. and his plan is for them to be who they are. he isn't ashamed of them and neither should we. people return to holden and his community once he gains his special gift of singing. where were they all along? jesus didn't rush towards people once they were doing well. he was present with them in the midst of their difficulties, loving them.

the problem with the beast view is that it removes the image of god, leaving only evil. the problem with the prince view is that it removes the sin, leaving only the image. ultimately both of these views are dehumanizing. the truth is that we are all created in god's image, we are all good, but we are broken by sin and its effects.

5) the story misrepresents how progress typically occurs for people with autism. obviously it doesn't make for a great novel to say, "holden went to therapy day after day for thirteen years and over time he made hundreds and hundreds of small steps which led to him being able to participate in a school musical." that holden wouldn't have the lead role. his presence on stage wouldn't have changed his families life. but that holden is a real holden. that is typically the reality of life for people with autism. the faithful presence of people around them, working together to bring about a good life, failing and succeeding along the way, is what makes for a good life for holden, and not just holden but for any of us.

holden's "miracle" seems so far fetched and patronizing. it offers false hope to parents and caretakers of people with autism. autism doesn't go away. people with autism don't go from doing poorly to doing well overnight. when great improvements occur, they are typically over time and the result of hard work by the individual and those working with him or her.

kingsbury seems to think that miracles are more likely to produce results than hard work. after holden begins to speak, ella "wanted to march Holden around to all the teachers and therapists who doubted that for Holden change was possible." if he went to a school with the best special ed program in the area and if he was getting a lot of therapy after school, he would have been working with people who wanted him to progress. such a negative portrayal of those who worked with holden is disheartening. if you had a child with autism and took the book to heart you would stop, or at least be skeptical of, all therapies and treatments and focus on praying instead. that is not good advice.

in this story kingsbury puts little confidence in the work of human hands and all the hope in god working in a "miraculous" way. i would argue, instead that we can have confidence in the work of human hands because they are the tools that god works through in this world. our work is good and produces fruit. that's the miracle.

i could say more, but that was probably more than enough. ultimately my concern is that people, especially the christians who are likely to read this book, have a better understanding of autism than what unlocked provides. regardless of what you think of unlocked's literary merits, don't buy into its story on autism - it is distorted and has a misplaced hope.

for a good work of fiction on autism, definitely read the curious incident of the dog in the night time. for a good memoir, read the siege or the only boy in the world. i'm still looking for a book or website that offers a thorough analysis of autism from a christian perspective.

a visual poem

2010-11-04T07:03:00.001-04:00

sigh no more

2010-08-14T11:01:00.002-04:00

"Love . . .
It will not betray you
Dismay or enslave you
It will set you free
Be more like the man
You were made to be."

- mumford and sons

a theology of marriage

2010-04-18T16:29:00.004-04:00

"Beautiful the marriage of Christians, two who are one in hope, one in desire, one in the way of life they follow, one in the religion they practice.

They are both servants of the same Master. Nothing divides them, either in flesh or in spirit. They are two in one flesh, and where there is one flesh there is also one spirit.

They pray together, the worship together; instructing one another, strengthening one another. Side by side the visit God's church; side by side they face difficulties and persecution, share their consolations. They have no secrets from one another; they never bring sorrow to each other's hearts. Unembarrassed they visit the sick and assist the needy. They give alms without anxiety. Psalms and hymns they sing.

Hearing and seeing this, Christ rejoices. To such as these He gives His peace. Where there are two together, there also He is present; and where He is, there evil is not."

- Tertullian

this quotation appeared on the front cover of the first packet of papers we received for our pre-marital counseling. beautiful isn't it?

a good soup recipe

2010-02-20T15:07:00.001-05:00

i love this recipe, which has been floating around my house for a month or so. it's easy, the sweet potato and sausage give great flavor, and the kale adds color, taste, and good-for-you-ness. you'll end up with a big pot of soup for not too much cost.

Sweet Potato, Sausage, and Kale Soup

Ingredients:

2 T olive oil

4 C chopped onion (about 2 large)

1 tsp. salt, divided

½ tsp. crushed red pepper

6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

1 lb. sweet turkey Italian Sausage

8 C coarsely chopped peeled sweet potato (about 2 ¼ lbs.)

5 C water

4 C fat-free less-sodium chicken broth

1 (16 oz.) package pre-washed torn kale

1 (16 oz.) can cannelloni beans or other white beans (garbanzo beans), rinsed and drained.

Directions:

Heat oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add onion; sauté five minutes.

Add ½ tsp. salt, pepper, and garlic. Sauté 1 min.

Remove casings from sausage; add sausage to pan. Cook 5 minutes or until sausage is lightly browned, stirring to crumble.

Add potato, 5 C water, and broth; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer 8 minutes.

Gradually add kale; cook 10 minutes or until tender.

Stir in ½ tsp salt and beans; cook 5 minutes or until thoroughly heated.

Yield: 10 servings

the incarnation

2009-12-25T08:58:00.000-05:00

"This then was the plight of humanity: God had not only made them out of nothing, but had also graciously bestowed on them His own life by His grace. But turning from eternal things to things corruptible, they had become the cause of their own corruption and death. When this happened, humans began to die, and corruption ran riot among them and held sway over them.

All of this God saw. And pitying us, and moved with compassion for us, and unable to endure that death should have the mastery, He took to Himself a body, a human body even as our own.

This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished.

This He did that He might turn again to incorruption those who had become corrupt, and make them alive again by the grace of His resurrection. Thus He would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from a fire."

- athanasius

ring. on. it.

2009-12-19T21:07:00.001-05:00

nabokov on storytelling

2009-11-23T07:27:00.002-05:00

today i ran across a nice quotation from vladimir nabokov. he says the purpose of storytelling is:

“to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern and appreciate in far-off times when every trifle of our plain everyday life will become exquisite and festive in its own right: the times when a man who might put on the most ordinary jacket of today will be dressed up for an elegant masquerade.”

oh snap

2009-11-01T18:57:00.002-05:00

me: what did you dress up as for halloween?

k (age 3): we don't celebrate the devil.

me: oh.

the vision for the heavenly city

2009-10-20T16:11:00.006-04:00

listen to isaiah 65:17-25:

"'Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.

But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy.

I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more.

Never again will there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; he who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere youth; he who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed.

They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the works of their hands.

They will not toil in vain or bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the Lord, they and their descendants with them.

Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear.

The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent's food. They will neither harm nor destroy in all my holy mountain,' says the Lord."

mark gornik shares this passage in the introduction of his book to live in peace as he lays down some basic theological commitments about the city and its renewal.

what is striking about these verses is not just the hope that they offer, or the location of renewal within the city, but how god's heart is so clearly tied to the reversal of the particular struggles of humanity, specifically the poor.

consider the promise that "they will not . . . bear children doomed to misfortune." god, it seems, is aware of the cycle of poverty as a social fact of the fallen world. and he wants it broken and for there to be celebration as people are freed from it.

i don't think we should take this passage as a whole and this verse in particular as a mandate to run out and get busy "helping." that probably won't work quite as well as we initially think. but it is a call to be present with those who have not and to be a part of the community that seeks justice and the new city.

the shape of god's redemption of the city isn't his tritely saying to us, "now now it'll all be better." he doesn't leave us waiting alone and attempting to console ourselves in the midst of brokenness until some vaguely defined eschaton.

rather god names the specific difficulties of this life, whether in the ancient near east or contemporary society - the pain, the weeping, the injustice, whether premature death, homelessness, being unable to work for one's self and for one's family, perpetual poverty.

then he provided his son to break the power of the curse over the world and our hearts, thus bringing life and light through his resurrection. now his spirit is at work through us, his church, to bring in the heavenly city, in whatever forms it might be manifested this side of christ's return.

an unlikely dinosaur

2009-10-04T13:50:00.001-04:00

me to a two year old about the t-rex toy she's holding: where's its mommy and daddy?

two year old: i'm its mommy.

me: oh. who's its daddy?

two year old: i don't know.

i'll go crazy if i don't go crazy tonight

2009-10-02T07:19:00.001-04:00

get ready for i and love and you

2009-09-18T04:43:00.004-04:00

on faith, mercy, and the struggle with brokenness

2009-08-22T13:28:00.002-04:00

"Mercy is a door. It is a portal through which we catch a glimpse of the heart of God. A gentle tug on our heartstrings draws us in.

