ecclesia

Cuban jazz

2007-11-05T12:42:00.000-05:00

Luke in his new PJs:

Pen sitting up and having some Mommy & Daddy time:

Both outfits were purchased by the extended family, look wonderful and we are so grateful for them.

Luke is really, really turning into a bonafide boy, not just in terms of energy levels (the boy runs EVERYWHERE. RUNS), but also in that he is beginning to be really amused by bodily functions, the start of a lifelong source of amusement for us. We can make little jokes now about "peepee" and "caca" and he laughs uproariously. It's fun.

His fascination with the world continues as well. We scored a couple of great placemats at Wal-Mart over the weekend: the world and the USA. Also, last night he and I drew our own map of the world, complete with oceans, continents, rivers and mountains. Luke helped me with the oceans and placement of several key mountain ranges. Lukia is the largest country, obviously, and it split into North, South and West Lukia, the second of which borders the smaller country of Penelopia. To the west is Momia, and an island to the northwest is Dadia. Further south are miscellaneous nations like Granddadland, South Aunt Maralynia (near Uncle Joshia), Grandma Country and Nanaland, among others. We need to find a bigger sheet of poster board (all we had were two sheets of letter-size paper) so we can do it justice.

I've been asked to teach Sunday School again this coming Sunday. The rest of the church classes are going through the book of Matthew, and I could and will probably do so as well, in the spirit of maintaining continuity. There are, though, many other topics to explore, among them one I've been keen on lately: the problem of evil; or theodicy, the defense of God's goodness, omnipotence and sovereignty in light of the ubiquitous evil in the world. I'm not in the least doubting such things, only trying to work out an apologetic based on the Word and reason. It always seems to boil down to the mystery of how God can be sovereign over every event in the world, down to the smallest, causing everything to happen, but not be morally culpable for the evil in the world. It's an instance where Scripture clearly tells us both are true (God is sovereign yet not guilty of evil), and as the foundation of our worldview it has the final word. Still, the desire to know, to understand is very strong. But it will remain in its proper place.

A growing sign of my disconnection from popular culture (not like I was ever really connected in the first place, nor did I make an effort to be) is my recent discovery of the phenomenon called "ghost riding." Apparently this involves playing bass-heavy rap music in one's car at some ungodly volume, exiting the vehicle while it is still in "drive" and letting the car creep forward while one dances beside it or on the hood or roof or other suitable location near the car. One of the definitions for this in urbandictionary.com is, "Yet another way that natural selection is working its way into pop culture," and I would have to agree. For a send-up of this trend, see Rhett & Link's podcast.

We are now the proud owners of sufferndesign.com. I hope there's some way to have that domain and this one redirect to independent pages instead of to a common index.html file, otherwise I'll have to put together that site and go back to referring to this page as suffernfamily.com/blog/ instead of just the domain name. I'll get it sorted out. In the meantime, things are progressing nicely and I'm pleased.

Sunday Naps

2007-11-04T09:56:00.000-05:00

Hi. I'm Diane. I'm married to Matt. He talks about me and the children on here from time to time. I just figured that it had been so long since I'd posted (well, except those 17 drafts I started but could never complete--this one might be number 18) that I needed to reintroduce myself.

Right now, Matt and Luke are off to church until 11, and Penelope is snuggly wrapped in her Bjorn against my chest. My chin is resting on her baby-fuzz head. She has a little bit of a cold and is adamantly refusing to sleep in her crib, add in the time change and you have a recipe for naptime disaster. Isn't parenting in these early months/years a wash of troubleshooting?

I really like these times. Weekends can be really stressful, but, the mornings of Saturday and Sunday are blissful. Saturday, Matt takes Luke to get donuts and look at tall buildings or tools, one. Sundays of late I have skipped church in order to be here for Penelope's naps and nursing. Can I admit that I need this quiet time? While I miss invaluable fellowship (thus the reason why I am so glad the ladies bible study is getting started), this is really the only time I have to be alone with myself, and also spend time getting to know my daughter.

This morning as I was rocking her to sleep, I realized afresh how impressionable she is. She is learning everything about life for the very first time, and I asked myself again what ideas she might formulate about womanhood by my example.

She clings to me in ways I do not remember Luke doing. Her eyes follow me and she lights up when I talk to her. There it is, that familiar stab of pain and beauty-love that all parents surely know intimately. I am IT for her. This small, frail, dainty, snoring, chubby, sweet-smelling (most times), little being has a heart and a mind and a soul. She will desire many things and long for things and have specific interests and one day will love a boy, too. But, now, this little heart is focused on her parents...perhaps more specifically on me. I am awed by this.

I want so much for both children. I want them to know the reality of their creator and know His heart and voice well. I want for them to cherish the cross of Christ Jesus and to understand fully the doctrines of Justification and Propitiation. I want for them to have wisdom and it might as well be the mantra they hear from my mouth as soon as they understand the concept, "Get wisdom. Get understanding. Get wisdom. Get understanding." I also want them to know the word. I want for it to dwell richly within them and for them to know where it is located and its context. I want for them to think critically and not be afraid of solitude, but welcome it. At the same time, I want for them to love the fellowship of believers, to love unconditionally, to love freely and love with an eternal perspective. I want contentment for them and open-handed/hearted charity. I want them to desire to go on mission, whether on these streets or foreign. I want them to have an "outward look," as my dad always called it, more concerned about others than themselves. I want them to know grace.

As I typed this, my heart stirred with conviction. These little babies have not been given to me for my own pleasure alone, the sleepless nights can attest to that. They were given for our mutual refinement and attainment of wisdom. What better way for them to understand our justification from God through Christ but by the life of a believing parent, living it out? Every desire I have for my children listed are so obviously the areas I have struggled in, I see that now. It's true, we always want more for our children than we ourselves had. Looks like I have more praying/changing to do. Wow.

