My Gift

Barely 4 months ago, Yvonne was to the point of not being able get in and out of bed by herself, had trouble dressing herself, couldn’t raise her hands above her shoulders, couldn’t lift anything of any weight. The cancer in her bones hurt nearly constantly; sneezing or coughing caused excruciating pain. She was deteriorating so rapidly that I knew she would be gone by the end of the year.

Today is our 29^th anniversary, the one I was sure we’d never have. Yvonne has her strength back. Her mobility is back to normal. And though considerable cancer remains, the pain is gone. Completely. And her energy level… as my friend Marc Miller says, “Holy Schnickes!”; she has far more energy than I do.

She is my Christmas gift. This anniversary is my gift. What more could I possibly ask for?

Happy Anniversity!

Every 17^th of December Yvonne and I look at each other and say “What in the world were we thinking, getting married in the middle of the Christmas season?” At the time, Christmas seemed like a wonderfully magical time to get married; each year afterward, however, Christmas has been a lousy time to try to celebrate an anniversary.

Last year we went to a very nice restaurant, and over the course of the evening’s chit-chat with the waitress it came out that we were celebrating our anniversary. At the end of the dinner she brought the check, and at the top had written “Happy Anniversary” – or so I thought at first glance, but when I looked again I realized she had misspelled anniversary and wished us a “Happy Anniversity”, with a big smiley face.

Even while we laughed about it we acknowledged that, in truth, there was a lot of adversity mixed in with the anniversary. Marriage and child rearing are not for the timid or faint of heart, and there’s a lot of wear and tear involved in making a relationship work long term. There were a few years when marriage was a hard slog, and a couple when we wondered whether it was worth the effort.

But 29 years later I can still say, as I’ve said before, that while I’ve never understood what lapse of judgement caused her to fall in love with me (see photo, above), it was the best thing that ever happened to me and I’ve been grateful for it ever since.

Happy Anniversity, indeed :)

Family story time...

Emotionally speaking, she was already pretty close to the edge even before she had been told to clean her room. She had been made to turn off the tv, take a bath, and now, contrary to every 5-year-old instinct, we had inflicted upon her the trauma of putting her toys away before going to bed.

It’s a brutal process, cleaning one’s room. The first step is to sit for several minutes in the middle of what looks like a news clip of a natural disaster, wallowing in the overwhelming enormity of the task.

Next, it’s time to complain loudly that there is too much to put away and if she doesn’t get help she won’t be done before her senior prom. This is usually followed by the parent’s terse rebuttal that it wasn’t too much to get out so it isn’t too much to put away. This, of course, is the catalyst to complete emotional collapse on the part of the 5-year-old. Sometimes the parent, too.

It was along somewhere in this part of the process that she spotted the spider. I knew something was up because suddenly there was an edge of hysteria to her crying. When I entered her room she was backed into a corner, staring at the opposite side of the room.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Aaaaaaaaaaa sp- sp- sp- aaaahhhhhhhh.”
“What?”
“Sp- sp- sp aaaahhhh!”
“Honey! Calm down. I can’t understand you.”
“Sp- Spiiiiiderrrr!”
“Where? Over here?” I had crossed to the general area she was screaming at and sure enough, under the wall heater was what had once been a fairly large spider, but had obviously long since met its maker.

“I’ll get rid of it, but it’s okay, it’s dead.” I tried to ease her fears.
“But it mooo - oo - ooved,” she sobbed.
“That’s because it jiggled on the web,” I pointed out.
“But how come it moo - oo - ved?”

I could see she was not going to be pacified, so I removed the offending carcass and vacuumed the webs. But we had lost all momentum toward room cleaning and I could tell that we would never get it moving again. Sensing that - for now at least - mercy was greater than judgment, I sent her to get a drink of water and cleaned her room for her.

Autumn Photo Op

Updates on Yvonne

Yvonne has been spending hours each day answering emails from family and friends, so I set up a blog for her to post all her updates to. That way people can ask questions in their comments and everyone else can see them and the answers and hopefully she won't have to repeat everything over and over. You can find her updates here.