But soon we encounter brokenness so overwhelming that neither the tender-hearted nor the inventive problem-solver feel up to the task. Our solutions fall short. Pathologies are too deep, poverty too entrenched. And we descend into our own poverty, a poverty of spirit, a crisis of confidence in our own abilities to rescue.

We are tempted to withdraw, to retreat to a more manageable world. Yet our hearts constrain us. Or our guilt. We feel trapped. And, like the broken, we find ourselves calling out to God for answers.

When our best efforts have failed us, we are left with nothing to cling to but frail faith. In a strange twist of divine irony, those who would extend mercy discover that they themselves are in need of mercy."

- bob lupton

living in a beach front paradise

2009-08-18T21:59:00.002-04:00

last week i finally found that long sought after libertarian paradise. no it's not in idaho or upstate new york. it's called cape hatteras and it's in north carolina.

i spent the first week of august there with a group of friends. we rented a large house a few lots off of the ocean. the house was great. the beach was great. the friends were great.

the whole experience was called "bwool," which stands for "best week of our lives." we plan on having one of those every year forever. sick.

towards the end of the week something clicked in my head and made me realize "ah-ha, this is it! this is what free people have been looking for." sort of.

on hatteras you basically govern yourself. there isn't a real police presence from what i could tell, nor does one seem particularly necessary on an island fifty miles from the nearest bridge to the mainland. no lifeguards patrolling. you can drink on the beach during the day and build a fire there at night. fireworks are technically illegal, but plenty of people were setting them off, even from the back deck of their house.

the only significant regulation i saw were a couple thin stretches of beach which had been closed off for sea turtles to lay their eggs. charming.

this isn't to say that you can do whatever you'd like. i'm sure that you'd be quickly stared down by the large family groups assembled on the beach and have sand kicked on you for, say, blasting excessively loud music in their presence. additionally, every house a sign on it that lists both the name of the house and its realtor. these houses are filled with people who take their vacation seriously and if you're too far out of line, i'd imagine they could kick you out pretty fast.

but all in all people can pretty much do as they please, unencumbered by the cold, hard chains of rules and regulations, instead conforming to a delightful form of life that has been constructed and refined through years and years of vacationing.

yes, this is it. the perfect place. for at least three thousand dollars a week during peak season it can be yours. we paid forty-five hundred for our week. something beach front will be at least a couple thousand more.

there's something unsettling about hatteras being so cloistered and homogenous and yet so loved by me. but relative to the clutter and bustle of nags head and kitty hawk, i'll manage the struggle with the dilemmas of living the high life one week a year.

crazy time

2009-08-17T07:47:00.001-04:00

"The tree of crazy is an ever-present aspect of America's flora."

- rick perlstein

a thought on government

2009-08-04T17:03:00.004-04:00

this from andrew sullivan in the midst of cash-for-clunkers and health care reform:

"What conservatives have to do, in my view, is not demonize government, but to champion limited government. If government can do tangible practical things that help everyone, while balancing its budget, it's doing what conservatives think it should. Smart, practical initiatives that address problems that the private sector has failed at: what else is government for?"

this georgian life

2009-07-29T20:45:00.018-04:00

over the weekend i talked to my brother for the first time since he left america in mid-june. he's currently in a small village in the republic of georgia called patara chailuri, which is about 45 minutes from the capital city of tbilisi.

he found out monday that his permanent placement will be in a relatively large city (around 100,000 residents) called rustavi, which was destroyed in the 13th century and then rebuilt seven hundred years later during world war ii by german pow's held by the soviets. so it'll have some of that lovely, soul-sustaining communist era architecture.

my brother relayed some amazing snapshots of georgian life, where they seem to make do with a saucy blend of politics, romance, and feasting.

1) georgians love joe biden.

joe biden loves georgians.

a group of protestors have been living in steel and cement cages in the middle of the streets of tbilisi. in honor of biden's visit to georgia last week and their love of democracy, they took down their roadblocks for the weekend. behold the power of gentle diplomacy.

brian met joe biden.

biden spoke to a group in tbilisi comprised mainly of the u.s. embassy staff and brian's peace corps group. apparently he's a great lover of that area of the world and strong supported of georgia in their struggles against russia.

after finishing his formal speech, the vice-president decided to do what he does best: ad lib.

he looked out into the crowd and someone caught his eye. he said, "oh you're a really pretty girl. how old are you? 16?"

the girl's mother interjected: "she's 9."

he then proceeded to invite all the children in the room onto the stage.

my bro speculated that biden smiles in his sleep.

after all this, during the meet and greet portion of the program, brian got the "hey man" from biden, just before brian could get in his own "hey man." biden asked brian where he was from. he said "north carolina." biden responded, "good state," and moved along.

2) georgians don't date.

unless you live in tbilisi, the as-cosmopolitan-as-georgia-gets capital, basically you ask a girl out to, say, dairy queen and then marriage preparations begin.

brian and the rest of his peace corps class were warned about this. just stay away.

however one of them managed to put himself in an awkward position less than a month into the trip. he started talking to a georgian girl, about what i don't know since she didn't speak english and he didn't speak georgian.

one thing led to another (remember it's literally a two-step process over there) and he ended up at her family's house one day. they drilled him with a bunch of questions, in georgian, obviously. having no idea what they were asking, he answered yes to all of them. the girl's mother then went around their village the next asking everyone if he was a good fit for their daughter.

to give you an idea of the size of this village, as well as the prominence any american in their midst has, soon after his arrival my brother was regarded as a hero in his village, as well as in the next village over. he signed his autograph on people's arms.

one of the peace corps directors had to pull this guy aside and straightforwardly and sincerely ask him if he was going to marry the girl. he wasn't, of course, since they'd never actually talked. they then had to take maneuvers to get him out of his jam which included learning the georgian equivalent of "i just want to be friends." apparently things have worked themselves out.

3) georgians toast everything.

georgians have parties called "supras" that are built around massive amounts food and wine. by massive i mean the plates get piled two and three high and the wine flows like the kura river.

the consumption of wine is ordered by a liturgy of toasts which ensures that by the time they've toasted god, country, peace, the dead, the living, family, etc., they're feeling great and ready to toast anything.

good manners at a supra require you to drink at every toast, yet not get excessively drunk. good luck young american.

brian was invited to one funeral supra, which takes place forty days after the death and is open to one hundred and fifty close friends and family. his attendance made him their brother.

he showed up at another supra last week a couple hours into the festivities. everyone was rolling along, with toasts flying left and right. they asked brian to give one.

brian toasted in his broken georgian what he hoped came out as something like, "victory to georgia and peace with america."

a bit later it became relevant for my brother to tell them what our dad's job is. apparently the word for pastor is complicated and had to be relayed to the other guests by someone who knew georgian.

when they heard our dad is a pastor, they went wild. they toasted god. they toasted our dad. they toasted my brother.

god bless georgia.

here's a video one of the other peace corps guys made which shows some of what they're doing right now. it's pretty cool.

a short story

2009-07-28T21:56:00.003-04:00

ellie, 3 years old: i want to tell a story.

me: sure - let's sit down and you can tell it to me.

ellie: papa came into town. [pause]

me: [listening]

ellie: [silent]

me: is there any more?

ellie: no, that's all.

me: oh . . . what a great story! should we build a castle?

wash yourselves, seek justice

2009-07-25T10:17:00.003-04:00

"Wash yourselves;
make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
correct oppression;
bring justice to the fatherless,
plead the widow's cause.

'Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.
If you are willing and obedient,
you shall eat the good of the land;
but if you refuse and rebel,
you shall be eaten by the sword;
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.'"

- isaiah 1:16-20

theology of the heart

2009-07-22T07:17:00.002-04:00

autism and quality of life

2009-07-20T20:45:00.004-04:00

in the closing chapter of unstrange minds, roy grinker offers his conception of a good life for his daughter isabel, who is autistic:

I am not particularly invested in the idea of independence. I want Isabel to have minimal emotional distress, to be able to continue learning as an adult, to know how to advocate for her needs, and to make friends.

he continues:

Even more importantly, my idea of a good outcome for Isabel is that people other than Joyce and me will contribute to her care. I know that it takes a village to raise a child; it takes a village and comprehensive mental-health care and educational policies to raise a child with autism.

i love where he's gone so far, and the way he closes out is a powerful reminder that, just like the rest of us, people with autism are so much more than what can be done for them by clinicians and educators, crucial though they may be. also, just like the rest of us, they need living breathing dedicated community that ties them into the world they inhabit.