Sloughs, boughs and draughts

2007-11-01T13:06:00.000-04:00

The graphic design side project is still getting off the ground on account of software issues. I just haven't yet gotten a Mac-compatible copy of Dreamweaver (to put together the website) nor an older version of Photoshop. Everything else I have. After that the plan is to buy another domain name and use the webspace I already have to host the site, put together a price structure and a mini portfolio, research local printers and their quoting procedures, print business cards and go at it. I'm actually excited about this.

Halloween was a lot of fun. We went to a local church for a "trunk-or-treat," essentially several rows of cars lined up, trunks open, with different themes and dioramas inside. Some had "Noah's Ark" themes, with collections of stuffed animals, there was a "Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord" theme with musical instruments, a "Fishers of Men" theme with actual goldfish and a fishing rod, and all manner of ideas in between. The creativity on display was very fun to see. Luke almost filled his plastic pumpkin with candy, Penelope slept almost the whole time and was duly cute. Luke had a little cold, which slowed him down somewhat, and combined with the crowds of people, noise and candy made him more than a little overwhelmed by the proceedings. But he did well. We're so grateful for Diane's family too, who came and participated and helped out too. There are few other groups in whose company we feel as wanted and appreciated (my parents, for one). They are invaluable and we love them.

As far as I durst

2007-10-31T13:04:00.000-04:00

Penelope is two months old. She is noticeably bigger than when we brought her home and rapidly growing out of her diaper size. She smiles at people now (especially Mommy), loves her bath and her Baby Bjorn and is absolutely beautiful. We thought about getting her a fancy costume for Halloween (like a pizza slice or a whoopie cushion or an air freshener) but she'll just be wearing an outfit that reads "I Love My Mummy" accompanied by a cute picture of a mummy.

Luke will be a lion this year. He's still of the age where the one-piece jumpsuit costumes aren't prohibitively expensive and we're taking advantage of that. Last year he was a chicken and it's nice that the first year where he (kind of) knows what's going on he's something a bit more, um, regal? Not that chickens aren't cute in their way, but coming into the bulk of boyhood, given a choice I'd have been a lion any day over a chicken. So there's that.

We're stretching to stay ahead of Luke's learning curve as far as absorption of information. Some concepts are long in coming but in terms of sheer capacity to memorize systems the boy has us all licked. He knows all 50 states and most of their capitals, many of the countries in the world, all the planets, the books of the Bible, the days of the week and numbers to 20 in French and obviously his alphabet and numbers into the hundreds. What's next? The periodic table, maybe? Constellations? I've been racking my brain trying to think of systems and information to put in front of him but it's difficult. He really enjoys nothing more than figuring out how the world is put together. Social graces and table manners are further down the totem pole of priorities, but...he's three. He'll get there. He is uniquely LUKE and we love him.

Barley

2007-10-22T12:39:00.000-04:00

I've said it before: Lasagna is the world's best reheated food, bar none, especially when it's Diane's. She took my mom's recipe and put her own spin on it, creating a dish that's tasty and unique and fully the equal of its inspiration. So good.

We finally got around to watching The Astronaut Farmer on Saturday night. From a technical standpoint (that is, the engineering in the film)--and this is important to me--the film is less than successful, but from a dramatic angle it's better. The film is beautifully shot, the cinematography owing a lot to wide-angle epics like The Right Stuff, but the uneven script puts a damper on things. There are still some inspiring moments, especially near the end when things start to go right. The technical inaccuracies were hard to look past, though. Two and a half stars.

* * * * * *

Back home, later today. Tried to install Dreamweaver earlier to assist in setting up the website, only to discover that the copy I purchased, while labeled "WIN/MAC" from Macromedia themselves, only appears to contain Windows installer software. Really frustrated. I've tried several different techniques to fiddle with the procedure, but none of them have worked out. Maybe there's a "software swap" site online where I can trade someone for a dedicated Mac version. Ugh.

Bright eyes

2007-10-17T12:17:00.000-04:00

Baby!

Yesterday, being held by her Uncle Josh.

Luke has been experimenting with magnets lately. His Granddad is a toolmaker and works with metal on a daily basis. He also works out of a shop in the basement of their house, an area they both call "the laboratory" and visit frequently. Luke came home one Thursday night from a visit talking about ferrous metals, a term I correctly assumed he learned from Granddad. Luke has a set of magnetic letters on our fridge which he'll try to stick to various items around the kitchen in order to determine whether they're a ferrous metal. A few nights ago his Aunt Maralyn and Uncle Josh were visiting, sitting in the living room, and I was alternating between there and the kitchen. Penelope was hanging out in her chair on the kitchen floor, and Luke was playing with his magnetic letters. As I returned to the kitchen from the living room, I happened upon Luke, holding his letter A, arm outstretched, touching it to his sister's hand, trying to determine if she was a ferrous metal. It was cute.

In other news, in the interest of supplementing my income as a product designer here at ImageWorks, I've decided to dive back into freelance graphic design, and more proactively this time. Previously I just let the jobs "come to me," as it were, without much (or any) self-promotion, but this time I'm going to seek things out. Even a few hours a week would go a long way. I can perform it at a distance, and if the job is local can even coordinate printing at local print shops. Will set up a pricing structure soon. Most of the time the procedure is that the client will provide all copy (text) and images and I will coalesce it into an attractive and functional piece, but I can write copy as well. So, if you or someone you know needs top-notch graphic design, do let me know.

La meilleure chose

2007-10-16T13:16:00.000-04:00

We received The Astronaut Farmer from Netflix a few days ago. We haven't watched it yet, or, for that matter, Monsters Inc (which I borrowed from Charlie). Penelope is a fantastic sleeper for her age, with consistent stretches from 8 p.m. to 3 a.m., then down again for a few more hours, but the result is that our evenings are somewhat truncated. I'm not complaining, mind you--just relating the status quo.

