BoldUlysses.com

My parents visited this weekend. It’s always wonderful to see them. I feel like we don’t entertain them enough, not having a television in the traditional sense and the fact that most of our weekends are spent running little errands and tending to the kids’ needs. But they’re always the first to assert they have a good time at our home. They play with Luke and hold and coo at Penelope and just spend time, something we’re always eager for. We haven’t visited their house back in the Chapel Hill since Mother’s Day, what with the pregnancy and Pen’s newness and aversion to the carseat. But since she’s a little older and we’ve cracked the carseat conundrum, we’re hopeful we’ll be able to spend a couple of days in CH soon.

It’s hard to know how to be the spiritual leader in the family. I know my dad had a hard time with it. I think just like so many other things, the primary way truths and habits are communicated is through example. To take just one aspect of it, I learned that having morning devotions, or just daily devotions at any time is important not necessarily because my dad told me explicitly, but because I remember walking downstairs in the early morning on more than one occasion and seeing my dad hunched over a Bible at the kitchen table. That scene remains very immediate in my mind when I think about leading and nurturing my family in such ways.

Saturday night Diane and I were discussing Luke, as we often do, and his current, growing ability to communicate. At the moment he’s all about facts. Anything that comes out of his mouth is likely to be a statement about a planet, a state, a country, the fact that mommy doesn’t like tomatoes, or that daddy’s favorite skyscraper is the CN Tower, and so on. The idea of expressing a desire like hunger or thirst or the need to use the restroom or even simple emotions like happiness or sadness is completely foreign to him (even when asked). It’s slightly counterintuitive given how directly motivated kids his age are by physical desire; I would think one of the first things he would learn to tell us is that he wants more food, or that he’s happy, etc. But no, it’s just facts. It’s more frustrating for Diane than me, not only because she spends more time with him in a given week than I do, but because emotional communication is so intrinsic to her nature. Granted, boys and men are tough nuts to crack emotionally anyway; it’s often difficult for us to figure out what we ourselves are feeling, let alone communicate it, but I think at least most basic physical desires should be fairly easy to express. He’s 3 and a half, and we’re certainly not expecting Demosthenes-like levels of oratory, but goodness knows it would certainly make toilet training easier if he would learn (or decide) to communicate certain desires, or even the presence of certain, um, substances after the fact. Ah, parenthood.

The sunbeams slowly creep across my cubicle here at work. I’m grateful for the large window but the glare does become problematic in the early afternoon. I stand up periodically to adjust the blinds so that the sun doesn’t shine in my eyes but I can still see outside. In the late afternoon their angle becomes such that my view is gone… Sad. But such is life post-Daylight Savings Time.

Luke loves to be quizzed about things that interest him. His two favorite verbal games at the moment are “Is X bigger or smaller than the Earth?” and “State, country or continent?” Each game has its own special “tricky ones,” which he waits with bated breath to be asked. The Bigger or Smaller Game’s tricky question concerns Venus, which is neither bigger nor smaller than the Earth, but the same size (technically it’s slightly smaller but we needn’t bother about that). Georgia is the object of the State, Country or Continent Game’s tricky question. It’s both a country (in western Asia) and a state. We play the games over breakfast. I’ve been trying to be more engaged in the mornings instead of waking up with just enough time to stumble through my routine and head to work. I enjoy it, too. It’s fun to sit with Luke and nibble around the edges of my peanut butter toast so that it resembles a country, while he scarfs down a bowl of frosted mini wheats. Today I made Mauritania.

NPR has been doing a series the past couple of mornings on the war and its effects. Yesterday they reported on a young veteran of the war and the difficulty he’s been having in finding employment back here in the U.S., and how that was representative of the plight of many young veterans. The report was substantive enough and I was duly concerned that many prospective employers in our country don’t recognize the skill sets of these veterans for what they are and for what they can bring to their jobs, but instead operate prejudicially, making individuals (veterans) suffer for an institution’s (the Bush administration’s) perceived bad decisions.

Okay, fine.

This morning, however, as part of their series, they reported on mothers in the military; specifically, how difficult it is for mothers who have been in combat (COMBAT) to readjust to peaceful life and their kids and families. I was incensed. What the heck are we doing sending mothers into active service in the military, let alone combat? I mean, beyond on the garbage on television and the cultural ailments at large, as an example of just how far we’ve fallen as a civilization, this has to be close to the nadir.

