Farewell 2014

The rain comes down in a gentle manner as we end our office year. Here are two pictures of my home away from home for the last 12 years, after a whirlwind straightening job by Shannon and Charlotte. I love our manufactured home office space.

I took an hour to help a friend prepare to advertise a 72 Mercedes for sale, its a sweet ride for some antique lover out there.

Saw the movie Unbroken last night. Good job of seeing the mercilessness of hatred and the power of endurance.

Laura has a good book she is reading, nowhere to go, and a great day to stay home. We will end our voluntary game of fasting from heat tomorrow and have a warmer time during this current cold spell. Over two months without using the AC or the heater....yeah us.Yeah lower electric bills.
Even Kitty got under the covers this morning, her ears are thin and cold.

Happy New Year!

Ending a great year

This old picture of the first walk after checking into the Point at Poipu is one of my favorites, as we go onto the resort property next door. Just catching Laura getting balanced on one foot, reading for a vacation week ahead, floods me with joy.

Hoping to spend time thanking God and thinking about what lies ahead in 2015. Our Ruby Anniversary in a few weeks, 40 years, and mostly good ones, with a few periods of sadness, loss and hurt from our circumstances. We are no different than everyone in that reality, and compared to most of the world, we have had far more blessing than pain, and the pain served its good purpose.

I want to continue growing in understanding, enjoying the health and flexibility I have, cherished the joys and challenges ahead.

Last Golf Round of the Year

Its pretty special to play golf all year round, and even though it took till ten for the frost to melt we were comfortable the whole round.

Open House

Is this an Elf? Saw it at a party and thought it was cute.

A fine Sunday, ready for 2015, an open house this afternoon, will welcome all who come with peace and joy.

Christmas joys

Shannon was gifted a designer I phone cover with artwork from our son Brian. A company does this for artists and we think it is very cool.

She also is spending time with her Tucson friend Charlotte that has extended for many years and gives her opportunity to visit down there several times a year. Charlotte also loves to visit her grandmother his in Sun Lakes so they can hang out together.

We are in cleaning and hiding mode for our open house, cleaning is mostly done, but hiding all out electrical cords and comfort stuff that make our life work takes some time and ingenuity.

The Raices Group

In the NYC Subway system they have some areas of connection that have huge concourses. In the past decade they have allowed groups with permision to perform and sell their music.

One day I was captivate by the sound of a Peruvian pipe group with catchy background tapes. I rushed a short video and kept up with the family and later checked out their website and discovered they are a group that supports human rights around the world as well, and have performed widely in countries struggling with abusive governments.

Brian knew I enjoyed the wind instruments that were developed in Peru, and brought to the Indian culture in the north american continent as well. I known have two albums given to me as Christmas presents and I am enjoying them today.

Merry Christmas 2014

This is my family, three kids, two grands together for Xmas Eve dinner.

An elegant Christmas Gathering

Troy and Denise have shared their home with friends at an annual Christmas Gala. We love the lavish decorations and food and drink and music that fills the home. We feel so blessed to be brought into their celebration and joy each year.

A week without Fox News

Fox is across the street from Radio City Music Hall in Times Square. It is a tourist hotspot.

Dish Network and Fox news are having a money issue. I enjoy many programs on Fox and think that people who make Fox watching a personal attack are being silly. We all have shows we like because we agree with them and shows we like because they challenge us.

I miss the smart women who are OK with being attractive, its not there fault.

So I am sure this standoff will be ended, but free speech and variety are good for our culture.

Drama every day

This we my first summer ministry in Delray Beach Florida in 1973, at my Birthday party in July, I am still warmed by how quickly church folks allowed me into their homes and lives. This family treated me like their family that brief summer so long ago.

We had a needy person in church and we helped her yesterday. No real time and possibility to test if she had a real or manufactured need. We gave her money to do what she needed, believing she came and asked in good faith. I am grateful to those who came to her aid with the church.

Today I got involved in another family dynamic involving money. It just reminds me how dependent we are on buying things to survive. We need shelter, we need food, we need clothing, we need the tools to survive and some money to enjoy things as well.

It would be nice if everyone had all they need without working for it. It is the failed impetus behind communism and socialism. Take from those who have and give to those who need. It never really works the way it should, and it has bankrupted more nations than we can name.