No philosophical musings lately. I went to Barnes & Noble Saturday afternoon to buy a copy of the new Clarence Thomas book as a birthday present for my father-in-law, as well as a copy of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress for Diane and me to read to each other (an activity we are greatly enjoying, by the way), and I had another chance encounter with a certain bookseller there. His name is Chris, is partially of French ancestry and is one of the most engaging conversationalists out there about the issues Diane and I enjoy discussing--history, current events, philosophy, worldview, etc. His stance on most of them differs from ours to a degree, but every time we've talked (and it has been a good half-dozen by this point), I've come away feeling alert and excited. Granted, much of that probably has to do with the fact that the conversations are an outlet for much of what bounces around in my head continually, and so I am grateful just to be able to share it with another (Diane receives the brunt of this). As I mentioned, his opinions don't quite line up with ours, though they are close from what I can tell, and yet, I've had far more awkward, and at times, heated conversations with people who espouse viewpoints much closer to our worldview. I'd like to think the dialogues with Chris have more of the French quality to them; that is to say, allowance for sharp disagreement without unnecessary infusion of personal sentiment. Not that it's wrong to feel strongly about tenets of one's worldview, or to passionately speak what you know to be the truth, but a maintained respect for the other person's intelligence and the thought behind their viewpoints goes a long way. By way of example, the French love to talk politics, and it's said two good French friends can have the sharpest differences of opinion in conversation and still remain civil, polite and indeed, good friends. That relational demeanor is seen more rarely on this side of the pond, but I do enjoy it when it's present.

Maggiore, Como & Garda

2007-10-11T12:20:00.000-04:00

Several nights in a row of frequently-interrupted sleep gives the days a surreal quality. I can handle interruption on a schedule fairly well; that is, if she gets hungry around a certain time every night then goes back to bed, but she's going through a growth spurt at the moment and that throws everything out of whack. But such is our charge, and we will delight in it and in her.

I used to read articles about people who succumbed to the allure of online sites that let them create an avatar, or alter-ego, and interact with others via whatever framework was provided. Many of them would create alter-egos that became more real, or at least significant to them, than the interaction in their actual lives. I remember reading those articles with a degree of disdain for those described, priding myself on my ability, or so I thought, to keep the internet at a healthy distance and the elements of my life in a good state of balance.

I brought some new music to work this morning to upload onto my iTunes. I do this fairly frequently and have amassed quite a collection. Among the songs I brought was Angie Aparo's "Spaceship," which I hadn't listened to in ages. It was the song, back in December of 2000, that inspired the selection of my LiveJournal username, and I used to jokingly refer to it as my journal's "theme song." I loved the combination of surreal verses, e.g.

When you gonna grow up
Momma always said
But I just wanna walk around with a dollar bill
And a coat that never sheds
A spaceship landed on the water
It was a holiday for the underpaid
Everybody got a haircut and lemonade
And they smiled just like it was their father

with the uplifting chorus:

If you get tired of satellite flyers
And fame has let you down
Under the wire and over the moon
I’m around

The song wasn't a hit back in its day, and while the music is serviceable and the singing is quite good, the production isn't great. Still, at the time it was as significant as anything else. And somehow, listening to it afresh this morning, coupled with a decent amount of distance from the time when I was immersed in that journal, made me realize just how significant that "identity" was to me in its day. It was an "internexistential" moment, if you will. While I never consciously tried to represent myself as someone I wasn't, I certainly put effort toward emphasizing select parts of my personality. But it wasn't true vulnerability; that's for sure. I put so much time and energy into that journal, much of it directed at "pruning," making my presence there more streamlined, as the appearance of simplicity takes effort. I liked who I was; I was proud of "spaceship." Matt seemed a little boring, a little mundane in comparison, and it was hard to let go. But I feel like I've reclaimed a part of me that only existed in the virtual world up until then; things I used to commit only to journal entries form topics of conversation now with Diane and others. And while verbal interaction may seem more transient than the written word, it can communicate more, and still has the potential to affect people deeply. Besides, I don't intend to let whatever meager writing skills I developed during my 6-year devotion to that outlet wither away. So hopefully I will have the best of both worlds.

Welland, Tay, Derwent & Tyne

2007-10-08T12:44:00.000-04:00

Good weekend. Diane made me a list of things to do yesterday. I love that she does this. I'm blessed that she's considerate of my capacity to accomplish things during a given day and "lists" accordingly, so that I actually have some chance of getting them done. And yesterday, I did, along with a few things that weren't on the list, like raking the front yard.

It was the first of what will be many rakes of the season and with Luke's "help" managed to do most of the front yard in one session. He helped me rake last year but didn't really know how to enjoy it; this year he was completely into it, trying to work his little rake ("one hand up high, one hand in the middle") before giving up and jumping into the leaf pile, lying in it and looking through the oak tree's branches. It was a lot of fun.

Penelope is definitely settling down. Her daily routine helps a lot. She has a set bedtime and Diane is so good with tending to her needs and providing all the love and nurturing she requires. She actually seemed to enjoy her bath last night for the first time, and we think she had one of her first social smiles yesterday. Still waiting for a definite one... She is a delight and a joy to her parents.

A man takes a rocketship into the sky

2007-10-05T12:36:00.000-04:00

He lives on starlets dying in the night
And follows in the trail
The scatter of light

The larger sensations coalesce in my memory into overall impressions more easily than they can be drawn out individually for description. Some days I'm glad to have a quiet office over lunch so I can put pen to paper (virtually) and record them in order to remember and relate them in due time. It's Friday, though, and even George Winston in the earmuff headphones can't block out the sound of the computer next door blaring movie trailers over unmuffled conversation. I don't even know what I want to write. My mind moves from moment to moment, recalling poignant times in college and before, but never long enough to gather more than the most fleeting scent of memory. Isn't it amazing that we can remember fractions of a second from years ago? Some of the things that come to mind are turning around in the empty brickyard on a cold January afternoon, wearing the gray striped sweater, the lull of energy in the high tide of the day as I struggled to stay awake in a math class. I remember feeling so unshielded then. University was a transitional time, and as glad as I was for certain aspects of that knowledge--a goal to work toward, for one--the close-ended nature of that time always impinged on my thinking. I can only get caught up in details for so long; I invariably return to a wider picture of things, even now.