You are what you eat

Bill Cosby recently wrote a book titled “I Am What I Ate...and I'm Frightened!!!” in which he describes his horror of having discovered what the food he ate all his life had done to him. Medical research in recent years is waking us up to the fact that what we put into our bodies affects how these bodies function. When my wife was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002 she began researching nutrition and as a result our household diet transformed literally overnight: No processed foods; few, if any cooked foods; no meat and no dairy. Not only did we become vegans overnight, we were raw vegans – as extreme a diet as I’ve ever seen. ("Vegan" in diet only – not ethical persuasion. There’s the time I went into a vegan restaurant wearing my black leather jacket…)

Although it didn’t cure Yvonne’s cancer, within a few months my cholesterol level had dropped from the danger zone to low normal, my blood pressure was back to normal, I lost 25 pounds (back to my young-man weight), and experienced my first allergy-free spring in 30 years. Clearly, what I was putting into my body made a difference.

I began to suspect that this principle also applied mentally and spiritually when I walked into our family room one evening where the kids were watching a sitcom - Friends or Will & Grace, can’t remember which – and saw them blithely absorbing language, images, ideas and morals from a completely godless world view. As I listened to the dialog I had this mental image of the television as a huge sewer pipe, pouring filth into my home. And the more I started paying attention to what was on television, like Bill Cosby, I became frightened.

Even then it wasn’t until recently that I had a blinding glimpse of the obvious, when I read Jesus’ words “I am the bread of Life” and really made the connection: Jesus is saying that He is the food that gives my spirit the nutrition I need for true life. In contrast, so much of what I read, watch or otherwise sit and soak up is mental and spiritual junk food – or worse, poison to my spirit.

I’ve started taking inventory, not just of the quality of things I feed my mind but also the quantity, comparing those things to the amount of time I spend in the Bible, in the works of other Christians, and time spent praying. It’s no longer a mystery as to why I feel spiritually stunted. If genuine Christianity truly consists of relationship with God – and I do believe it does – then it’s no wonder any more why I feel such a stranger to God since it’s obvious (I would have thought) that you can’t have a relationship with someone you never spend time with.

I’ve begun making changes in my spiritual "diet" and it is making a difference. And I can’t help but wonder what would happen if all of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus stopped feeding from the same menu as the rest of the world and ate only the Bread of Life; maybe then we really could be, as Paul said, “blameless, sincere and wholesome, living in a warped and diseased world, and shining there like lights in a dark place”.

“Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”
Phil. 4:8

We now return you to your regularly scheduled life…

Three weeks ago my wife gathered all our extended family together and gave us the news that the pain she had been feeling was in fact caused by her breast cancer having returned and metastasized throughout her upper body. The doctors resist giving a prognosis because they can’t say with any certainty how any individual’s body will respond to the treatments. Maybe years, maybe months.

It’s one of many cruel ironies that the specter of death often hovers closest to those who are most full of life. Yvonne is one of those rare individuals who makes everything all right just by walking into a room – or a life, as she did mine. (I’ve always said that I’ve never understood what lapse of judgment on her part caused her to fall in love with me, but it’s the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me and I’ve been grateful for it ever since.) If there were any justice in the world, cancer would only happen to grumpy, crotchety, negative people like me.

Yes, it has thrown my faith a curve ball. How can you possibly reconcile something like this with a God who is, as James Moffat translates, the “Divine Yes”? How does this square with my belief that God created us to be, and desires us to be whole people, physically and emotionally as well as spiritually? I don’t know. Do I still believe in God’s goodness? Yes. Do I believe this is a sign of God’s displeasure? No. Do I believe this happened for a reason, that God allowed it or caused it? I don’t know; I tend to think these things just happen, like being caught in a rain storm without an umbrella. Do I have hope? Sometimes, though more often I’m afraid. Still, I believe that all of life - from cradle to grave - is sacred and held in God’s hands. Should it come to that end, though, I also believe that the end of life in this realm of time and space is not utter finality but simply the doorway into the presence of the Eternal.

But it hasn’t come to that. As Yvonne herself keeps reminding us, she’s not dead yet. While there’s life there’s hope, and a battle to be fought, and battles are only won if those who are fighting them believe they can be won; the surest way to lose the battle is to believe it is already lost. We will be grateful for each day we have to live and fight together.

The fullness thereof...

July was an incredibly full month (attested to by the span between posts). On top of the normal 4th of July family get togethers and Newberg’s Old Fashioned Festival – itself an occasion for family get-togethers – this July I hosted Churchbass.org’s annual Bassapalooza at our church, Newberg Friend’s Church. Approximately 25 bassists who are either part of church worship teams or otherwise involved in Christian-oriented musical ministries, gathered on the hottest weekend of the year to worship, fellowship, play with each others’ toys, commiserate, and generally generate as much low-frequency noise as possible – which we did. During the “All Bass Orchestra Jam” I went into the church sanctuary directly above our gathering, and could feel the floor vibrating under my feet. A successful weekend by all counts.