Neither has pure Ayn Rand selfishness worked very well. I like the word I heard from George Bush, compassionate capitalism. If we can provide help to those truly needy and dependent and also provide rewards to the truly hard working that they can keep and use to build a more prosperous world, lets do it.

The middle class where I was raised has truly been shrinking in the past decades, an I do not know what to do about it. The lack of preparation for retirement of my own baby boomers could create a retirement crisis unlike any we have ever seen. There is drama every day in this financially unstable time we are going through.

Short Day

Bushwick, Brooklyn, where Brian lives. Sad for the NYPD and our country.

The Winter Solstice, you can set your clock by natures consistency. Enjoy your Christmas week.

A few good habits

As the years pass the happy Christmas times flood back with the old photos I so patiently digitized over the years.

I have been exercising weekly at the Tumbleweed Rec Center for almost five years, Laura for four. Most Saturdays we begin the day with an hour of stretching, lifting, and moving. It has been very beneficial for our sense of wellness, our muscle tone, and even though I have heart disease, it is not due to the muscle part of the heart, which is strong.

We all make our habits and they make us, and these Saturday dates are sweet. And I have a very healthy wife who needs her energy and flexibility to handle a job like elementary teaching.

Happy time ahead this week with Brian visiting, and 70 degree weather.

P.S. an old friend from college Skipper, got a lung transplant yesterday after a long wait on the list. Pray for a good outcome and restored health, he and his wife have a high school age son that came along later than most.

Old Movies

A Coval Family Cardboard Chimney 50 years ago.

Ghostbusters is 30 years old and still funny. Enjoying a quiet day reading and resting and thinking good thoughts.

Too much out of control type news

Christmas long ago at Aunt Esther and Uncle Al's in Indianapolis.

Some weeks the headlines just kind of overwhelm me. The Pakistan inhumanity, the Cuba reversal, the Sony cyber attack. My head spins with the moment by moment fleshing out of our brokeness, violence, hatred, and pride. It's not that I am not engaged, but that I am overwhelmed.

I hate what war does to nations, I hate what communism did and does to Cuba, I hate smug bullies like North Korea's dictator, and I hate that somehow we are marching toward WWIII, God forbid.

Somehow I have to unplug the sad noise. I hear the bells on Christmas Day, but there is no peace on earth. I need to feel what I heard in a message on the cross this week that when God seems to have lost control, He is still controlling.

I need hope and joy, its personal, emotional, immediate. The images of the news need to get out of my spinning head.

Dream Launch

Wow, 25 years ago this month we moved from the gulf coast of Mississippi to the East Valley of Phoenix AZ. I wanted to leave stuffy tradition, stodgy old buildings, and mean spirited attitudes behind. At least that's how my mind felt it.

I don't want to reflect on anything heavy, but to share how odd is still is for me to have this much time invested in a location. Yesterday I ate lunch with friends near my first home purchase. So much change, growth, and struggle in the area. I know the whole town now, all 60 plus miles wide, but these are my familiar streets of my adopted home.

I am an Indiana, Kentucky, New York, Alabama, Mississippi transplant, but Arizona has been my home for longer than any other, and I still don't ride and rope or own Cowboy Boots.

Happy to say, I like my City. The raw hills, the ugly desert, uniqueness of each town within the larger area, the parks, the ponds and lakes, the downtown. Nothing happened like I dreamed yet we survived, grew, lived, loved, enjoyed it all.

Confusion is good???

We keep a pet red TRex down at the art museum. Do not get too close to the cage!

I keep hearing people I respect talking about Christians needing to embrace less absolutism and be more willing to question whether the formulations at the foundations of their faith are worthy of the weight we place on them.

It's akin to the whole foundation based upon sand analogy Jesus used.

Folks, we are in a 500 year cycle in history in which ideas that are hindering us or crippling us are being exposed and abandoned. It is painful but necessary process to question authority, even the boogey man fears planted in your brain by someone decades ago.

Confusion while you work through these things is good. Just keep listening and reasoning.

Angels with laser beams

The reason I see history with hope lies not in the sad acts of violence but in the small acts of light in a dark world. I have been struck in the story of the good news of great joy for all the people with the fact that very shortly after the birth Jesus they are sent to Egypt to protect the Child from Herod.

I was surmising a better short term scenario in which the Angels enter Bethlehem and subdue Herods troops with powerful lasar weapons and thus begin to uproot evil.