We used to comment that college wasn't "the real world," but rather than said in a self-deprecating way, or jokingly condescending toward our younger classmates once we had graduated, it was a comforting statement. There was a transparency to that knowledge, though, that made our position feel tenuous. In retrospect, it's counterintuitive how the relative singularity of purpose in college made me feel so unsteady at times, and how the creeping avalanche of responsibilities to follow in subsequent years actually fosters a greater sense of security. Is it more self-knowledge? The pursuit of that knowledge is, according to conventional wisdom, the grand goal one's late teens and twenties, but if a similar level of responsibility to what we are experiencing now used to be assumed at a much younger age, and human nature hasn't changed (which it hasn't), what's different? There are a myriad of answers, of course, and it's up to me, by His grace, to make the best of the modern sequence of things. The more important corollary to the fact that human nature hasn't changed is the knowledge that God's nature hasn't changed. That's a knowledge to build life around.

Wonder?

2007-10-02T12:10:00.000-04:00

The skies have been exceptionally clear lately. I took advantage of that fact a couple of nights ago in hauling the telescope out after the kids had gone to bed. There was a bright planet in the southern part of the sky I wanted to investigate, wanting to figure out whether it was Mars or Jupiter (I suspected the latter). Sure enough, it was, and it put on a good show. I called Diane out and we saw all four Galilean moons. With my recently-found "power doubler" (essentially a 6-inch tube), we were able to double the magnification of my closest lens and catch glimpses of the bands of gas swirling around the planet. I wish I had had it when we saw Saturn a few months ago--the rings would have been even more spectacular than they were. But it will come around again.

Diane went back inside; she's not much interested when I start looking at things that aren't planets, and I pointed the telescope at Vega, almost always directly overhead during the summer months. It's a beautiful star. It is bluish-white and looks like a sapphire against the darkness. It's one of the three stars (with Altair and Deneb) that make up the "Summer Triangle," one of the landmarks, if you will, of the sky. Deneb is the brightest star in my favorite constellation, Cygnus, or the Swan, always easy to spot soaring prominently over the summer sky, wings outstretched, tips raked back. It's always a familiar and welcome sight.

In addition to the R.C. Sproul podcasts to which I'm a dedicated listener, I've added extras, among them Ravi Zacharias' podcast, Let My People Think. The most recent one is a Q&A session after a lecture to faculty and students at Georgia Tech, and it's exciting and inspiring to listen to one of the greatest Christian thinkers of our time go at it, as it were, with a succession of students. Some of them asked very good questions. One question I found particularly arresting was: "You've identified loss of meaning as a problem ... and so, what should be the meaning?" His reply:

I appreciate that question because I believe we are living in a postmodernist time when we wonder what meaning really means. There are four components to finding meaning in life. I put [them] on a grid as you grow from childhood.

When you are in your years of childhood, the thing that keeps you going in a sense is the enchantment with life--the sense of wonder about everything that you see. But as you get older you can no longer believe in all of the fairy stories. As wonderful as they were, you know that those were all figments of people's imaginations. And you come into your teens and your early twenties and the question of truth becomes supreme. Not whether this belief of mine or this experience of mine brings me a sense of wonder, but whether this experience of mine is also based in truth. Truthfulness becomes an important category...

As you move along into the years of the twenties and the thirties where your commitments are being made and your relationships are developed, you’re looking for love beyond merely romance. It is a love of relationships and affections, whether it be in a family or whether it be in friendships. And finally you’re looking for the concept of security: How do I know what it is that I believe will ultimately stand the test of time, and is there a life, for example, beyond the grave?

What brings meaning is when you can combine a sense of wonder under-girded by truth, experiencing the richness of love, with a knowledge of security. Those four components bring genuine meaning to life. And the older you get the more it takes to fill your heart with wonder and only God is big enough to fill that heart.

He goes on to give examples of just having one or two of these components in isolation, and how that fails to give a cohesive structure for meaning in an individual's life. Excellent stuff. Between that lecture and the stars a couple of nights ago it reminded me of a post from a while back.

U2 on the brain

2007-09-28T12:39:00.001-04:00

Some random pictures of domesticity:

Luke and Mommy, from a while ago.

Pen gesturing, fascinated by some outline.

Pen and Mommy (not) napping.

If you've spent much time around me at all you probably know I have strong (though not unassailable) opinions concerning music and Christianity and church and the mix thereof. With limited time, R.C. Sproul does a great job in addressing the points of contact between music, spiritual maturity and worship. I appreciate him making the distinction between "simple" and "simplistic" worship music and discussing how much current praise music largely falls in the latter camp.

Being employed here, doing work that for the most part aligns with what I majored in at school makes me think of my college days more than previous jobs have. Specifically, it reminds me of days and nights in studio and the convergence of personalities that marked every new semester. I can recall the peculiar mix of people that comprised the Lowry studio (fall semester freshman year), the Pause studio (spring semester), the Hooper and Lewis studios and so forth. Studio was a required 6-credit-hour course every semester for design students and as such it was someplace we spent a lot of time, with people we grew to know very well, for the most part--you could really be as open or as isolated as you chose to be. But the opportunity was there. The vignettes within those experiences that came to mind just now were friendships I could have pursued but chose not to, usually because of laziness or neglect or some other petty hangup. I think about Brett, second semester of my sophomore year, and how I knew he was taking the initiative to be my friend (how rare that is), talking to me during the studio's habitual run to the C-store and taking the desk next to mine. There were others, too (Josh comes to mind, from freshman year, and Tim from junior on), and while I did return their friendly initiatives somewhat, I never endeavored to build the connections that would last, to say nothing of taking the opportunity to share my faith with them except in the most cursory way.

What made me think about all this is the ample occasion I have at the moment to become good friends with any number of the guys in my Sunday school class. Granted, it's not always going to work out, but I plan on trying to make friends, and goodness knows if I sense one of them going out of their way to befriend me, I'm not going to brush it aside.