But no policy or parent can transform society. That is why it is so important to cultivate a stable network of family and friends. I don't want to just find comfortable holding patters, this school or that institution that will care for her at different stages of her life. In that kind of life she wouldn't have the opportunity to understand the world - or to get to be a part of it - any more than someone who traveled the globe without ever leaving an airport would be able to understand the countries he's landed in.

why to listen to gospel music?

2009-07-18T19:06:00.002-04:00

"We wanted the kids to be influenced by Southern gospel because it’s the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, the most absolute, accurate and correct way of living.”

- jim avett, father of seth and scott, aka the avett brothers.

examining the rise of autism

2009-07-16T22:48:00.002-04:00

i'm nearing the end of roy grinker's fascinating book on autism, unstrange minds. grinker, whose daughter is autistic, is an anthropology professor at george washington university. the first half of the book is dedicated to explaining why rates of autism have increased so dramatically over the past twenty or thirty years. in the second half he takes an anthropologist's look how autism is viewed in other cultures such as south africa, south korean, and india.

like all of the good literature i've read about autism, this book is informative and heart-felt, which makes sense considering grinker is both an academic and a father.

i find his explanation for the rise of autism informative and compelling. his basic argument is that certain social conditions (the rise of empirical psychology, standardizations in diagnostic criteria, shifts in educational funding, disability rights movement, etc.) created an atmosphere in which autism as a specifically identified condition could become prevalent. he believes there have always in most every society been people who are "autistic," but it is only in the last half of the century that autism as we currently know it was actually described and became a label for these people.

in other words, collectively we didn't know autism existed until relatively recently. but the more we are aware of it, the more we see it. every major change in the diagnostic criteria (particularly the DSM III in 1980 and DSM IV in 1994) and the availability of funds contingent on an autism diagnosis (i.d.e.a and the inclusion of autism as one of the special edcuation categories in the early nineties) has precipitated a jump in the number of people labeled "austistic."

the rate of autism reported by epidemiological studies from 1966 until 1993 was 4.7 cases per 10,000. from 1994-2004 it was 12.7 per 10,000. more recently, conservative estimates put it at 36.6 per 10,000, while some put it closer to 60 per 10,000, or 1 in 166, others even as high as 1 in 150.

why is this? grinker points to seven factors. note that none of them have to do with environmental factors such as vaccines.

1) awareness and diagnosis of autism has improved in most of the world, especially north america and western europe. teachers, the general public, pediatricians, and psychiatrists know better what to look for.

2) diagnosis is happening at an earlier age. if more two year and even one year olds are being diagnosed now when they weren't previously, then the overall rate is going to go up.

3) autism is now a diagnosis distinct from schizophrenia. before the release of the DSM III in 1980, it was common for someone who would now be diagnosed with autism to instead be diagnosed as schizophrenic.

4) what "counts" as autism now includes more than it previously did. it's now viewed as a spectrum that includes classic autism, asperger syndrome (which wasn't in the DSM until 1994, pervasive developmental disorder - not otherwise specified (pdd-nos), as well as a few others.

one group of researchers in finland did a study where they compared rates of autism under a criteria from the 1940s to rates using a version of the current criteria. the rate more than doubled under the newer criteria, from 5.6 per 10,000 to 12.2 per 10,000.

5) "autism" is replacing "mental retardation" as a label. rates of children in special ed programs who are considered mentally retarded or learning disabled are dropping as autism rates are rising.

6) epidemiological research methods, which give us our best estimates as to how many people have autism, have become more thorough.

7) unlike some of the early criteria for autism, an autism diagnosis can now be given to someone with a separate medical condition, such as cerebral palsy, down syndrome, or some other chromosomal abnormality.

grinker views the rise in autism rates positively, since to him autism has always had a similar rate of prevalence. with this new awareness comes many many more resources for individuals with autism, as well as their families, friends, and those involved in providing them services.

unstrange minds is a great book. it was highly recommended to me by a parent at the school where i work. its perspective provides some sanity in the midst of a lot of autism-related hysteria. read it.

more avett brothers please

2009-07-14T17:24:00.008-04:00

friday night i went to see the avett brothers in richmond. i've been a fan of the avetts for a year or so and as time goes on i get more and more into them. their artful and playful weaving together of folk, bluegrass, rock, punk, and singer/songwriter genres continues to capture my ears. and as i grow more and more acclimated to their lyrics, the more i feel my heart is softened and my mind is sharpened by their stories and commentary on life.

at the show they played "murder in the city," which turns towards consideration of what it is that binds a family together:

I wonder which brother is better
Which one our parents love the most
I sure did get in lots of trouble
They seemed to let the other go

A tear fell from my father’s eyes
I wondered what my dad would say
He said I love you
And I’m proud of you both, in so many different ways.

the song concludes with an amazing couplet:

Always remember, there is nothing worth sharing
Like the love that let us share our name.

let these words soak into your idea of family. this is more than music - it's moral formation.

the avett brother's shows are different from most of the other concerts i've been to. people go to hear great music, to yell and scream, to feed off the avett's incredible energy, dance, unwind.

but many seem to go for something more. all the fun is enveloped in care, in concern not just for the music, but also for the well-being of those participating. the music is formative, not just telling how things are, but also how things can and should be.

i think the audience at their shows are looking for something a bit deeper. at most concerts i've been to any reference during to drugs, sex, or alcohol will elicit lots of cheers and yelling from the crowd.

in high school i saw tim reynolds, the virtuoso guitarist who has toured with dave matthews for years. the only words he said during the hour and a half he played were "if you're gonna do anything, just get real stoned." people went crazy. it was in asheville after all. but people love that kind of stuff, any chance to cut loose from the struggle and just be gone.

on friday night, during the song "the ballad of love and hate," the avetts passed through the lines

Hate sits alone on the hood of his car.
Without much regard to the moon or the stars.
Lazily killing the last of a jar
of the strongest stuff you can drink.

a few people went nuts. alcohol!!! i love that stuff!!! hell yah!!!

but most of the people in the crowd knew what was coming next. they waited for hate, who, instead of descending into a self-destructive hedonism, stumbles home to love, who is waiting up for him, worrying and forgiving of him, as he has fallen apart in her absence.

the avetts sing plenty about relationships (nearly ten songs in the "pretty girl" series), about the bottoms of this life, and drinking. but they see more in the world than just trying to get the hell out of it via substances or becoming cynical about women or family or the past.

i see them touching on the human condition in such a humane way, never being didactic, showing rather than telling. they comprehend our tendency towards disaster:

I'd like to say I'm a faithful man
but it may not be true.

but also get that our shortcomings - past, present, and future - aren't the total story:

We came for salvation
We came for family
We came for all that's good that's how we'll walk away
We came to break the bad
We came to cheer the sad
We came to leave behind the world a better way

did i mention they're from north carolina too? dig it.

here's a video from another favorite "talk on indolence":

the music of reconcilation

2009-07-08T07:38:00.001-04:00

"There are lots of heavy theological words ending in '-ation,' and it's easy for us to hear them and not really take in what beautiful things they are. We are often like someone seeing the outside cover of a music tape or CD, being vaguely interested in it, but never listening to the music inside.

If we listen, however, to the music of the word 'reconciliation,' we will realize that it's the music that will heal the world."

- n.t. wright

b.d.j.