It was very cool that we had people from all parts of the country in attendance, but the highlight for many there was getting to meet Xeno, our Greek Churchbass pastor, for the first time. Yvonne and I had the pleasure of meeting Xeno and his beautiful wife Anna in Greece in 2003, but the others in attendance had only known him through his pastoral postings on Churchbass.org. Xeno got to hang around and spend an extra day with my family and me, blessing us yet again with his grace, humor, wisdom, and wonderful insights into walking with God.


The weekend after Bassapalooza ended, Old Fashioned Festival began, and this year featured local musicians more than they have in the past and I played three times over the weekend with two different groups, Nate Macy and the QLO and Lori Willcuts.

A few days later my oldest and dearest friend (with whom I share vices: he introduced me to latakia, I introduced him to scotch) was in town for a few hours so we were able to share a taste of Dufftown's finest and get caught up again.


And somewhere in there, my baby girl packed up and went to spend a year at Faith Academy in Manila, just when I was looking forward to having some time to spend with her. With number 2 leaving for college and now number 3 out of the country, it's empty nest time. Wow, it's quiet...

I am the Light of the world

This isn’t at all the kind of thing I anticipated writing about here, but as someone once said, life is what happens when you’re making other plans.

A year ago February my mother passed away from a brain tumor, from diagnosis to death in 4 months. Then in October my father-in-law, the most wonderful and godly of men, died suddenly from a burst aneurysm. As hard as those were to go through, two weeks ago I experienced what is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done - sitting for two days with a close relative who was suicidal. I have never witnessed such despair. I have never seen such deep emotional pain and anguish. I have never before seen someone with absolutely no hope or expectation of anything good, nothing to look forward to but more emotional and physical pain. In short, I have never, ever, seen such darkness.

In these two weeks, however, I have seen light begin to break into the darkness in small, tentative but tangible ways, and I have come to believe that when Jesus said he was the Light of the World he meant it literally. When He is truly present in our lives there is an inner light that manifests itself as peace, hope, love, forgiveness. When those things are driven from our lives by our own actions or the actions of others, the result is a darkness that is as tangible as it is terrible.


Joh 1:4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men;
Joh 12:46 I have come as a Light to the world, that everyone who believes into Me may not remain in the darkness.
1Jo 1:5 And this is the message which we have heard from Him, and we proclaim to you: God is light, and no darkness is in Him, none!
(Literal Translation of the Holy Bible)

Sir, we wish to see Jesus.

A few weeks ago Out of Ur, Leadership Magazine’s weblog, posted an entry about an article written by Hemant Mehta, otherwise known as the eBay Atheist. In the article Mehta describes his fascination with Christian Media, and concludes with the following summary:

Christianity works best for non-believers when we hear stories that sound like something we would see or do. Joel [Osteen] tells me to not be dishonest by telling a story from his college days (Hey, I went to college, too!) and then supports his message with a story from the Bible. Dobson tells me I shouldn’t be dishonest because Proverbs 6:16-19 says so (as he does in the April issue of Charisma). Period. Who would I be more inclined to listen to?

What Mehta describes are two common ways that Christians present their faith:
- The way of Pragmatism: The attempt to validate Christianity by demonstrating that following Christian principles helps avoid problems, while not following Christian principles will cause problems. While personal experience is a great way to share your faith, this particular anecdote leaves me missing something.
- The way of Legalism: Instituting and following the rules for the sake of the rules, and obligating others to follow them or suffer the consequences. But again, something is missing…

Granted, I only have Mehta’s description to go on, but what appears to be missing in these two accounts is any mention of the person of Jesus.

And therein lies what I believe is a third and better way, a way that puts Jesus front and center, the way of Love: To love people with Christ’s love in such a way that people see Him through us and fall in love with Him. After all, comprehending how much God loves us compels us to love Him in return. We want to please Him; we want to be like Him. We want others to know and love Him. We want Him to be honored, and respected.

The world does not need more principles to live by, nor does it need more rules to keep. The world is desperately in need of the healing and transforming love that comes only in the person of Jesus Himself, and that only happens when we, His body, His church, act out His love to people around us.