Graceful ghost

2007-09-25T12:18:00.000-04:00

So many things gone awry, the male "fix it" instinct kicks in, it's hard not to feel overwhelmed but really, what will I remember in a year, except through laughter? I won't remember the dryer having been on the fritz, defying all attempts at repair; I won't remember my (truly) lovely daughter having thrown up on my wife's phone, disabling it; and I certainly won't remember that although our countertop was successfully installed yesterday, I still have to reattach the faucet and drains. I really won't remember these things.

In the meantime, here's another picture:

We'll get a good awake-time picture eventually.

We visited Diane's parents yesterday evening. They babysat Luke all day while the countertop was being installed and graciously provided dinner for us too. Luke was fantastic. He is definitely emerging from his "terrible twos" and in fine form too, praise God. Our visit was Penelope's second and boy, does she hate the car seat. For the time being it stands in stark contrast to Luke, who is quite honestly the world's easiest, most patient traveler. We're hoping she warms up to it, or at least acquiesces to the fact that she's going to be in it sometimes, otherwise any trip anywhere with her is going to be an ordeal. She was alert and calm while we were there, and it was heartwarming to see the extended family interact with and enjoy her. The last couple of nights she has been a champion sleeper, conking out around 8 p.m. and only getting hungry around 12:30 a.m. (which I take) and 5 a.m. (which Diane takes). We're praying for it to continue.

A few weeks ago one of our Sunday School speakers, Joe, talked at length about vulnerability and the necessity of it in Christian circles that involve fellowship. Our class has only been around in its present form for about a year, and most attendees, ourselves included, have been a part for less than that. As one of the initial members as well as being invested in the well-being of the group, Joe was taking stock of the larger picture of our progress in becoming a group that models biblical principles, a perspective I can identify with. Vulnerability, he outlined, is a key attribute of truly biblical fellowship. I didn't say much during the class itself but have had many thoughts about it since and have discussed it extensively with Diane. The key question for me is: Is it vulnerability something you can "engineer" into a relationship? Or is it simply a byproduct of a compatible mixture of personalities and time together? I know, based on biblical mandates, that it must be something to strive for, so there must be some degree to which we can effect it in our relationships. Based on personal experience, though, it can be a tricky endeavor. Vulnerability and openness were something I always tried to draw out of (some sessions more intently than others, admittedly) the interaction of various groups I led, be it Coffee Theology or Car Guys. No matter what I did, though, it always seemed such an elusive, hit-or-miss quality that I effectively chalked it up to personality interaction. However, I never did state it as a group's objective quite as explicitly as Joe, and I think there's something to that. Vulnerability has to have not only intentionality behind it, but recognition and acceptance from the other party. I could exhort group members to share the "state of their souls" until the cows come home, but without the knowledge of the goal and more importantly, the mandate behind it all, there's a lack of vision and aspiration that hampers desire. Something to work toward.

Cotton Candy

2007-09-22T14:56:00.000-04:00

She is sleeping on me as I type this.

I am looking at her resting, slumber-wrinkled face and listening to her breathing. She has these excrutiatingly precious arms and legs tucked under her...peachy-white skin still smelling like the Burt's Bees I smoothed onto her the day before.

Will her legs grow and lengthen into adult legs? Will these little papery hands and fingers be as old as mine? She will see this world one day. Oh, goodness. There is so much to shield her from. I am jealous, actually, ZEALOUS for her innocence. It is hard to imagine a sin nature in her from this vantage point. I know it is in her heart, though. She needs her Father and I will pray for that. Now, though, it is easy for a parent to imagine only the things which could harm her, not the things she could possibly chose to do to herself.

My heart aches now over what I've seen and done. How can we protect our daughters from this?

Intentionally vague today.

Not fade away

2007-09-20T12:48:00.000-04:00

Penelope is settling down somewhat. We went through a bit of a rough stretch for a week or so where we were learning her temperament and she was learning to let herself be soothed. She sleeps in her own room now at night and will take a bottle, which last night allowed me to get up, feed her and put her back down without waking Diane. She sent me a picture of her today with a triple chin. Ah, baby fat.

It's hard to make room in your life for someone else. But never out of complacency or lack of desire--it's just difficult, any given day, to apportion everyone the time you want to give them. There is a very real sense of expansion of our lives; I told Diane a week or two ago that my capacity to be flexible under the old view of our family life, which had carried me through the birth and the first week or so, by His grace, was expiring. What I needed--what we all need--is the "new normal," and once that is in place flexibility will grow from there. And we're reaching it, praise God... Although there are certainly things out of place (the broken dryer being the principal one), stability is returning to our day-to-day. I can see the new baseline emerge in the near future even as I try to keep a vision for the long-term mixed with a focus on the immediate. It's a delicate balancing act, and I would be incapable of having a proper concept of any part of the future without a grounding knowledge of His sovereignty and character. And He gives me the grace to rest my mind on that knowledge.

For whatever reason, I've been very interested lately in all things having to do with space exploration. I'm something of an amateur astronomer and haul my telescope out in the front yard once every month or two, but my renewed interest in space vehicles, exploration and astronauts goes back farther than that, farther, almost to where Luke is now--one of my very earliest memories is going to the mall to buy a prize for some achievement as a young boy, possibly being potty trained. The prize, as it turned out, was a plastic model of the Space Shuttle, then (early '80s) very new and exciting. And my brothers and I loved to shoot off model rockets almost every Saturday at a big park with my dad. So space exploration has been an interest for, well, almost forever.

I'm excited about NASA's latest plans to keep the manned space program going, even if there was a stretch there where it seemed every promising program got axed: the NASP, DC-X, Hermes, among many others. Even the Shuttle has its issues. The most disappointing cancellation (and I've written about this before), although it was conceived far before my time, was undoubtedly Project Orion. So exciting, so feasible with existing technology and yet, so...unrealized. One day, maybe.

