i spent a great deal of my formative years reading.  sometimes in the summer i would read for thirteen hours straight.  at the time that seemed normal to me, now it seems a little sad.  but the books did their work, perhaps too well.  it seems to me that i could not have survived without the finches or narnia, Yoknapatawpha or middle earth but heroes in books, characters in general, are different than “real life.”  what happens if aragorn just wants to stay home and build up the kingdom’s infrastructure or if atticus decides he just doesn’t feel like getting the cold shoulder at the country club?  how bout if the world does most severely adhere to faulkner after all?  the loutish brother dominates the family, abuse goes unchecked, and even i don’t have the heart to talk about miss emily.

i am inclined to negative hyperbole but i have to be honest.  there are enough kind and brave and funny and generous people out there who remind me that God loves me and is writing beautiful stories in my life and theirs.  if you have been a part of those beautiful stories, thank you.  you give me hope.

Malachi 3:16

I have finally started losing my bear suit.  Apparently judicial and pastoral apathy helps me to skip the carbs. 

We were waiting for sushi in a crowded, way-too-cool-for- me restaurant somewhere south of the Mason Dixon line.  J was watching basketball and I notice a distinguished gentlemen eating alone close to the very cool rectangular lounge chairs.  I figured i should talk to him for a few minutes?  maybe i wouldnt look too dangerous with the sleeping baby in my arms?

hard to cross lines so i devised a fleece–if baylor scored i would go talk

baylor scores

i have a nice talk with the gentleman, who is European and very interesting

j looks at me like i am crazy

on the way out j smiles wryly

you know baylor was winning, right?

oops!  i thought i was supporting the underdog

always support Xavier, right?  rules the house..

my mother is so brave about talking to strangers

something she taught me how to do well…

I once saw a picture of myself probably taken by my mother.  My father was pushing my little brother in a stroller and I was standing next to him in a fascinating blue fur coat.  I can tell you with no irony whatsoever I would wear that coat today if it were in my size.  I knew that when the picture was taken God was still a remote abstraction to me, it would still be several years before I knew I could draw close to Him, that He is Real.

I asked Him why it took so long?  He said, you believed in me then, you were safe then, it is just better to know that I love you, to feel it.

And for the first time I could see the little girl in the coat, in the gate, in the picture, in the camera’s lense and her mother’s gaze, the way God had that day–deeply loved.

Every picture He takes of us with His infinity eye is a picture of love.  If you don’t know anything else, know that.  If you don’t see anything else in the picture, see the God who loves you.

a friend of mine who is a librarian told me a story about her grandson telling his parents he needed to go to the library because he needed the sequel to old yeller.  a beautiful choice.

The dusk light is beautiful, fading.  The children are buring each other in the sand and a little girl is sprinkling the faces and hair of those being buried by dipping a bud-lite can in the surf.

At the end she runs  into the water and when she came out of the water she said, I got my whole self wet!

That is how I feel about baptism, about Jesus, about God’s boundless love.

I want to rush into it and get my whole self wet!

The other day I told a lovely young person a story that Nebeel had educated me about.  I can’t say I remember all the details, after all, some people accuse me of a poor memory–a fuzzy memory.

But Nebeel said that there is a frog somewhere who has no defenses. Completely helpless.  But this frog has a companion who protects it.  The companion has all the weaponry and the companion is a tarantua.

The big, creepy looking spider keeps the little frog safe.

I want to be like that.

I want to know if the spider is as weary as I am…

there are some typos in “control issues” I refuse to correct because it would verify my control issues.  Internal editor will have to live with the chaos and the fact that the typos expose my mental framework.

What I would describe as the shouting into a hurricane philosophy of blogging.  Which I also would like to rename webdairy, weglob or goggling just because a word as silly sounding as blogging should either be humiliated further aggrandized to new hights. Diarylogging, cyberjournaling, ooh–cloudpoetry…which reminds me of one of my favorite stories about the GU Writing Center.

We spent time one afternoon riffing on the self-referential and somewhat random narcissism of organized poetry (disorganized poetry got a pass)and then created a made up poet replete with an book entitled “The Perpetual Rainforest”

One day when I retire from blog therapy I will self-publish that book and it will be even more silly than what I usually write…

M. tells me something she learned from the Simpsons.  (This statement alone would disqualify me as a good parent in some circles:)

Whar word can you make out of the word ‘danger’ without losing or adding any letters?

J. found a number of interest answers but the Simpsons answer was ‘danger.’

‘danger’ out of  ‘garden.’  hmm….

For many people the story of Adam and Eve in the garden is essential mythology.  It is no more or less relevant than Zeus or Dagon; stories of dead gods.

But I consider it to be not only a foundational story about the human condition, but also a story connected to our collective family tree. 

I would like to distill a well worn story into something essential–two people who are given the opportunity to abide in the safety of a perfect world are derailed by the lie that they can possess control.

control/rebellion/authority/pride/power

seem to be thorns on the same pernicious weed

What happens if we say, watch out, there is danger in the garden?

danger in the snake and his pernicious lie

and in our own tenacious desire for control

who wants to be out of control?

I think that we all have to constantly admit that there is danger in the garden.  If we do this we face it head an try to minimize its damaging power.

Instead I see us building gates and fences and eighty foot walls around our gardens in the illusion that the walls make us safe

but in this we are wrong, our own hearts are traitors in the fortress

willing to sell out for control

this is sin, this is the white washed sepulchres that Jesus talked about

and the only antidote  is to always remember that you can spell danger in garden and garden in danger

but the only cure is the Cross.

Luke 9:23-27