It’s not a question of competency or proficiency, it’s a question of the nature of the God-designed relationship between men and women. The oft-cited litmus test goes like this: A husband and wife are on a date at a nice restaurant. The wife happens to have a black belt in karate and is an expert in self-defense, whereas the husband leads a more sedentary, laid-back lifestyle. Leaving the restaurant a mugger emerges from the bushes and runs at the couple. Who should defend who? Clearly the wife is more qualified, but there is just something fundamentally out of order about a woman jumping in front of a man to defend him. Scale that viewpoint up to the present situation in the military, add kids–KIDS–in the mix, and you have the current disgrace.

Now, throughout the ages, in times of extreme duress women have been involved in the military as medics or translators or other non-combat positions, which is fine–so long as there are no kids at home who need their mother present more than anything. There’s no substitute for that in the early years of a child’s life, and all throughout, really.

Call me a dinosaur, call me sexist, call me what you will. Not only is this representative of the Biblical take on male-female dynamics, there are a majority of women out there who feel this way as well, and I stand with them.

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The website is coming along and will be up in the next few days, with, as promised, a redirect at the top so our (five) loyal readers can update their bookmarks. Diane has been leading a ladies’ small group on Monday evenings, and the window she’s away gives me more time to work on it. Besides that and more than that, I’m excited for her. They’re going through the Truth Project and the women who attend are very engaged and eager to absorb the material. Diane is building friendships with them too.

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This past Sunday was our one-year anniversary. We observed it on Friday and had a special at-home dinner consisting of the very same meal we had catered on our wedding. It brought back a lot of memories and was beyond special. Luke spent the night with Diane’s parents and enjoyed himself there, and it afforded us the opportunity to sleep in a little bit (until 7:30, haha) and to spend some time together in the morning. Having only one child for the night seemed incredibly easy compared with the two we normally chase around, and we had a chance to spend some more Penelope-focused time as well.

With apologies to every other male on the planet, I am married to the most lovely, thoughtful, wonderful, intelligent woman in the world. I got her. It’s over. Go home :)

Apologies for the blog outages over the past couple of days. I’ve moved the whole shebang to a new directory (www.suffernfamily.com/blog) in preparation for the new design-focused front page to the site. There will be a PSA at the top of the new page for a while to remind you all to update your bookmarks, where applicable, and to thank you for your continued readership. Unfortunately the big move coincided with a rash of issues my publishing service was having with FTP uploads, so without getting unbearably technical, if you tried to access the blog Monday evening you were probably out of luck (or fortunate, depending on your point of view). But, as they say, watch this space.

They’re going to prototype one of my designs here at work! They’ve prototyped a couple of my designs before, but this is the biggest one yet. To give you a rough idea of the process here, the design department–all three of us–comes up with ideas (concepts) for displays based on an initial set of specifications and conversations with the client. If they like one or two, we’ll prototype them and hopefully the client will be pleased enough to order X number of them for their stores. But the vast majority of the time the concepts, however creative they may be, aren’t what the client is looking for, and they just disappear into design oblivion. Out of the several hundred concepts I’ve put together since I began here in January, only three or four have been prototyped and none have made it into stores, at least to my knowledge. But this latest design, whether or not it makes it past the prototype stage, will be pretty cool to look at. It’s for Hot Wheels, and without going into too much detail (it’s all still very hush-hush in the industry), it’s a new merchandising system for their Basic Cars line that looks like a Ferris wheel. The axis runs parallel to the shelf front and the unit is about 4 feet wide, with 8 “tiers,” if you will, that contain 10 cars each. It’s the last one I thought they’d pick to prototype, but they like it and want to see it in real life. I’m excited.

P.S. — It occurred to me that you all might want to see these: 1 2. It appears our little girl bears an uncanny resemblance to older male statesmen. Hmm.

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 sign of my growing 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 known as “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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Back from our yearly week-long beach trip. I say yearly–this year makes two in a row… Went to Ocean Isle Beach, a dozen or so miles from the SC border and Myrtle Beach (the latter aptly nicknamed “the armpit of civilization” by my lovely wife). The beach was wonderful, relaxing, with clear skies and enough wind for the kites we flew almost every evening near the end of the week. I purchased one of those dual-handle fancy “stunt kites” on Friday and had a good time flying that, doing loops and dives and terrorizing stray pelicans.