Having said this, however, I confess that I don’t do this. I’m afraid that far too often it isn’t Jesus that people see in me. I’m fully aware that I fall terribly short of having the qualities that drew people to Jesus, and too often I’m more likely to be taken for a pharisee.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love.

For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. (2Co 4:5)

Four things...

Well, I got tagged by Mauri so I'm it; here goes:

Four jobs I’ve had:
1. Music store sales guy
2. Belt puller, Weyerhauser Lumber Co.
3. Photographer
4. Camera store sales guy

Four movies I could watch over & over:
1. The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming…
2. Lord of the Rings
3. Princess Bride
4. Any Marx Brothers movie

Four books I’ve read over and over:
1. Lord of the Rings
2. C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy
3. Brother Cadfael Mysteries
4. Any Patrick McManus

Four places I’ve lived:
1. Klamath Falls, Oregon
2. Manila, Philippines
3. Capernwray, England
4. Newberg

Four places I’ve vacationed:
1. Seoul, Korea
2. Colonial Williamsburg
3. Ireland
4. Greece

Four TV shows I love(d):
1. M*A*S*H
2. WKRP in Cincinatti
3. Dick Van Dyke
4. Extreme Makeover, Home Addition

Four favorite dishes:
1. BBQ chicken, cooked (literally) on the streets of Manila
2. #47 at the Golden Leaf Thai restaurant (Steamed Brocolli in Peanut Sauce)
3. Crème Brule in the Ramada Inn restaurant in Fargo, ND
4. Leche Flan

Four websites I visit daily:
1. Victor Davis Hanson
2. Stupid Videos
3. Christian Headlines
4. Talkbass.com

Four places I’d rather be right now:
1. Santorini
2. Rhodes
3. Cascade Head, Oregon coast
4. Bagby Hot Springs

Four things that make me warmly happy:
1. Being in the wilderness, away from any visible signs of civilization
2. Last movement of Beethovens 9th Symphony
3. Hocus Pocus by Focus
4. Having all my kids together, listening to them laughing and telling stories

Tag, You're it:
Nate Macy - because he's about the only other blogger I know who hasn't been tagged, yet. And if he's irritated by this, as I suspect he will be, he can blame his uncle Mauri :)

Spare me a smile?

Within a few weeks of having started a new job in downtown Portland I had learned, while walking around the downtown area, to avoid making eye contact with all the people asking for spare change.

One morning, as I crossed a street, I could see a young man sitting on a store window ledge at the other end of the block I was approaching, ratty backpack & duffle bag beside him on the sidewalk, palm held out to the crowds of stone-faced business people on their way to work. As I got closer I could hear him saying over and over, “Spare some change for some food?”

As he repeated his request I could see the tension on his face and hear the rising exasperation in his voice as more and more people ignored him and walked on by. I was just walking past him when he stood and shouted “Somebody spare me a smile so I can feel human? S***!” He snatched his bags off the sidewalk and stalked angrily away.

I wish I could say that I stopped, talked, helped, made a difference… The fact is that I was stunned by the truth I had just heard, and kept on walking. His words haunted me; by ignoring the homeless, the transients, the mentally handicapped, the down-and-outers, was I denying them their true value as people created in God’s image? Was I truly guilty of treating “the least of these” with such disdain and arrogance?

That was 10 years ago. I’ve thought about that young man so many times, and I’ve tried to change the way I treat those who – especially in the downtown business core with its sidewalks full of busy and important professionals – are on the outside of “respectable” society.

I’ve also thought a lot about what a smile can convey – Acceptance, worth, inclusiveness, belonging – and realized that this is what God has done for me, for all of us. While I was a down-and-outer, God smiled at me, and gave me a sense of value and worth, belonging and acceptance (Rom. 5:8). Jesus, in the incarnation, is God’s smile that restores our humanity.

Happy Easter!

“The LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace."
Numbers 6:25,26

“Unless a grain of wheat…”

In church last Sunday prayer was requested and offered for the freedom and safety of the Afghan man who had been arrested under threat of death for converting from Islam to Christianity. As we were praying, though, I found myself wondering if we were praying for the right thing.

Was it only two weeks ago that we read the words of Jesus “Truly, Truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal”?

In the kingdom of the world death is the worst that can happen: The end of everything, the horror of utter finality, nothingness itself. In the kingdom of God, however, death - as someone described it - is nothing more than changing out of dirty, ill-fitting rags into clean, new, tailor-made clothes. In the kingdom of God, as Paul said, to die is gain.