2009-07-06T22:43:00.005-04:00

i received a text on friday from my housemate mike: "slapped big daddy jr in the face today after catching him eating a tomato."

big daddy jr is a groundhog.

it turns out mike and his girlfriend mary ashton arrived at our house and spied b.d.j. in the middle of the garden mike has created in our back yard. the garden has been turned into a fortress due to the number of thefts on the veggies within by the animals in the surrounding woods.

a seven foot tall net fence goes all the way around, giving the garden a sort of mixed martial arts arena feel. this was due to an early suspicion that deer were the ones getting into the garden. additionally some cds were strung around the top of the high fence, based on the theory that either 1) deer don't like rap music or 2) they'd be scared away by the shininess of the discs.

it turned out that deer weren't grazing in mike's garden this year. it was actually a herd of groundhogs destroying the harvest.

they were led by big daddy, now a manor house legend (sometimes also called fat daddy). we regularly spot him in the yard and precede to throw whatever is at hand towards him. i've thrown a football at him a number of times. we launch shovels and hoes like they're javelins. one of my roommates once ran out the door screaming and carrying a laundry basket so as to trap him.

last august big daddy made his way into our house through the back door. out of the corner of his eye chris saw some little feet heading down the hallway. he suspected they belonged to one of the little kids from next door and called out "jaquis!" no response. he soon realized that a groundhog was in our living room and spent about thirty minutes constructing a maze made out of furniture to funnel him out through the front door.

a post-it note is attached to the inside of our backdoor reading: "close door - groundhog/gopher got in."

big daddy was spotted on 7 1/2 street behind our house a few weeks ago, dead. he'd been run over by a car.

despite our hate of big daddy and his foraging in our gardens and trash, we never really wanted to kill him, or even do seriously harm. our relationship with him was defined by the chase. if we ever actually got him dead, it'd be a let down. a part of our house culture would die with him.

prompting the mixed emotions groundhogs tend to provoke, his children picked up his legacy and have been raiding the garden any chance they get. this despite the presence of a shorter and sturdier fence, reinforced by a bunch of bricks, that now surround the circumference of the octagon.

it was big daddy jr sitting in the garden when mike pulled up.

mike, knowing the ways of groundhogs and the garden, quickly and quietly ran to the outside of the garden, intending to teach b.d.j. a lesson he'd never forget.

mike's passionate defense of his garden has a strong element of irony, mainly because he doesn't eat vegetables, especially green ones.

despite being essentially an omnivore, mike was once a vegetarian for three months during college. he swore - pay attention to this - that he wouldn't stop being a vegetarian until he ate a salad. he originally saw this as a one month project. he subsisted solely on veggie burritos and general tso's tofu for three months until he just gave up on vegetables, having never eaten a salad. it's a legendary failure.

after some hasty maneuvering between some of the possible exit points the groundhogs have been exploiting, mike had a panicked b.d.j. cornered and stuck between a piece of fence. from within the garden, mary ashton held a pot over her head, ready to strike.

not quite sure what to do, but fully intent on this being a teaching moment, mike called off mary ashton and, hurling didactic curses, reared back his fist to, um, punch the groundhog. his resolve to actually punch a groundhog failed as his moral sense kicked in, so he lessened the punishment to a slap, across the face.

a slap. across the face. of a groundhog.

b.d.j. bared his fangs at mike in protest. mike then grabbed a handful of weeds and starting thrashing b.d.j. across the face, yelling at him "never come back!!!" this lasted a few seconds before the groundhog got free and scurried off into the woods.

this is my life.

where at least i know i'm free

2009-07-04T13:07:00.004-04:00

every american, whether they'll admit it or not, has some lee greenwood in them. some have just a smidge, while others have gobs. i'm somewhere in the middle.

wherever you fall, embrace your inner lee greenwood.

obama dominating the white house press corps

2009-06-24T16:37:00.003-04:00

this is from yesterday. it's good.

john perkins on the bible, justice, and the law

2009-06-23T18:37:00.003-04:00

"One of the things for Christian observers is that there are times when the biggest need is for information rather than exhortation. We need to know more about what really goes on before we solidify our theoretical ideas about what a Christian 'ought' or 'ought not' do.

Whether or not we admit it, our reading of biblical ethics is colored by our perception of the world around us. If we think that there are only a few 'bad guys' such as burglars and murderers, and that all the given political, legal and economic structures around us are basically okay, then we are bound to read our bibles in a certain way. We will assume that it tells us to 'lay low,' whether we are a part of the law or only under the law; that the person who speaks out is a rebellious agitator.

But that assumption can be badly shaken up by a good look at what happens to many people who are simply crushed by, rather than helped by, these social structures and institutions we take for granted. If sin can exist at every level of government, and in every human institution, then also the call to biblical justice in every corner of society must be sounded by those who claim a God of Justice as their Lord.

- john perkins, let justice roll down

canada volume 3

2009-06-11T22:20:00.002-04:00

an incident yesterday more or less explained canada to me.

i was driving the fam back to our hotel after an awesome hike to cape split, which is about an hour and half from halifax on the north shore of nova scotia.

we were headed down highway 101 in moderate traffic at around seventy miles per hour.

a few miles from halifax my brother, sitting in the passenger seat, got my attention because an red hatchback had pulled alongside us and its driver had rolled down his window and was frantically waving for us to roll down our window.

this car had been in our driving neighborhood for awhile, nearly half an hour.

my heart leapt slightly because 1) i don't want to do anything while driving 70 mph except drive and 2) people only signal like that because something is wrong.

up to that second i had no reason to think that anything was wrong - no noises, no flames, no smoke, no screaming.

brian put the window down and the man yelled something towards us. remember we are driving on the highway, side-by-side, very quickly, in five o'clock traffic.

brian yelled back, "WHAT???"

the man repeated himself, looking me in the eye, this time somehow coming in clearly, "DO YOU NEED DIRECTIONS???"

let me say that again: we were asked to roll down our window and have a conversation while driving at speeds that would crush us if we crashed in order to be asked, "DO YOU NEED DIRECTIONS???"

nothing in my driving patterns could have suggested that i didn't know where i was going, mainly because i did, in fact, know where i was going.

and anyways, what was his game plan if we actually needed directions? were we going to yell back and forth for as long as it took us to get our bearings? was he going to throw a map into our window?

my brother shouted back, "NO!" and windows went up.

i started laughing immediately after the conversation ended. we drove past our new friend, gave some thumbs up, and rolled along.

brian speculated that as soon as he got home, the friendly man walked into his house and his wife asked him, in a nasally canadian accent, how his day went.

sitting down on his overstuffed couch, he responded, in the same accent, "good. good. nothing out of the ordinary. oh, i drove past some folks from north carolina on the way home."

his friendly wife cheerfully asks him, "well, did you offer to give them directions to get where they're going?

he responds, "oh, of course dear. you know i mind my manners. but they knew the way." he picks up the paper and clicks on the tv.

his wife smiles and get on with dinner.

it all goes back to the distinctive answer every maple leafed little boy and girl learns to give to the most basic safety question: "should you talk to strangers?"

which is: "yes, you should interrupt whatever they're doing and ask, 'do you need directions?'"

and that pretty much sums up the difference between the u.s. and canada.

canada volume 2

2009-06-10T20:35:00.000-04:00

canada volume 1

2009-06-09T09:09:00.002-04:00

about six months ago it became clear that my brother was going to be leaving the country after his graduation to go into the peace corps. so our family decided to go on a trip the week before he heads out on june 15, with brian picking our destination. i think the parameters were something like, "we'll go anywhere within driving distance."

my brother took advantage of this situation and our ignorance of northern geography. he chose nova scotia for his farewell to, uhhh, north america.

fact: nova scotia is in no real sense within driving distance of asheville. it's a nearly 30 hour drive, 1,600 miles away. other places that far from aville:

1) el paso, tx

2) denver, co

3) dickinson, nd (that's right nd, as in north dakota. and dickinson is in western north dakota, past fargo and bismarck.)

or we could have driven back and forth to charleston, sc, always a preferred destination for me, a half dozen times.

anyways, my family picked me up in cville on thursday after work and after a couple days of doing not too much in annapolis, we swung through philly and picked up my siblings who had gone to a wedding there on saturday afternoon. we tarried on to west haven, ct, spent the night, then moved along to an afternoon in boston.

boston is very nice, especially when it's eighty degrees and sunny, as it was sunday. my mother got so excited at the public gardens about make way for ducklings that she insisted on taking a picture of her children standing next to a hot dog truck.

but our day wasn't over yet. after experiencing boston, particularly the freedom trail route and the north end, we drove four more hours to bangor, maine, making sure to watch out for moose on the highway. i found myself wondering what you do when a moose is looking out for you. i don't see that ending well.

yesterday morning we got up and pushed into our final leg to canada and halifax.

the further north i go, i have a feeling i'm invading some sacred space and time for the locals. they toil in the freezing cold for nine or ten months, constantly thinking, i assume, about the upcoming summer months, where the days are long and the sun is warm.

i arrive here from the ever warm southland just as they're coming out of the thaw and into the glory days, just in time for me to take advantage of their finest time of year. it's like joining all your coworkers at the celebratory trip to the bar after finishing a marathon project when you just got hired that morning.

after an eternity in the car, we're here in halifax, the capital of nova scotia.

initial observations on canada, where i've been three times before, but never for more than 15 hours:

1) they sell milk in a bag. like you can walk into the store and buy a 4 liter bag of milk.

2) highway signs tend towards small print. missed exits are a guarantee. i think they just assume that anyone driving around canada knows where they're going, as if to say "yes, we don't get a lot of out-of-towners here."