What’s more, Luke had a fantastic time, miles beyond his experience last year. He splashed about in the water, helped build sand castles and got excited over sea shells and walks to the pier. He and I went wave jumping a couple of times and he was loath to return to the sand. He didn’t even have a death grip on me the whole time, but relaxed, moved with the waves and laughed uproariously when daddy would spit out some seawater or we would jump over a particularly big wave.

He is much more adventurous now with his words, and is mispronouncing them in cute ways. “Domino” becomes “donimo,” “magnifying glass” turns into “magsdifying glass” and he remembers our trip two months ago to Discovery Place in Charlotte as our trip to “Excovery Place.”

Diane’s parents and my parents vacationed with us in the beach house, and it was good to spend some time with my mom and dad. With my dad, it’s always good to discuss work, being able to take advantage of the common understanding of that framework and responsibility. He can be sparing with his words at times, but I trust his intentions implicitly and he is an encourager at heart, so his words of motivation have added weight, nevermind the fact they’re coming from my dad. And my mom and I always talk about anything and everything. She brought a stack of literature to the beach, much of which Diane and I plowed through: the latest Newsweek and Weekly Standard were quickly dispatched, along with a neat little book called Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar. I almost finished, at long last, Sophie’s World and inspired by recent “encounter” with Flannery O’Connor, I started Mystery and Manners.

It’s hard (for me) to believe how much I used to write. I was looking through old journal entries last night and remembered my old quasi-rule of thumb: On its default journal page, LiveJournal displays the past 20 entries, and if the last entry on the page was dated more than a month prior, I wasn’t writing enough. In other words, I always tried for 20 entries in the past 30 days. Didn’t hold to it often, but I did get a nice sense of satisfaction from it when the criteria were met.

I used to reflect a lot. Reading some of the entries definitely leaves me with the impression that I spent a good deal of thought time in the past. As if to confirm that notion, a few evenings ago I remember looking at myself in the bathroom mirror and thinking how my existence before the past year and a half seems very much like another life. The immediacy of life, the consideration of the future with not just my own but three other lives in the mix are the sensations that preside–as they should be. My life is more dense now… Rather than jumping around from the future to the past to the present in my mind all the time, my consciousness is concentrated on the present. The days tick over inexorably, but at a slower rate than they really ever have. I’m grateful for that. And I am glad that I do have as much recorded as I do.

Marriage and parenthood are arresting things. I was listening, as I often do during the workday, to Over the Rhine, and thinking of Diane and her beautiful singing voice that I have heard far too little of. My wife is a concert-quality singer, and a wonderful writer, public speaker, apologist, among so many other things. By the grace of God I can draw well, write well, organize my thoughts well, fly a plane, fix a car… And before all that we’re mommy and daddy to two little children. We get used to seeing each other only as parents sometimes, and that certainly is our highest role in this season, but when I take a moment to step back and see my wife for all that she is… We put these abilities on hold, sometimes indefinitely, with the hope that we will someday pick them up again, but with the realization that we may never. I know God allowed me to acquire those abilities for a purpose, possibly unseen, and I hope I will be able to use them again, but… After all’s said and done it’s really a matter of changing the paradigm from either/or to yes/and when it comes to integrating parenting and our talents. I have a feeling this is something I’ll be reflecting on for years to come.

My dad and I wired up much of the kitchen yesterday. It’s a small amount of visual progress (the addition of outlet boxes, various wires) but it still produces a sense of satisfaction when observed. The added bonus is that I’m not nearly as tired and sore today as I was last Monday, after the weekend in which we ripped everything out.

Charlie and I enabled sharing on our respective iTunes here at work. What this means is that while we work, we have access to all the music and podcasts on each others’ computers. I’ve been enjoying his stash of podcasts quite a bit. He has a “Time Magazine’s All-Time 100 Best Albums” ‘cast with some interesting selections (Black Sabbath and the Beastie Boys?). I was pleased, however, with the inclusion of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On and Paul Simon’s Graceland. And it piqued my interest about some artists I hadn’t heard of before, or hadn’t paid attention to, among them Robert Johnson (influential blues guitarist) and Patti Smith.