Here in our little town just a few weeks ago the movie “The End of the Spear” played in the local theatre, the story of the five men who were killed while attempting to take the good news of Jesus’ love to a violent tribe in Ecuador. This story illustrates the truth of Jesus’ words as it tells how those five seeds resulted in incredible fruit that is still being borne 50 years later.

I cannot imagine what Abdul Rahman is going through. As I pray for him I also pray that I never experience anything like it. But here is a man whom the whole world is suddenly aware of, and is watching to see how the Afghan government and Muslim authorities act. What if he were a seed that God wanted to plant? How then, should we pray? Perhaps as Jesus did himself in that same passage: “Father, glorify Your name”.

Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?

In honor (sort of) of March/Ireland/St. Patrick's Day...

There once was a man from McShean

Whose main disposition was mean.

If you dare cross his path

You would suffer his wrath

For with you he will wipe McShean clean!

... the only limerick I've ever written. And no, I don't know what put it in my head. I'm sure there's some Freudian explanation...

Trust - lesson 2

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”

In 2002, my wife of 25 years was diagnosed with breast cancer. Only those who have suddenly been brought face to face with imminent death truly understand the massive upheaval this causes in your life.

We talked about the treatments she would face and the trauma they would inflict on her and our family’s lives. We talked about the future, for her, me and our kids, from the aspects both of surviving and of not. She joked a lot. I tried, but just couldn’t, quite.

Mentally and emotionally I began disengaging. I began thinking about and focusing on a future without her. She teased me about the line of women that would be waiting for me outside her funeral, and that seed germinated to become fantasies that I indulged in to provide relief from the fear and anxiety.

I don’t remember when or where, but God confronted me in a very clear mental picture – a vision, if you will. I saw Jesus, with his arms around Yvonne, walking through a dark valley. Jesus looked at me and I knew he was telling me that if I wanted to walk with him, it was to be through that valley of the shadow of death. He made no promise to me that Yvonne would recover, yet in His presence there could be no escapist fantasies. Being with Jesus during that time meant walking with Yvonne through the valley, completely vulnerable to pain, fear, and loss, but also knowing with certainty that her life was in His hands.

Gratefully, five years later, after diet changes, chemotherapy, and mastectomy,Yvonne is free from cancer, though there’s no certainty that it will not come back.

We (especially we American Christians) tend to think that the sign of God’s favor on our lives is that everything is going well, that we don’t have problems. No…

God shows his favor by walking through the difficult times with us, and bearing the burden of the pain, the uncertainty, and the fear.

Trust - lesson 1

Miriam, my oldest, was born in Manila – assembled in the Philippines from American components was the title of the prayer letter we sent out. The photograph of me holding her says everything that could be said about how I felt. She was definitely the best thing that had ever happened to me (besides her mother)!

Before she was a year old, she contracted Dengue fever. In 3rd world countries, death from this virus is very common and I was terrified. My charming, happy, active baby lay in her crib too weak to move or even cry. The first night was agonizing; the second night was overwhelming, and in the dark I fell on my face on the floor beside her crib and began praying for her. I lay on the floor for two hours, crying and pleading.

Suddenly, as if a cleansing water had been poured over me, I felt peace. And I knew. Though I didn’t hear any words, God spoke to me, directly to my heart and mind. I suddenly knew that Miriam belonged to God, that she was in a very literal way being held in His hands. I also knew very clearly that this was not a promise that Miriam would recover, only that she belonged to God. All the fear and worry was gone, and even though I didn’t know if Miriam would survive the night I went to bed and slept as peacefully as I ever have. The next day she began improving.

Motivation

I'm hoping that maybe committing to a blog will motivate me to finally pull some thoughts together that have been bouncing around in my head forever, and maybe also to get out and take a few photographs again. I don't seem to feel up to doing anything creative unless I know there's going to be an audience.

As I thought about doing this, in my mind my audience is always my daughters: #1 is out of the nest and making one of her own; #2 is on the edge, getting ready to take the plunge; and #3 is looking forward to a little more room in the nest before she's ready to leave. So dad is panicking, thinking of all the missed opportunities, and hoping that the "cool" factor of high-technology will entice them to come and read some things that dad would have said if the subject had ever come up. Everyone else is welcome to eavesdrop.

Spring seems an appropriate time to start...