3) regarding food, i wonder whether maritime province cuisine is influenced more by the french or by the british. the vietnamese restaurant we ate at tonight was more french. but i'm scared of all the pubs i've seen.

4) apparently canada has no crime. we'd been here ten hours, including three in halifax, before we saw a police car. but that might be because . . .

5) . . . more or less no one lives in canada. or maine, which brian suggests they call southern canada.

6) a man named tim horton has created an empire here via a chain of what appear to be slightly-nicer-than-mcdonalds burger places. you remember tim horton from back in the third grace, don't you?

permanent record

2009-06-06T09:03:00.001-04:00

my sister's boyfriend got a new tattoo this week. what started out as a joke is now, for $50, an eternal part of his inner left bicep. in short, he did a google search for "shark drawing" and now sports the steve zissouesque tiger shark which is the first image to show up:

being the beloved

2009-06-03T07:44:00.003-04:00

"Aren't you, like me, hoping that some person, thing, or event will come along to give you that final feeling of inner well-being you desire? Don't you often hope: 'May this book, idea, course, trip, job, country, or relationship fulfill my deepest desire.'

But as long as you are waiting for that mysterious moment you will go on running helter skelter, always anxious and restless, always lustful and angry, never fully satisfied. You know that this is the compulsiveness that keeps us going and busy, but at the same time makes us wonder whether we are getting anywhere in the long run. This is the way to spiritual exhaustion and burn-out. This is the way to spiritual death.

Well, you and I don't have to kill ourselves. We are the Beloved. We are intimately loved long before our parents, teachers, spouses, children, and friends loved or wounded us. That's the truth of our lives. That's the truth I want you to claim for yourself. That's the truth spoken by the voice that says, 'You are my beloved.'"

- henri nouwen, life of the beloved

stay thirsty my friends

2009-05-20T21:29:00.005-04:00

in case you have yet to meet the most interesting man in the world:

i treasure his advice on pick up lines.

four kids stories

2009-05-18T21:59:00.004-04:00

on thursday, i was playing with a couple kids from our neighborhood. a five or six year old girl who i don't know walked up to me and said "you're taller than me." i stooped down low to the ground and said "now you're taller than me." then we went our separate ways.

friday evening, a five year old from our neighborhood spent about an hour and a half in our backyard. he got mad a number of times and stormed off as if to go home, returning every time. this was the rhythm of his entire time at our house - play for five or ten minutes, be happy, something goes sightly wrong, he declares he's going home, walks off pouting, looking back every 20 feet to make sure we know his pain, then returns after a couple minutes, repeat. it all culminated with him getting hit (not very hard) by a bean bag and yelling "fuck!!" and getting upset again. yes, he's five and drops f-bombs. his story is complex, already at his age.

the next day he reported to a friend that he had come to our house and apparently couldn't stop talking about it and what a great time he had. go figure.

on saturday, one of our neighbors, jaquis, who is six (and brother to jaquez, who is five), needed to head out, his mom calling "jaquiiiiiis! come home!" he asked me if i could carry his shoes to his house, since he had taken them off and needed to push his bike. i asked him why i would carry his shoes when he could just put them on his feet on walk them home. he had an "ah-ha" moment, put his shoes on, and headed homeward.

yesterday in church nursery, a little girl walked up to me. up to that point in the morning i hadn't had any interaction with her. i said "hi" while she looked me in the eye, saying nothing. she reached out her hand, gave my nose a hard squeeze, and laughed.

ron artest in da club

2009-05-15T12:18:00.009-04:00

houston rockets forward ron artest offered some of his deeper thoughts in the locker room after a big win last night against the lakers to force game seven:

"'Five Dollar Foot-long' is one of the best songs. That's a hot song. You've got the FreeCreditReport.com, and then 'Five Dollar Foot-long' comes on. When 'Five Dollar Foot-long' comes on, they should play that in the club. They should play all those in the club."

when i was a young man

2009-05-09T21:41:00.011-04:00

today i found out that my dad used to read sports illustrated to me when i was an infant.

chalk this in the category "things i wouldn't know unless my grandma told me."

also in this category is the fact that i never crawled. instead i rolled.

the sports guy analyzes the hills

2009-05-05T20:30:00.006-04:00

bill simmons gives his take on the hills (please note that this happens smack in the middle of an editorial on the celtics, yankees-red sox, and the lakers):

I woke up six minutes into "The Hills" and the Sports Gal refused to change the channel because Audrina slept in Brody Jenner's bed in Hawaii and Brody's Playmate girlfriend was furious about it. These are the moments when Bruce Jenner feels proud for all the sacrifices he made trying to win that Olympic gold medal in 1976. But this led to an awesome moment in Twisted Female Logic when Audrina's friend LC then blamed Brody for not sticking up for Audrina and siding with his girlfriend because it was Brody's fault that he didn't kick Audrina out of his bed because he was in a relationship and Audrina was single, so, really, it was up to HIM to do the right thing. No blame for Audrina for going after someone else's dude? Really, LC? I sided with Brody, the Sports Gal sided with LC, and I'm ashamed to admit we actually argued about this for 20 minutes.

My argument in three parts: (A) Audrina is a tramp, (B) all women are natural enemies even if they pretend this isn't the case, and (C) a single woman will always do whatever it takes to land someone as appealing as Bruce Jenner's untalented but handsome son, even if it means seducing him on a reality-TV show and promising secrecy with him even though that show will be airing two months later.

hahahahaha

the omnivore's dilemma

2009-05-02T21:54:00.006-04:00

i'm nearing the end of michael pollan's the omnivore's dilemma, an engrossing and very very illuminating look at one of our more basic, yet rarely asked, questions: where did my dinner come from?

as pollan traces the history of four meals - industrial, big organic, sustainable/pastoral, and hunter/gatherer - he brings up so many points i've never thought about for food and its sources. for instance, seventy pages on corn makes me never want to eat mcdonald's again. or any fast food. or anything make by kraft or procter and gamble.

all four of his meals, and their modes of production, have pro's and con's and pollan is not willing to invest himself fully in any of them. notably the first two have the major benefit of feeding a lot of people, while the latter two have the major benefit of sustaining our culture, environment, and our humanity.

on the negative side, industrial food production is probably killing us and the environment. big organic is kind of just a cleaned up version of industrial. sustainable/pastoral probably won't be able to sustain anywhere with a population over five hundred. and hunter/gatherer hasn't really worked in ten thousand years.

i hope pollan will influence my future eating habits. however, so far not much has changed. last weekend i was faced with buying food for twenty for a cookout we were doing. i had to give the book the middle finger as i walked into food lion and bought food for twenty for only eighty dollars, including canned baked beans, frozen burger patties, twenty four hot dogs, and food lion brand hot dog buns. today i ate some mcdonald's (only because i was babysitting a kid who loves their fries).

i've started shopping at whole foods more, but mainly because of their fresh made peanut butter. it's probably not actually any good for me, but i suppose that if it isn't good for me, then no peanut butter tips the nutritional scales in a favorable direction.

the most philosophically interesting chapter is called "the ethics of eating animals," where pollan wrestles with the senses in which it is right or wrong to kill and eat animals. he interacts with brainy vegetarians like peter singer, for awhile appearing to be convinced by their brand of utilitarianism. however he moves away from their positions, suggesting they impose a moral framework upon the animal kingdom that is incongruent with the way nature actually works (for example, a major problem for animal rights philosophers is the fact that animals eat each other).

after killing the pig that will become his dinner in the hunter/gatherer section, pollan wrestles with the weight of killing your dinner. at first he felt great about it, as he walked up to the sow that took the bullet from his gun. but as he dressed it, and the blood and guts and their accompanying odors flooded his senses, he started to feel less certain about what he'd done, despite having read a lot of literature affirming the inherent goodness of hunting.

as he records his reflections, which are of a sort i've never had, he offers an interesting thoughts indicating the moral complexity of eating, yet also goes beyond that to the point of being proverbial, pointing out the moral complexity of all human activities:

I have to say there is a part of me that envies the moral clarity of the vegetarian, the blamelessness of the tofu eater. Yet part of me pities him, too. Dreams of innocence are just that; they usually depend on a denial of reality that can be its own form of hubris.

read the book. it's worth your time. it has immense conversational utility as well.

lupton on urban ministry

2009-04-27T22:10:00.004-04:00

last night i started reading through bob lupton's powerful little book theirs is the kingdom, a series of vignettes reflecting on the shape and meaning of ministry in a poor urban setting. lupton came from suburbia into the 'hood of atlanta, seeking to bring jesus to the broken places. he ended having most all of his assumptions about what his ministry would look like being challenged.

many of lupton's reflections have spoken deeply to me. consider some of these words:

Blindness, homelessness, hunger. Although there may be discernible causes and people to blame for the painful events of human history, these events are also opportunities for the glory of God to break through. In the midst of human misery, healing and hospitality and sharing are visible manifestations of the kingdom that has come. And the essential method of that kingdom is personal touching.

lupton continues:

Jesus does not allow us to withdraw to the theoretical or theological. He forces us to feed, to clothe, to give a cup of water - to touch the undesirable ones. His words and his life push us to the very place that will change us and fit us for kingdom use.

lupton reminds me that there are no perfect charity cases, that things don't often work out according to my plans, that i am not in this to save people, that god uses the humble to teach the proud, and that his grace is sufficient to do his work in his good time.

on california

2009-04-25T22:01:00.002-04:00

me: where are you from?