* * * * * *

It’s later in the day and I’m here at home, putting off cleaning the rest of the kitchen as Diane reads the latest World on the bed and Luke chirps from his room after having been in there for the past hour and a half without falling asleep. The fan is running for Diane’s benefit and in a rare moment I caught her saying “This fan is really loud.”

I remember the sky early this morning during my run, how the lowest clouds were the red of an underlying fire as the sun rose, darkening in contiguous bands until they ended abruptly in a thunderhead. It rained this morning, a fluke, though not unwelcome thunderstorm that tempered the rest of the day. I catch fragments of other lives in sensations here and there: a fleeting whiff of a pine tree from the park in Fréjus or just the quality of light filtering through the leaves will remind me of an afternoon at the Col de Vence. After years of consciously training myself to catch these subtle sense-prompted memories like butterflies in a net, it happens so instinctively now that it borders on the white noise we have to train our senses to filter out, like extraneous stimuli when driving or the feel of the clothes against my skin. We just don’t think about these things.

Diane and I are avid readers of World magazine, a weekly Christian news magazine with top-notch reporting, columnists and commentary. Their annual “books issue” came out a little less than a month ago. In it, along with the book reviews, was a faux interview with Christian novelist Flannery O’Connor pieced together from passages from her 1969 book Mystery and Manners. It is presented as a response to a reader’s request for advice concerning fiction writing as a believer. The mindset conveyed by O’Connor is strikingly Schaefferian and a fantastic reply to those wondering about the attitudes we, as believers, ought to take towards the arts in general. Some excerpts:

WORLD: Why do you call lots of religious novels “sorry”?

O’CONNOR: The sorry religious novel comes about when the writer supposes that because of his belief, he is somehow dispensed from the obligation to penetrate concrete reality. He will think that the eyes of the Church or of the Bible or of his particular theology have already done the seeing for him, and that his business is to rearrange this essential vision into satisfying patterns … by beginning with Christian principles and finding the life that will illustrate them … The result is another addition to that large body of pious trash for which we have so long been famous.

WORLD: Some Christians object to showing evil and violence on the grounds that the good must be emphasized because the good is the ultimate reality?

O’CONNOR: The ultimate reality has been weakened in human beings as a result of the Fall, and it is this weakened life that we see.

WORLD: Some of our readers who don’t like writing about adultery or murder quote the admonition in Philippians 4 to think about what is good. Should novelists avert their eyes from what is bad?

O’CONNOR: The novelist is required to open his eyes on the world around him and look. If what he sees is not highly edifying, he is still required to look. . . . What he sees at all times is fallen man perverted by false philosophies. Is he to reproduce this? Or is he to change what he sees and make it, instead of what it is, what in the light of faith he thinks it ought to be . . . to ‘tidy up reality’?

WORLD: I think I know how you answer those questions . . .

O’CONNOR: [The Christian fiction writer] is entirely free to observe. He feels no call to take on the duties of God or to create a new universe. He feels perfectly free to look at the one we already have and to show exactly what he sees. He feels no need to apologize for the ways of God to man or to avoid looking at the ways of man to God. For him, to ‘tidy up reality’ is certainly to succumb to the sin of pride.

WORLD: Is tidied-up writing also weak writing?

O’CONNOR: The fiction writer has to make a whole world believable by making every part and aspect of it believable. [He has to be concerned] with the evil, and not only with the evil, but also with that aspect which appears neither good nor evil, which is not yet Christianized.

WORLD: But there are dangers in this.

O’CONNOR: It is very possible that what is vision and truth to the writer is temptation and sin to the reader. There is every danger that in writing what he sees, the novelist will be corrupting some ‘little one,’ and better a millstone were tied around his neck. . . . This is no superficial problem, [but] to force this kind of total responsibility on the novelist is to burden him with the business that belongs only to God.

WORLD: So what do good writers do when they see the need to describe but want to minimize the anger of corruption?

O’CONNOR: [The good writer should] take great pains to control every excess, everything that does not contribute to the central meaning and design. He cannot indulge in sentimentality, in propagandizing, or in pornography and create a work of art, for all these things are excesses.

WORLD: Should readers have obligations as well?