It just doesn't work that way. The way of peace and truth is much longer and much more costly than eye for eye and tooth for tooth.

Chess as a metaphor for soveriegnty

I suggest that the deeply serious declaration of God's soveriegnty in accomplishing his purposes in history stands over and against all the open and free moves of evil men, half hearted disciples, unexpected events.

This requires skill and knowledge and power that works above and beyond all the variables mentioned and more.

This may require long periods of time, and may not gaurantee you live during a happy time in history, but it does fill one with hope and joy.

Common Cold #2

The welcome sign to a true shopping madhouse.

I was in several crowds this week and picked up my second cold of the season Marginal breathing all night. Ugh!

Drug run to Algadones

Four guy trip to buy pharmacy goods and a bit of liquor across the border. Enjoy the drive and the laughter.

Old people have baggage!

We visited a coffee growing plantation on Hawaii one rare Sunday morning off a year ago....Don't judge me.

Having a discussion on a small group, and me and another reformed guy had an old wound scratched open by a newer believer. I ranted about it and he observed that someone must have really hurt me in the past about this issue.

He was right, but it was not just someone, or one time, it was many people at many times. It was the accumulation of a mindset that tried to gently enforce religious obligations on me. If you want to be part of this group, these are things we do and things we don't do that we are sure that make us more pleasing to God.

Was I wrong to take such a strong position on the freedom I feel when discussing religious practices like the old discussion about proper ways to keep the sabbath?

My problem is that there is such a fine line between suggesting that God would like me to set aside the day in a special way, to insure I was resting properly, and being judged because you are not keeping Joe or Sallys scruples about Sabbath.

Then you add the huge issue of sabbath being an old covenant requirement and you wonder why people are trying to turn the Lord's day into another way to practice religious oneupmanship.

I think this type of activity code is damaging to grace and faith, not just neutral.

Sports on Sunday, Restaurants on Sunday, playing outside on Sunday. Its a treadmill that only spins faster and goes nowhere.

Preachers who sort of work on Sunday are supposed to sort of make Monday a sabbath.....what a holy crock of religious #(@)#&#^.

Live your life, be authentic, rest when your tired, have a weekend, which is an american kind of thing because some people do sadly work seven days a week to survive that crazy money demanding world.

Jesus did not come to help me be a better sabbath keeper. Do I sound wounded, your damn right I'm wounded and sorry I had to cuss to make the point.

The joy of being a theological malcontent

They call this mountain face in Zion National Park, chess board because of the horizontal and vertical striping.

We watched a magnificent video tonight on the bigness of the universe and the smallness of the intricate cellular structure of the human body and the power of a God who thought through all the wonderful nature of creation. And then the whole outcome of all of the magnificence of this creation is dependent on our agreement with the plan. It's an offer which remains null and void unless you allow it.

If the evil that brought our brokeness into the world is not defeated unless we can mend our brokeness by a supposed act of free will, which is supposed to depend on multitudes of concurring coincidences in our birth, influence, circumstances.

Makes me malcontent with the success/failure aspect of good news of great joy. I think He has more bases covered that we allow in american evangelicalism.

Painful lives

Living in a bit of paradise in the desert.

When I see all the racial disharmony in our country it saddens me greatly. I feel helpless to change anything, and yet thankful that I am not living in the midst of it.

I do not ever want to be near an angry protesting crowd of any race, creed or color. It brings out the worst in people. We have the right to peaceful assembly in this country but when it becomes violent no one wins anything.

I think some of my personal changes over the last decade have made me realize that the majority opinion of anything needs to be questioned a bit, and that folks need to be very independent and individualistic in many areas of tension in this world.

What can I say, I live in a gated community, in a segregated housing area, not by race, but by age. No young people allowed, no strangers walking and driving past my home.

I live on a cul de sac, my second one in a row, and people who pass my house either live here or made a mistake. Except for the security car that calls me when I leave my garage door open. Now that is a safe place to live.

I feel sorry for the heat that law enforcement is getting. I cannot imagine what our country would be life if they disappear or are crippled from using necessary force.

I thought we had moved further from the Selma Alabama days than we have.

Surprised by Joy

That's the name of C.S. Lewis spiritual biography. I have always liked what it intimates, that joy cannot be directly sought but indirectly recieved by contemplating some one or something outside your self.