3 year old: california.

me: oh really? what's it like there?

3 year old: there are small lizards. and there are big lizards.

me: sounds sweet.

political experiment

2009-04-20T21:55:00.004-04:00

this afternoon i was trying to inspire a friend to do something. i texted her "yes we can." she jokingly responded, "i didn't vote obama. try again."

all i could come up with was "drill baby drill!"

she responded, "that's more like it!"

i asked her if mccain even had a slogan. i could think of no distinctive branding from his campaign.

she said, "i can see russia from my house?"

take a second, think about it. six months later, was there anything substantial about the mccain campaign that stuck with you? like i said, i've got nothing.

obama will always have "yes we can." mccain may end up with just an igloo full of palin jokes.

part of why i've started to listen to christian music

2009-04-15T21:18:00.006-04:00

this is josh garrels. and he's from indiana, but moved to nc (i know that transition). and he's so awesome. buy jacaranda, or better yet, download it from emusic.

obama's pirate stats

2009-04-15T07:41:00.003-04:00

rock band

2009-04-13T07:43:00.001-04:00

the grave is now a groove

2009-04-12T08:27:00.005-04:00

"Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead. But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

'Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?'

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

1 Corinthians 15: 12-14, 20-22, 48-49, 54-57

and watch this and see a glimpse of how all will sing the song of the resurrection.

living like a local: nyc

2009-04-09T12:12:00.003-04:00

tuesday night i got back from four days in nyc, hanging out with paige, trent, and shleigh, who made a special trip up from birmingham and nearly didn't make it back. besides the sweetness of hanging out with such good friends, i viewed the trip as an opportunity for some cultural tourism as i went to the epicenter of our current financial problems.

i was able to hang out with a real live unemployed new yorker, who had just gone on the unemployment rolls the previous day. i saw the effects of cutbacks (for example, fake flowers instead of a huge bouquet in the lobby of trent and paige's building). i read the papers and their talk of the vacant buildings everywhere. ad's taped onto phone booths offered home cleaning at recession prices.

one of my main goals when traveling anywhere is to live like a local: to blend in with the people (when they're white, mainly), to appear to know what i'm doing, where i'm going, and why i'm there.

it is now easier than any time in recent memory to live like a local in nyc. sleeping in, getting outside at noon, spending your afternoon listlessly walking around, peeking in store windows, trying to find best kept secrets and new streets to trod down, going to museums, then retiring back to your half-empty apartment building - these are all perfectly normal activities now for all sorts, not just the artists and those trying to find themselves while on their parents' dollar.

i don't think i've ever appeared more natural in new york than i did over the weekend. damn it feels good to be a local.

besides fitting in so well, the two best elements of the trip were the food and palm sunday.

foodwise, trent and paige love to cook. they talk about flavors and ingredients and exciting recipe ideas in the same manner richard and i talk about fantasy sports: often, in lieu of more important matters, and to pass the time. i enjoy cooking and tend to get pretty good reviews from those i feed. then again, i live in a house where we cheer on certain among us when they manage to properly heat up frozen vegetables or cook rice.

from the hudson kitchen we ate french toast, curried chicken, a cuban styled pork roast, and some brilliant salads. out on the town we went to a latin restaurant on the upper west side that offers a free all-you-can-drink sangria bar (!!), a thai place on union square, a little wood-paneled spot in williamsburg, brooklyn with a sparse menu that delivered the goods, and a gourmet pizza place off battery place.

for the first time in my travels to new york, i ate neither a hot dog nor grabbed a slice from somewhere on a corner. physically, i feel great about this, though perhaps a bit unsettled emotionally.

fortunately it wasn't all healthy choices. we hit up a couple chocolate places, namely jacques torres, where we ate one incredible chocolate chip cookie, and the start-up mast brothers, whose proprietors' looks prompt me to think of them as the avett brothers of chocolate, thus giving them a special place in my heart, not just because they are the only bean-to-bar chocolate maker in the city.

the high point of the trip for me was sunday. we headed up to new song community church in harlem, an amazing little inter-racial congregation committed to renewing their community through the gospel. as far as i'm concerned, nothing is better than a worship service where people of all different races, ethnicities, and classes are gathered together to praise god. and new song delivers.

after a better than average pot luck, we headed out into the sunshine and walked through morningside heights and columbia university so that i could get nostalgic about the days i spent there studying greek back in '06. we then checked out st. john the divine episcopal church (which has some church size superlative, i can't quite remember what), and then made our way down to the 1st baptist church on 79th and broadway for redeemer's west side evening service.

being packed with a thousand others there on the upper west side provides, i have found, so much encouragement, as if to say, "yes, this gospel is real. not just in the pews and hearts of southern christian moralism and in isolation elsewhere and in the rear-view mirror." right there on manhattan, the altar of self-sufficiency, people keep coming back to be shaped by the humility of the gospel.

moving forward, i realized over the weekend in new york that i don't care to refer to myself as being from virginia. it feels unnatural, inauthentic, and teleologically incongruous. i'm heading down to north carolina this afternoon for a couple days. that's very nice.

here is new york

2009-04-06T17:17:00.004-04:00

"On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy. It is this largess that accounts for the presence within the city's walls of a considerable section of the population; for the residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail. The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York. It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky."

- e.b. white

outliers

2009-03-31T22:57:00.007-04:00

i just started reading my first malcolm gladwell book, outliers. when i took summer greek in nyc, one of my classmates, perhaps the most outspoken person i've ever met who i simultaneously enjoyed being around, dismissed gladwell as being fun to read, but mainly just pop-psychology, the sort of thing the masses eagerly consume, but which leaves them no closer to eudaimonia than when they started.

having read some mitford and tom wolfe, as well as one chapter of outliers, i'm pretty sure gladwell isn't producing nicely wrapped nothingness. we'll see

anyways, this is his very in-your-face-individualism thesis:

"In Outliers, I want to convince you that . . . personal explanations of success don't work. People don't rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot. It makes a difference where and when we grew up. The culture we belong to and the legacies passed down by our forebears shape the patterns of our achievements in ways we cannot begin to imagine. It's not enough to ask what successful people are like, in other words. It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't."

i'm always intrigued by a story that is told in part to call into question the way another has been told. here we go.

fantasy weekend is near

2009-03-25T22:57:00.004-04:00

this weekend i'm going to asheville for a fantasy baseball draft. we have people coming from maryland, virginia, north carolina, georgia, and tennessee, all for the sake of three hours of sitting around and yelling "joe mauer!" or "coco crisp!" or "k-rod!" and then getting nostalgic about the time feero drafted the vikings defense in the third round. and that will be absolutely hilarious to us. to us. probably alone.

at least five of the ten members of the league will be present, plus another is sending a proxy. the others will be present via gchat, video conference, or tele-conference. we picked the drafting site based on the quality of its internet connection.

for awhile i've been striving to have a gmail strand in my life that got up to one hundred. this draft took me there. we've sent out over a hundred emails in prep for the draft, none of which have been about actual baseball players. when we got to the milestone, i found out (spoiler warning!) that a hundred is as far as you can go, then gmail starts a new strand back at the beginning.

this will be my fifth fantasy draft and the third where a bulk of us are present in person. the other two happened to coincide with events where we'd already be there anyways (a spring break and a wedding). this weekend is happening only because of the draft.

out of the four previous leagues i've done, i've finished either fourth or fifth every time. i've been happy to be consistently in the top half. currently i'm shooting for a top three finish in fantasy basketball, mainly because in yahoo! fantasy sports you get an electronic trophy if you pull that off.

