Winter mornings...

The late organ virtuoso, Virgil Fox, used to say that Shakespeare and Bach had "felt everything." The same could be said of the Psalmists: Every emotion experienced by humankind is expressed somewhere in the Psalms. Like countless others, the Psalms have been a tremendous help and comfort in every circumstance life has thrown at me.

But today I'm having a some trouble finding what I need. Can someone point me to a Psalm that talks about getting up on the wrong side of the bed?

"His heart is steadfast..."

When you have a close loved one (your wife, for example) who has what constitutes a major disease (such as cancer), bad news eventually becomes routine. Not that you get used to it, you just get used to the idea that it's going to keep happening. Kind of like getting beat up by the neighborhood bully; you never get used to it, but over time you come to expect it, and resign yourself to it.

So when Yvonne called late this afternoon to tell me she was in the emergency room with severe chest pains, my first response was to steel myself for the blow; it looked like the bully had caught us with our collective guard down again. Fortunately it wasn't any of the very serious things it might have been, but a case of Costochondritis - an inflammation of the cartilage that connects the ribs to the sternum. (Similar to Costcochondritis, the inflammation in my brain when I go to costco.) One Aleve and one hour (and several hundred dollars) later and she was feeling fine.

Maybe getting resigned to bad news is better than what my response used to be - instant panic - but it's not what I want it to be, either. In spite of the fear, pain, weariness, and anxiety that have marked this battle with cancer, God has proved his faithfulness and trustworthiness in ways that we would never have seen otherwise. So, after experiencing God's provision, grace, and comfort first hand over the last few years, you'd think that when bad news jumps out at me now that my first response would be to remember God's faithfulness, remind myself that He is still in control, and trust Him.

Right. Uh-huh.

Not yet, maybe, but this I aspire to:

"He (the righteous man) will have no fear of bad news; his heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord." Psalm 112:7

Environmentally overwhelmed, part 2

Just when you think help is on the way:

Low Energy Bulbs Worsen Rashes

Doubts cast on Hybrid Efficiency

Environmentally overwhelmed

In church yesterday, pastor Gregg - quite bravely - spoke about the environment. And, quite rightly, he focused our attention on the responsibility we Christians bear to be good stewards of God's gift to us. He concluded by suggesting ways we can reduce our harmful impact on the environment and pointing us to some web sites where we could learn more.

Somewhere towards the middle (as often happens but it's not Gregg's fault!) my thoughts started wandering and I found myself mentally back in Manila. I remembered the thousands upon thousands of buses and jeepneys in this city of (then) 11 million people, billowing impossibly enormous black clouds of diesel exhaust. On a normal day visibility might extend for a few blocks; other days it was a stretch to see across the road. But the air pollution was just the tip of the iceberg. The raw sewage, garbage and industrial waste pouring into the rivers and into Manila Bay made the Exxon Valdez look like a kool-aid spill in kindergarten. Sadly, Manila is not unusual; the same could be said of pretty much any city in the third world. In comparison to how massive the problem is outside our borders, it would seem that our most diligent efforts here in America could - at best - have little more than a negligible impact on the global problem.

Obviously, something needs to be done. But when daily life is a desperate struggle to put food in front of your family, the environment doesn't even show up on your radar. How, then, does the global community put pressure on the third world to address pollution without wiping out what little means of livelihood they have?

Then my thoughts wandered to the article titled "High-Tech trash" in January's National Geographic, about the West's electronic trash being exported around the world. Then I started thinking about everything I use each day: my car, paper, shampoo, razors, clothes, shoes, computers, cell phones, CD's, DVD's, TV's & stereos, musical instruments, electric & gas heating - it's not just the discards that damage the environment, it's the manufacturing process of all the trappings of modern life. I find it overwhelming, because the problem is far too big to be resolved by simply conserving and recycling: It's now a matter of changing our way of life, but we are hopelessly addicted to our technology, our comforts, our entertainments, our conveniences.

My fear is that no significant change will be made until the environment collapses and the change is forced upon us.

Blessed

Yvonne & I have never been much for the Christmas newsletter thing, where people write about all the wonderful things they did the past year and all the wonderful things their wonderful offspring accomplished that year – not that there’s anything wrong with that, you understand. We’re just lazy. While looking today at this photo, though, I thought that if I were to write one it would be very short and would go something like:

It’s been a hard year, but a good year. Life has been full of difficult things, but also full of wonderful things. In the end it all comes down to this: I have a beautiful wife & three beautiful daughters who all say – without any coercion on my part – that they love me. I have a wonderful son-in-law that I thoroughly enjoy and who makes me very proud, even if I can’t take any credit for the quality of his character.

And now we have this wonderful little man in our lives who we hope will soon officially be our first grandchild.

I figure this makes me the luckiest man in the world.

Has anybody seen my good friend …

Curtis & I met the first week of 7th grade, and by the end of the school year we were inseparable. For 5 ½ years the two of us were our own little clique, unaffected by the “jocks”, “hoods”, “hippies” or any of the other little subcultures of the time.

Together we explored nature, rock & roll, puberty, counter-cultures, and Christianity. We once tried experiments in developing ESP so we could communicate without talking, but gave it up because we already thought so much alike there didn’t seem to be any point. We made “bombs” together - very unsuccessful ones, fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your gender and age), played with knives, bows & arrows, swords - all the usual boy stuff. We joked and laughed together. Curtis introduced me to Bill Cosby on a sleepless night in the pitch black of a pup tent by reciting, verbatim, the entire “Bill Cosby is a very funny fellow” album. To this day, when I hear recordings of Cosby’s “Noah”, in my memory Curtis does it better.

Curtis lived and breathed motorcycles. He could tell me the make, model, and displacement of any approaching bike by the sound of the engine before it came into sight. After he got his license, I was attached to the rear of his BSA like a piece of velcro. If we weren’t in school, working, or sleeping, we were on that motorcycle going somewhere. The only exceptions occurred because of the occasional girl friend; not quite enough room on one motorcycle for 3 (or 4) people.

In the middle of our Junior year, Curtis’s family moved away. I was absolutely devastated, as if I’d been torn in half. I spiraled into a horrible depression and came within inches of committing suicide.

I saw Curtis only two or three times after he moved away, the last time in 1973; we eventually lost touch altogether. On a drive through central California many years ago, Yvonne & I stopped in his old home town and looked through the phone book, hoping at least to find a relative if not Curtis himself, but there weren't any Ellis's listed.

He has been on my mind a lot lately. Not sure why. But if you happen to see him, please tell him I miss him.

What goes around...

Our youngest, Megan, was born at home (an event that deserves a whole story), so we didn't have the usual data collected that a baby born in the hospital would, such as birth weight. When Meg was a couple days old, her aunts took her down to the local grocery store and weighed her on the meat scale. When I found out, I was horrified. It seemed so demeaning to take my little baby and put her on a meat scale! As I recall, I made a rather big deal of it.

So you can imagine my chagrin as, many years later, I'm reading my mom's entry under "Weight" in my own baby book: "Eight and one half pounds on the scale at Safeway"!