Pearl Harbor Day

Beautiful Christmas music today, our annual Symphony Christmas Concert this afternoon, a good day.

Shannon is 15 years old

Our daughters oldest children is maturing. We love her and Ben. She and her Grandmother are shopping for new clothes at the mall, not my idea of fun, but theirs. I stop by the bargain store to get a new belt because I have run out of holes with my very slowly shrinking waistline.

Pentatonix is polyphonic

One evening in Hawaii last year my small Canon started producing psychodelic pics. I thought I had broken it but it was a silly setting on the camera that produces this kind of image.

The human voice singing, if you have the pipes, is something beautiful. The group Pentatonix, a very catchy name by the way is making a splash with their Christmas CD this year. I love it when people use their voices for percussion and background. We bought it and are enjoying it.

I came across the word polyphonic this week reading a great book. The point the author is making is that if we are unbiased and honest, that the scripture has many voices that create tension and may yet harmonize the varied needs of its audience. We cannot be so dogmatic that we are sure of only one interpretation when we find verses that seem to affirm a wider and more hopeful stance on many things.

Some need mercy, some need rebuke, some need forgiveness. The scripture speaks in many voices that should make us less dogmatic but more hopeful that the world and the universe will shake out in the shape of a God who is love and mercy.

Educated Clergy-the last of a dying breed

A diorama of a one room school house, the original american institution, in which scholars would be encouraged by the teacher to take a subject they were interested in and run past the others to learn more.

I read a post about a guy enjoying a local church bible study until the pastor decided to attend and ruins it by taking over.

We have many large churches here in the valley that boast that their pastor was a business man before called to preach and never needed to waste his time in seminary.

I joke quite a bit about my nine years of higher education that prepared me to preach, but how my barber knows more about the bible than I do, at least in his own opinion.

When you use the word scholarly in most modern discussions, you are booed out of the room.

We live in a world of instant information, and instant opinion, and infinite theological variety. I have been pondering an article I read that said if C.S. Lewis had been speaking and writing today he would have been thrown under the bus like many of today's innovative thinkers and writers. He had some unorthodox views of when Adam and Eve came along, was very inclusive of those who were in non Christian religions but had their hearts in the right place, and several other interesting thoughts.

I think what is happening with this explosion of information and opinion is good, but in many circles we get uneasy about the broadness of the discussion and as conservative folks we dig in and fight and split and are fearful.

Scholars of any stripe have spent time to look deeply, at the past, present, and future of thoughts, movements, historical writings, background languages, and thus many times their perspectives are unnerving to the person convinced that if he picks up the bible it will lead him directly to the right and only answer, no matter what his own bias, or innocence, or ignorance have left him unprepared to understand.

Thus in many, and sometimes most cases, the most popular views of any instant culture might actually be the most thoughtless and ill conceived. Thus the education and discipline of an educated clergy.

Which, I fear, are being thrown under the bus in popular evangelical culture. Which may by why highly educated people today are beginning to see the movement which led me to school and seminary as the haven for thoughtless people.

If considering myself anything of a scholar has any merit other than pride, it would be that I have been humble enough to know that I need the wisdom and foundation of deep reflection of men and women of every age and that I stand on the shoulders of those who spent their lifetimes in deep study of truth, and practice.

That being said, I might have a hard time encouraging a young God lover to take the hard road of scholarship in this climate. Yet, if they are hungry and searching, they won't listen, they will still take the road less traveled.

Faith Traditions are very personal....don't tread on them

My parents were Presbyterians...my sister joined a Methodist youth group and has been a happy Episcopalian all her adult life. I followed in my parents traditions for 20 years and became non denominational. The other day someone said my Calvinist tradition was in such error that all who follow it must beware of being eternally lost.

There are just too many traditions that developed post reformation for us to diss each others upbringing and faith roots.

December has arrived

Laura took this little pond with her iphone last year in Hawaii while I was looking at the ocean across the family park.

My Christmas spirit is high this year. Some years its not. No reason I can pinpoint. I think in recent years my study and thoughts on Trinitarian theology have restored a more ancient view of incarnation that cements the fact that God is not our problem. That God is for us not against us.

I am so weary of evangelical attitude that keep folks on the outside until they learn the magic words and the club handshakes.

Change is in the air, in the air we breathe. Christmas is good news for all the people.