I've been very interested particularly in the former Soviet space program. The technology used for space exploration is so exotic anyway that the addition of the foreign-ness of the regime and their status for so many years as the "bad guys" gives the history of the program quite a mystique. Add to that the secrecy surrounding it, and the draw is definitely there. The Soviet attempts at a moon shot are fascinating, as are their attempts to rebuild their lead lost in the space race by concentrating on developing space stations. And even their early achievements, like the first spacewalk, are interesting given their rudimentary, almost crude manner relative to the American space program.

Needless to say I'm very keen on seeing the recent film The Astronaut Farmer. Don't know why I haven't yet, actually. Oh well; it's on the queue.

Considering it pure joy...

2007-09-17T10:53:00.000-04:00

I cannot really articulate how tired I am right now. My eyes are steadily burning from lack of sleep. I walk around so slowly, dazed and forgetting why I've even entered a room and why I'm still holding items like a solitary toothpick or a jar of white out. Seriously.

If I ever complained about not having time with one child, God forgive me. While I'm sure that those among us with far more children than two can attest that the busyness of two is nothing compared, I am still a relativist when it comes to personal discomfort. :o) At this point, I am merely surviving. Clinging to grace, yes, always. But still quite like a zombie.

The nap synchronization is not entirely impossible. I mean, Luke might not *technically* be napping, but, at least he is quietly reading/playing in his dimmed room for an hour or two. Penelope is learning the fine art of falling asleep drowsy but awake. She's doing a lot better than a couple of days ago, actually. Maybe it's the Gripe Water we bought, but, she is able to settle herself, albeit grunting and squirming, without crying. This is a big deal.

She has been sleeping in the same room as us for hers and our own sake (convenience) since she was born but takes naps in the spare room/her room-to-be because of her clunking, sound effects-making big brother. I'm thinking that it might be fine to allow her to spend the entire night in there now, rather than make the huge transition every evening and morning. I guess part of me is holding on because right now, Matt gets up every time I do. I know I am not alone. The long walk to her room will probably be a lonely one who knows how many times it will be ours to take. We'll talk about it, I'm sure.

Here's also hoping that our dryer is fixed today! On top of last week's ordeal, we did not have a working laundry system. Part of our dirties were graciously done by my mom but the rest was either hung up in various spots in our bedroom or on the porch. Classy. Especially when it is Luke's plush TIGER PRINT BLANKET...a priceless gem of a throw which goes well with his safari-themed bedroom but for those who do not know, I can only imagine what they think our decor must be. I shouldn't care.

I'm delirious. I need a nap. Wonder if it will be my day?

It promotes eupepsia

2007-09-14T12:48:00.000-04:00

Rainy, dreary day for once. The weather has cooled and these days seem fragile, unsteady, as if the norm were for the temperature to be blasted into one extreme or the other.

Gave BT's This Binary Universe a fresh listen this morning, all the way through for once. It's difficult, brilliant, challenging music. It's electronically-generated, but the compositions themselves have quasi-classical arrangements, which sets up quite a contrast from the get-go: most electronic music is released as singles and has an almost disposable quality, and most classical music is meant to have a much longer shelf life. The album is ambitious not just for that reason, but the content of the music itself is intricate, layered and complex.

During my run this morning I found myself daydreaming about cars and airplanes, a dangerous thing. In my defense, my mind ranges far and wide during my runs in an effort to keep it from fixating on the exertion, so dwelling on one subject for any length of time doesn't carry the same weight as it would had my mind rested on a subject during, say, a conversation with Diane. But still... It remains there are many things about which I enjoy thinking, and cars and airplanes are two of them. Specifically, I thought about my Datsun 240Z, in need of a restoration, languishing in my parents' garage in Chapel Hill. I think it awaits the day when we will own a house with a garage of our own. And disposable income and time, definitely. I remembered the joy of tinkering with it, of changing the oil, fiddling with the oh-so-elegantly designed S.U. carburetors and relishing the sound of the inline-6. And on the airplane front, I simply remembered what it was like to fly, to take off and land and so forth. I contemplated what it might be like to own a little Cessna 150 or 152 and the possibilities that would bring and responsibilities it would entail. Pleasant matter for a morning run.

Back to work.

Birdhouse in your soul

2007-09-12T11:24:00.000-04:00

Penelope is almost two weeks old today. We are learning her and she us and the world around her. She can't quite see clearly yet and isn't sure what to make of all the shapes and colors and noises and sensations around her, but we think she recognizes our voices at least, Mommy's for sure. We joke that she doesn't really know who we are yet, but just knows that there is a deep voice (me) and a high voice (Diane) and occasionally a "medium voice" (Luke) that swirl around her. We wouldn't trade this time for anything but at the same time can't wait for her to start interacting more, smiling, grasping, etc. It's going to be fun.

I have been completely addicted to crossword puzzles lately. Diane bought a book of "fast and easy" ones for the beach trip and since then I've been hooked. We rented a documentary about them called Wordplay, which only served to reinforce my enthusiasm. Of course it didn't hurt that the centerpiece of the film, the annual national crossword puzzle tournament, had strong overtones of Odyssey of the Mind tournaments I used to participate in, especially in terms of the sheer concentration of geeky people in one place, getting rabidly excited about little arcane tidbits of their shared passion. In any event, as I shared with Diane, crosswords are one of the few mental exercises I can engage in and not feel compelled, even (or especially) when stumped, to sneak a peak at the solution. I really enjoy the challenge of figuring it out, and the longer the word the better. I thumb through the puzzle book looking specifically for crosswords with long rows or columns. A few days ago I found one with a row that spanned the whole puzzle: a four-word phrase for "slumbers." It was "drops off to sleep," and I was immensely satisfied to have filled in so many letters in one fell swoop, even if it doesn't approach the cleverness of the higher-end crosswords. All in good time.