a big part of why i've been unable to move into the top three is my inability to pull off good trades. for instance, in fantasy football i charitably gave away a good receiver in exchange for a quarterback who had one good game all season, which happened to be the week before i got him. in this basketball season i was not able to unload baron "i haven't hit a jump shot all season except last week when i was on gillikin's bench" davis before the trade deadline. i have a feeling i won't be able to move up as long as i have davis, but i've been unable to depart with him. i did pull off a very nice trade at the beginning of the season, dumping elton brand and samuel delambert for rudy gay and deron williams.

last fall i started paying yahoo! ten dollars per season so i can have an add-on called "stattracker" which allows me to get real time stats on all my fantasy players. it's common for richard and me to close out the evening sitting in our room, chatting, and letting each other know how our players are doing that night. in fact that's what we're doing right now.

i was talking to a friend last night and trying to explain why we are building a weekend around a fantasy sports draft. i started to say "it's the male equivalent . . ." but i caught myself, realizing i was about to contrast it with weddings, as if they are a women's thing to be polarized with fantasy sports. i restarted, saying that this weekend is analagous to the way weddings bring people together.

it's all about the people. i love the people. and any excuse to be in north carolina.

paul and n.t. wright on reconciliation through christ

2009-03-22T22:37:00.006-04:00

ephesians 2:13-15 reads: "But now, in King Jesus, you have been brought near in the king's blood - yes, you, who used to be a long way away! He is our peace, you see. He has made the two to be one. He has pulled down the barrier, the dividing wall, that turns us into enemies of each other. He has done this in his flesh, by abolishing the law with its commands and instructions. The point of doing all this was to create, in him, one new human being out of the two, so making peace."

n.t. wright comments on this passage, exhorting us to see the demand and hope that stem from the church's identity in jesus christ alone:

"If our churches are still divided in any way along racial or cultural lines, Paul would say that our gospel, our very grasp of the meaning of Jesus' death, is called into question. How long will it be before those who claim to follow Jesus, not least those who claim also to love Paul's thinking, come to terms with the demands he actually makes?"

this is so challenging, but so right.

listen to page cxvi

2009-03-19T20:50:00.008-04:00

do yourself a favor and go here to download some amazing remakes of five old hymns by a band called page cxvi. they've redone come thou fount, my jesus i love thee, nothing but the blood, solid rock, and joy. i hope they continue to do what they do. i've been listening to them on repeat.

inspired mainly by waterdeep, i decided last summer i was going to start listening to christian music, which i've more or less ignored since i was in eighth grade and listened to five iron frenzy and the o.c. supertones. i didn't really do much about it, but now i have.

very cool

2009-03-14T20:38:00.007-04:00

this is from a talent show at virginia tech. one of my housemates's girlfriend was there. dig it.

learning disability and crime

2009-03-14T08:56:00.004-04:00

definitely read this article on learning disabilities and crime written by a canadian police constable. it's compassionate, very interesting, and reveals another layer in the relationship between the way we educate and the lives we can hope for one another to lead.

affirm me

2009-03-10T21:59:00.005-04:00

today at tutoring i was talking to jabari, the five year old brother of the third grader i tutor. i don't know jabari too well, but he is at least two things: cute and a hand full.

he knows i'm his brothers tutor. i asked him who his tutor was and he said he didn't have one. i remembered the kindergartners have more of a group program than one on one and mentioned to him the name of one of the leaders.

a minute or so later jabari walked away from the circle of kids gathered together in our pre-tutoring ritual where one of the kids says "a word," usually some sort of prayer.

i went after him and told him he needed to get back in the circle. he looked away and refused. i told him again he had to go back to the circle and took his hand, which he quickly pulled away.

i asked him what was wrong. he stared at the ground for a sulking second and, flexing his knees as he spoke, told me, "i want you to be my tutor."

my day was made. we made plans to hang out this weekend.

this american life talks about hell

2009-03-08T19:15:00.006-04:00

the other day i listened to an episode of this american life dedicated to the career of reverend carlton pearson, who was a rising star on the american christian/televangelical/pentecostal circuit in the late nineties and early 2000s.

pearson's stock dropped off the charts, however, when he decided he no longer believed in hell and that christ's atoning work saves everyone no matter their beliefs or actions. his large church in tulsa, ok shrunk by ninety percent and he was descried as a heretic.

his embodiment of two of the major strands of christian thought is fascinating. he began in the pre-millenial, narrowly spiritual fundamentalism that is perhaps the most widespread form of american christianity (as well as an easy target for criticism), and switched over to the increasingly popular universalism that seems to have grown up, in large part, as a reaction to the fundamentalism practiced during the last thirty or forty years.

though i don't agree or disagree completely with either the place he started from or the place he went, pearson's account of how he stopped believing in hell after watching footage of starving children in africa is powerful. most of us can identify with the intellectual and, more significantly, existential struggle about where god's justice is in the midst of the pain in this world:

"God I don't know how you could call yourself a loving sovereign God and allow these people to suffer this way and just suck them right into hell," which was what was my assumption.

And I heard a voice say within me, "So that's you think we're doing?"

And I remember I didn't say yes or know, I said "That's what I'd been taught - we're sucking them into hell."

"And what would change that?"

"Well, they need to get saved."

"And how would that happen?"

"Well, somebody needs to preach the gospel to them and get 'em saved."

"So if you think that's the only way they're gonna get saved if for somebody to preach the gospel to them and that we're sucking them into hell, why don't you put your little baby down, turn your big screen television off, push your plate away, get on the first thing smoking and go get 'em saved."

And I remember I broke into tears, I was very upset. I remember thinking "God don't put that guilt on me - I've given you the best forty years of my life. Besides I can't save the whole world; I'm doing the best I can - I can't save this whole world.

And that's where I remember, I think it was God saying, "You can't save this whole world, that's what we did. You think we're sacking them into hell? Can't you see that they're already there? That's hell. You keep creating and inventing that for yourselves. I'm taking them into my presence."

And I thought, "That's weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. That's where the pain comes from. We do that to each other. And we do it to ourselves. And I saw emergency rooms, I saw divorce court, I saw jails and prisons, I saw how we create hell on this planet for each other. And for the first time in my life I did not see God as the inventor of hell."

while in his fundamentalist phase, pearson felt great anxiety about trying to make sure he could save everyone he could from the fires of hell. he couldn't sit on a plane and relax from a tiring weekend of speaking without feeling obligated to share the gospel with the person sitting next to him.

now he's entered into the "gospel of inclusion" that doesn't give a particularly compelling reason to believe anything. i'm sure pearson wouldn't agree with that, but the logic of universalism tends towards it.

while i'm quite unsettled as to what hell is or looks like, i rather doubt it is some fire pit designed for the eternal torture of the reprobate. i also doubt god is content to allow those who fashion their lives around the selfish abuse of others to pass into the new jerusalem alongside those who claimed christ and lived humble lives of repentance built around loving god and their neighbor.

i'm drawn to the view of c.s. lewis and tim keller that suggests hell is merely, and suffocatingly, being left to ourselves forever, but i'm not sure it has great scriptural support. then again, i don't think the bible gives us a literal picture of what either hell or heaven are like.

i don't think the fundamentalists or universalists tell the whole of the christian story, the story of christ as the son of god made flesh, who came into a good-world-become-broken to exhaust and overcome evil and inaugurate the kingdom of god, a kingdom that seeks the renewal not just of our souls, but of our bodies, our relationships, communities, and the whole world.