I've been continuing to listen to R.C. Sproul podcasts and downloaded radio broadcasts at work. Lately he's been going through a series addressing common objections to Christianity and the biblical worldview. Some of them have been quite compelling, especially the ones that talk to the connection between reason and belief. Sproul doesn't apologize for the sometimes-heady nature of the lecture, and delves into Greek roots and theological and philosophical vocabulary without missing a beat, assuming his listeners, even if they don't grasp everything initially, are engaged and want to learn; they want to know. I really appreciate that quality and it makes his talks very informative. It makes me want to read more of the original authors, too, especially Aquinas, Van Til, Barth and Kant.

Of storks and such

2007-09-05T21:13:00.000-04:00

We're still culling pictures from the relatives (things were a little too hectic for me to do any quality photo-snapping), but here is a preview of little Penelope Wynn Suffern:

She's beautiful, like her mommy.

She was born at 1:25 p.m. on August 30, weighed 7 lbs. 4 oz. and was 19 in. long. Diane had been progressing smoothly through the last stages of pregnancy for some time, and around 1 a.m. on Thursday morning started having some pretty intense labor pain. We timed the contractions and decided it was time to make the (1/2 mile) trip to the hospital. They admitted us and we got situated. Diane got an epidural for the pain mid-morning and was ready to start pushing just after noon. She pushed beautifully through a couple of contractions and our little girl was among us. It was amazing and incredibly special.

Mother and daughter got cleaned up and bonded for a few minutes. After that Penelope visited the nursery for a little bit while I followed. We spent a couple of nights in the hospital and returned home on Saturday morning. Both sets of parents were an incredible and essential help--Diane's with watching Luke during the hospital visit and mine staying with us over the weekend while we settled in, among many other things.

The first couple of nights were rough but overall Penelope is very calm and a great sleeper. She slept like a champ last night. Diane swaddles her and I think that's a big reason she's as docile as she is. We fed her right before bedtime at 9:30. She woke up exactly twice (around 12:30 and 3:30), chirped a couple of times to let us know she was hungry, then waited patiently for me to get up, retrieve her and hand her to Diane. The feeding and changing went like clockwork and she conked out when we put her down again. I hear the first week can be easy but I sure hope this continues.

One of the special things about the event is her birthday: August 30, same as my maternal grandmother's. Gran is the only grandparent I have left and in many respects the focal point, not to say matriarch of that side of the family. Soon after I was born 28 years ago, her husband, my maternal grandfather, passed away after a long battle with mental illness. The nature of his ailment in the decades leading up to his passing meant that Gran had to take a quasi-leadership role in the direction and sustenance of the family, setting a precedent for strong, educated women in her daughters and granddaughters and hopefully, great-granddaughters. To me it was very much as if a generational "torch" had been "passed" last Thursday when Pen was born, Gran's first great-granddaughter. Neither has yet been able to make the trip but I hope they will see each other soon.

Much more to come.

Bromidic

2007-08-23T09:35:00.000-04:00

Excellent article, yet again, at Boundless.

"A Peculiar People: Sex and the Young Christian."

Though I could talk at length about the issues of teen sexuality, even among christian youth, this portion struck me as important on all fronts:

But you can't fight a hegemonic culture with curricula–no matter how well-designed—and pledge cards alone. You need to create an alternative culture. By "alternative" I don't mean taking the dominant culture, sanding away the most obvious objectionable bits, i.e., those relating to sexual mores, adding a bit of "God talk" and, as my family says, "¡huepa!"

I'm talking about the courage to be, as 1 Peter puts it, a peculiar people — "peculiar" as in the Latin peculiaris, "one's own." "Our own" is not to simply "re-brand" and otherwise assimilate everything that is not obviously objectionable but to ask what is in keeping with our calling to 'show forth the praises of Him who hath called [us] out of darkness into His marvelous light."

How? How does one abstain from worldly temptations while being fully enriched and thriving, creative and engaged? It must be more than circling the wagons, so to speak, and creating an insultingly synthetic, sanitized copy of all-things fashionable and culturally en vogue. Do we really think our kids are that stupid? The "cool Jesus" trend lasted all of three seconds before we were rightly ridiculed for such a stunt. Have we learned? This must be a spirit-wrought peculiarity, I am certain. I've had many conversations with myself and Matt about movies, music, businesses, alcohol, etc. We seem to straddle so much of the fence, questioning what is acceptable and not, what is permissible and what is beneficial, how far we can go, at what point have we challenged our witness...are these inevitable, important questions to ask or correct questions at all?

Just thoughts.

Rockwell

2007-08-22T12:32:00.001-04:00

Any day now. Diane's discomfort increases a little every day (and night) and we have just about reached the point where the lingering hesitation about the ordeal of labor has been overcome by the desire for the baby to emerge. Being ready helps. We've cleaned the basement, restored the kitchen to functionality, prepared her room, purchased or been given (thank you!) all the accessories we need and preemptively acknowledged the Lord's sovereignty over the entire upcoming ordeal, which taps into the core of emotional and spiritual preparation we need. There really is little left but to go through it and meet this new soul.

We watched The Iron Giant last night. What a great movie... One I would buy, definitely. The characterizations are sharp, the personalities three-dimensional and the animation is very good. Diane and I got into a discussion over dinner last night about the merits of carrying one's enthusiasm for animated films (including computer animation) into adulthood. We didn't reach any conclusions, but suffice it to say my enthusiasm for that last feature is certainly not dampened by my status as an adult.

(I seriously have no more Juice for a title. Apologies.)

2007-08-17T08:52:00.000-04:00

It is a dimly lit day with rolls of thunder intermittently injecting itself into the pinkish environs beyond the window. The street outside looks moderately damp--expectantly waiting to be quenched. It's been dry and hot here lately. Anything green that grows has turned to a yellow-brown ugliness. I welcome the rain.

I've been sleeping a lot better lately. I went through a bought of insomnia over the beach trip and some after returning home, possibly from excitement of new kitchen cabinets or the wonderful break from reality at Ocean Isle. Funny, I prefer sound sleep in my usual bed in a usual week over that nightmare existence any day! I was tired...and for no good reason (like, let's say, a newborn infant in the house rendering sleep elusive for months on end.)

Mornings are reclaiming their position as my favorite time of the day. I have been enjoying them quite a bit recently. I've found more time to write to Penelope before she is born, a practice I was diligent in doing before Luke arrived. She is a funny little thing already. I am seeing a direct correlation between my activity and hers. I've read that often this can be indicative of personality after birth, or at least some behavioral traits. For instance, with Luke, if I put a book on my belly to read, he would squirm and "fuss" until I corrected the injustice to his space. While he is a generally easy-going little guy now, he certainly is particular about his routine and comfort. Disrupt the order and you will hear about it somehow. It's a bit different with Pen. When I was not sleeping well, I complained (often dramatically and loudly) in the middle of the night that I could NOT get settled into sleep. Then, moments later (after my outburst), she would begin kicking and rolling in such a fitful way, hiccuping relentlessly, that it was impossible to sleep, even after I had managed to quiet my thoughts. At the time I considered the fetal movement and racing mind to be pretty much simultaneous assaults. Since then, sleep has returned and I tucked the memory away. The other day I noted that she goes completely bonkers when I indulge in my favorite craving, crushed iced. I laughed about it thinking it must be so noisy in there for her, all that crunching and swallowing. Again, tucked that nugget away. A recent morning ago, I noticed that she was very still for awhile, only finally moving when I began eating ice. It was then that I realized that she had been still most of the nights since the insomnia, not waking me up with ceaseless tugging movement. I am really beginning to believe that she is sensitive to mommy's voice/actions (naturally), but, hopefully this will transfer into a relatively quiet disposition unless loudly disturbed. More confirmation came the past morning when I was writing to her in still silence, and broke into it by saying the final line I had written out loud, "I have a daughter," and she seemed to immediately dance around inside of me at the sound. It made me smile.

In other news, "Dreamgirls" is a very good movie and Luke calls dominoes "Indonimoes" and no one knows why, but we like it and refuse to correct it.

This is all I can squeeze out in the way of creative writing these days. Labor is looming and I am ready to jump in again, I think...

bellerophon

2007-08-15T19:58:00.000-04:00

Diane and I have both been listening to Eva Cassidy lately. Charlie brought his copy of her album Live At Blues Alley to work (I already own Songbird) and I played her take on "Cheek to Cheek" for Diane when I got home. I admitted to my wife that it was much to garner her opinion on the song--she is an expert on singing--as it was to inspire her to want to sing in front of an audience again. And she does want to... After the baby's born and the dust settles, that is. But Diane's first words after hearing the song were, "Yeah, she pretty much destroyed it." I agree--Cassidy's voice and phrasing are phenomenal in any song she performs. I had to draw the line, though, when Diane mentioned she thought Cassidy's voice was better than Karin Bergquist's (of OtR). I couldn't agree, and anyway it isn't a valid comparison, as Bergquist is more focused in her choice of material and infuses her own compositions with character and color, whereas Cassidy interprets others' songwriting (and does so admirably).

Been listening to R.C. Sproul radio lectures at work recently. Yesterday I listened to a week-long (6-18 to 6-22) series on origins, and was particularly impressed with his lecture entitled "Chance: The Modern Myth." Among other things, he pointed out how many people who hold to a materialistic view of origins often describe time and chance as active agents in the formation of the universe. Sproul talked of the absurdity of this, as the ontological status of concepts such as time and chance is non-being; that is, they are nothing in and of themselves, they have no power or force in the sense people might like them to have it, but are only words used to describe--measure, if you will--abstract concepts. But people talk as if they have not only being but are able to exert influence in proactive ways. He gave an example of flipping a coin: What is it that makes the coin land head or tails? It is not "chance," in the sense that some use the word to describe some force that motivates evolutionary progress, but material, and dare I say it, intelligent influences, such as the resistance of the air, the angle of my thumb and whether I choose to catch it high or low. "Chance" is merely a mathematical concept used to describe the probability it will land heads or tails, not the panacea some would have it be. Highly recommended listening.

ariadne

2007-08-08T12:40:00.000-04:00

Diane prevailed upon me to update our home computer's screen saver last night. Since time out of mind it had been a series of artistically-altered photographs of Tokyo and its environs. Last night I replaced them with photos of our family and extended family. A nice benefit was that it produced a photo selection session wherein Diane and I reminisced about all nine months since our wedding, and what they've contained. There are shots of our honeymoon, the creepy cabin we stayed in the first night, reading in the front grass with the friendly dogs at our feet and cooking in the kitchen. Her hair was much shorter then and her loveliness hasn't faded one bit. We included pictures from the wedding itself, unabashedly happy ones of our respective parents and a little boy unaware of what was happening but just excited to be there. We looked through some older photos too. We found some of me in the cockpit last spring, flying my first solo cross-country, and ones of Luke's younger days.

It reminded me today of a line from the OtR song "I Want You To Be My Love" (incidentally on our wedding soundtrack): "...and I want you / all you've been through." It somehow succinctly articulates the all-encompassing desire for the being of another, past, present and future, with all the experiences that formed their character, whether or not you were a part of them. And set in a song that, once it starts, I just never want to end... It's quite an effect. I have such an insatiable desire for anything to do with Diane and her past, artifacts, home movies, photographs, anything (to the point of annoyance on her part when I make her narrate her home movies). What little I understand of myself comes in large part from my past; I think I want the same from the one I am one with.

cartography

2007-08-07T07:59:00.000-04:00

This is probably the coolest site I've ever seen:

Strange Maps

Some highlights:

153 - A Subway Map of Web Trends 2.0 - A great spoof of Tokyo's subway map.
148 - Oh, Inverted World - The fanciful names of the islands and lakes...
9 - Germany wins World War I (French worst case scenario)
47 - The Lost Continent of Mu - Atlantis counterpart...

Among others.

I love maps; always have. Atlases, encyclopedias--I pored over them. And weird maps are even better.