[whether or not you listen to the podcast, read this debate on the problem of pain between n.t. wright and bart ehrman. ehrman went down a similar road to pearson out of orthodoxy and wright navigates a path that, i think, avoid some of the major pitfalls of pearson's various views. online debates are chronically bad, but this one is good - both substantive and hard hitting. also, i wrote something on this issue a few years ago that included some good thoughts by other people]

the big cactus speaks

2009-03-02T11:13:00.009-05:00

over the weekend shaq put up 45 on the toronto raptors. afterwards the raptor's center chris bosh, who is a pretty good ball player, complained that shaq was cheating, spending too much time camped out in the lane.

the big aristotle's response to bosh is amazing:

“I heard what Chris Bosh said, and that’s strong words coming from the RuPaul of big men,” O’Neal said.

the diesel goes on:

“I’m going to do the same thing (in their next meeting) I did before - make him quit. Make ‘em quit and complain. It’s what I do.”

dig it.

autism in perspective

2009-02-26T22:04:00.005-05:00

you need to read this brief essay by jim sinclair, an autistic man, that addresses how autism relates to an individual and in turn how neurotypicals can relate to the autistic. to sinclair, autism is woven into his being and isn't something that should be spoken of or acted upon as if it were some additional (and debilitating) part of who he is (no "person first" language here).

he speaks directly to parents of autistic children who lament that they did not have a normal child, telling them, in short, to get over it. they need to grieve, seek support from others, and accept and love their child for who he or she is, autism and all.

the essay provides a unique perspective and is a particularly strong counter to those who think of autism in terms of something to be cured or prevented (for example autism speaks).

it's all part of one of the fundamental questions in any discussion of autism: is autism a good thing or a bad thing?

to put it differently: is autism a part of the fall, something that isn't part of the way things are meant to be, a blight on shalom? is there something truly right in the desire to wish for autism to not exist, to expect there will be no autism in the new jerusalem?

or is it the case, as i suspect, that the problem for most autistics is not the autism in and of itself, but rather 1) how autism is perceived as an undesirable flaw that ought to be eradicated and 2) society is ill-prepared, on many many levels, to deal with the unique, and sometimes very challenging, needs of autistic people?

a good example of the "exogenic" causes comes from my friend anna, who was set up through an organization in north carolina to work with a four year old girl who is autistic. anna's (brief) relationship with the girl's mother has dissolved into non-existence and anna no longer works with them, in good part because the mother has a mentality which seeks to erase all traces of her daughter's autism from their family's world. the word "autism" is not used in their home. the girl's older sister has not been told that her sister is autistic. anna wasn't even allowed to bring any of the paperwork over that she needed signed in order to get paid.

basically the mother is in denial. and eventually there will be a day of reckoning about this situation, probably when the girl is in about third grade and doesn't have any regular third grade friendships and other kids are making fun of her for being weird. you don't treat an autistic four year old like a "normal" child because 1) "normal" doesn't exist and 2) she is, in fact, different and has certain needs that must be addressed if she is going to reach her full potential.

those who see autism as part of the fall (though they might not put it that way) don't seem to laugh very often and to struggle to see the good in autism. they're missing out, i think, because they aren't seeing autism for what it can be. there is so much to love and enjoy, so many amazing moments, so many strides forwards, so much to laugh about.

with the right supports, which go hand in hand with telling a truthful story about what autism is, so much good can be had and so much glory reflected.

i'm certainly not trying to paint a rosy picture of autism as if it is god's undiscovered gift to the world. i'm quite aware of the challenges it presents - i got absolutely worn out today by thirty minutes with a five year at my school. and i've seen enough challenging behaviors within the highly structured environment of my school to cringe to imagine what goes on elsewhere.

i believe pretty strongly that autistic people will be present with their autistic-ness at the lord's table when we gather together in the new heavens and earth. we will all love one another perfectly: we will know what perfect loves means and we will know how to embody it. we need to make place in our minds and our hearts for autistic people as members of the kingdom of god, a kingdom that is being brought into this world now.

the manor house

2009-02-21T09:03:00.002-05:00

this is where i live. i've been meaning to put these up for awhile, but i finally got a computer that will let me do photo stuff in less than an eternity.

this is who i live with:

this is a traditional lunch - every sunday, bring some food, we've got the place:

from the front of the bulletin this morning

2009-02-08T20:26:00.002-05:00

"In other words, by Christ's death it is not only that the devil is deposed and the power of death overcome, but also that sin is vanquished. Jesus came to rob sin of its tyranny and its suffocating stranglehold on man. Obviously, sin is still at large in the world, just as death and the devil are still active, but all three have been robbed of their former hold on man. In Christ we are free from their enslaving power."

- raymond brown

head carolina, tails california

2009-02-05T22:09:00.006-05:00

the other night we had a game night at our house, at the end of which a discussion arose as to what is the best state in america.

it's hard to say what exactly qualifies a state to be "the best state" since 1) that's not something you can actually know and 2) your rankings could fall along the lines of either best place to visit or best place to live. or best place to avoid income tax. or best place for cat people.

we didn't spend much time developing a precise rubric. instead we got out the whiteboard and ranked all fifty of 'em, just pounding it out over the course of an hour, discussing, lamenting, yelling for and against every part of america. i won't give you all fifty here, but the top five ended up like this:

1. north carolina (this was a reasonable group of people)
2. california
3. colorado
4. virginia
5. hawaii

basically if you were a southern state, you did good. south carolina (6), tennessee (7), texas (8), georgia (15), alabama (16), and kentucky (19) also made the top twenty.

the bottom five turned out as such:

50. new jersey
49. nevada
48. ohio
47. north dakota
46. indiana

perhaps surprisingly, ohio drew major hate from our committee. it was more or less unanimous that ohio is a terrible place and should be driven around at all costs.

the midwest struggled, with only michigan (24) cracking the top twenty-five. but that's what the midwest is all about: the struggle.

we're going to get back together to rank cities. new york, new york is my number one, always and forever.

i love america.

some good words from the avett brothers

2009-01-30T17:25:00.011-05:00

i really like the avett brothers. besides having a sound i enjoy and being from north carolina, to their credit they've made it onto the pathetically small list of artists i listen to in good part for their lyrics. others include pedro the lion and mo leverett. actually that might be the whole list, despite all my bob dylan and nick drake albums.

i suppose that my early adventures in classic rock provided a little too much volume and too little lyrical depth or even the ability to comprehend the words. and being a big fan of phish, who sing non-sense, and sigur ros, who sing in icelandic or a language they made up, didn't give me much of an opportunity to sharpen my ability to digest the words. my general ignorance of poetics doesn't help, nor does my inability to attend to one task for more than half as long as is truly required.

the avetts have a wonderfully strong moral vision, with an emphasis on family, place, and living with the choices of the past. there's something they get at, particularly clear in the gleams and emotionalism, that i want more of.

here is one of my favorite from the avetts, "the weight of lies." i think there's a lot of wisdom here, particularly in the chorus (the second verse here).

Disappear from your hometown
Go and find the people that you know
Show them all you good parts
Leave town when bad ones start to show
Go and wed a woman
A pretty girl that you’ve never met
Make sure she knows you love her well
But don’t make any other promises

The weight of lies will bring you down
And follow you to every town
Cause nothing happens here that doesn’t happen there
So when you run make sure you run
To something and not away from
Cause lies don’t need an aeroplane to chase you anywhere

I once heard the worse thing
A man could do is draw a hungry crowd
Tell everyone his name, pride, and confidence
But leaving out his doubt
I’m not sure I bought those words
When I was young I knew most everything
These words have never met so much to anyone
As they now mean to me

three by david brooks

2009-01-23T21:09:00.002-05:00

today at lunch i read david brooks' three latest columns. my readership of brooks and most everyone else who talks politics dropped off the earth as soon as the election ended. but with obama's inauguration we've returned to a phase where the happenings on the national stage feel purposeful, at least that's how it seems to me.

like many of us, brooks hopes that the arrival of our new president and the co-incidental economic down turn may be thrusting us in to a new phase, a place where things may not necessarily be better in the short-term, but where the individualism and excess of recent years are put behind us. furthermore the glass ceiling that the subtle yet certain form of the last forty years of racism in our american life has put over the lives of so many may have started to lift.

brooks suggests in his most recent piece that we'll be able to figure out pretty quickly whether or not obama is going to be something new or more of the same old. the economic stimulus plan as it currently exists is, in brooks' estimation, fat on spending and lean on short-term stimulus and effectiveness. if obama doesn't but the brakes on it, we'll have suddenly lost much of our reasons to think him different.

in his january 19th column, brooks explains that america may be moving into a post-individualistic era, one where community and authority are valued.

and in a very interesting column brooks explores the emerging paradigm shift away from classical economics towards a model of human action that recognizes the complexities and, often times, irrationalities of human decision making and behavior, even by those with the sharpest minds and the most to gain by acting in rational self interest (think of all the wall street types that look like morons right now). he also addressed this issue in this column. the implications are sweeping and worth pondering.

they've found kevin pittsnogle

2009-01-17T18:44:00.004-05:00

an encouraging answer to the question "where is kevin pittsnogle?" sounds like p-money and i caught just about the same visions with respect to our career aspirations: the bigs are still calling our names, there are concerns about our current playing weights, and we prefer to live like locals. but for now we're coaching and teaching the children.