O’CONNOR: [Some readers] open a novel and, discovering the presence of an arm or a leg, piously close the book. We are always demanding that the writer be less explicit in regard to natural matters or the concrete particulars of sin. [Such readers] are over-conscious of what they consider to be obscenity in modern fiction for the very simple reason that in reading a book, they have nothing else to look for. They are totally unconscious of the design, the tone, the intention, the meaning, or even the truth of what they have in hand. They don’t see the book in a perspective that would reduce every part of it to its proper place in the whole.

It’s an answer to my frequent railings against the Christian music industry and my concern with our response to cultural tides in general.

I scanned the “new releases” on the iTunes store last night, didn’t recognize a single one (I haven’t listened to mainstream radio in months) and decided I am okay with that. Maybe this is where my music taste freezes. But more likely is that it will continue, just self-propelled (as it always has been, really), rather than depending on the radio to suggest what I should like. It does mean, however, that I will become something less than a pop culture expert. This is an easy sacrifice. As I told Diane yesterday during a similar conversation, the past 40-odd years have left us such a dense collection of music that I think we could mine it at the rate we do for the rest of our lives and be quite content.

I have desk drawer here at work filled (well, not filled, but you know) with bits and fragments of potential entries, snippets from songs I’m in the process of listening to and beginnings of poems. I did have one idea for a poem’s “gimmick:” to play with verb tense throughout, (apparently) randomly selecting tenses to give an impression that the poem is stretched out in time, or at least that the emotions expressed are more than just a momentary point of contact between the mind and the page (or screen). It happened when I was listening to Over the Rhine’s “Suitcase” earlier in the week. I was arrested with the thought that not only do I think the song is beautiful now, I will always think the song is beautiful. There are some like that, that if you let them will always make you ache no matter what station in life you find yourself.

It’s been raining most evenings lately. The day gets hot and sticky until the clouds make it dark as evening around 5 p.m. The intensity varies from day to day, but we will generally get some rain. It’s making the backyard grass look more lush, no mean feat.

We destroyed the kitchen last weekend. Totally. The only things left are the section of counter immediately over the dishwasher, the sink, the stove and the fridge. New cabinets are coming in soon and my father, father-in-law and me not only ripped out the existing cabinetry, we tore down one of the pantry walls and put up drywall in its place. It was an exhausting but productive day.

We saw Transformers on Saturday. It was a mess of a movie–too long, with far too much material with sexual overtones for its intended audience, not to mention the robots were just…visually busy. When watching a fight scene it was difficult to distinguish the debris from the robots themselves. There was a lot of transforming from the vehicles to the robots and back, which is a draw, but not enough to offset the film’s flaws. I’ll stick to the original animated series, thanks.

Primer, on the other hand, was brilliant. I can’t remember having to work so hard to grasp the fundamental mechanisms behind a film’s plot, and I can’t remember having so much fun doing it. I can’t honestly say I understood everything the first time through, but the engineering-ish dialogue, the visuals, everything… As I told Diane later, the movie just made all the right synapses fire in my brain. Recommended.

Coming up to the big beach trip in a couple of weeks. We’re both really looking forward to it, though the interplay of all the families involved is a big unknown. The environment, hopefully, will help smooth over any interpersonal bumpiness.

Life here at ImageWorks is settling down into a routine. I’m “putting down roots” here at my desk, which in essence means bringing in cds to copy them to the computer, putting up pictures of the fam (which was actually done quite a while ago) and personalizing my desktop scheme and screensaver. Exciting… But on a more serious note, it is nice to be in a place where I feel invested and where I feel I have potential to really become an integral part of the company. Case in point: there was a meeting with a potential client this morning (Sealy mattresses) at which I provided all the materials and just the quality of the interchange made me feel like I was really being taken seriously on a level I haven’t felt before. It’s a blessing, makes my job much more satisfying and bodes well for the long term.

My boss is out for the week, vacationing at the beach. The pace here at work is a little more relaxed but no less busy. I’m designing merchandising prototypes for several Fisher-Price toys, along with displays for QuickBooks (financial software) and other odds and ends.

Things with Luke are improving. He went through a rough spell behaviorally over the past couple of months, but I think he’s finally beginning to come to terms with who his parents are and that they expect obedience, respect and deference to their authority. He’s learning us, and we’re learning him. A common saying in parenting circles is that you have to choose your battles–you can’t go head-to-head over literally everything. I’ve been finding not only that to be true, but also how to recognize when the battles that I do wage have been won. He is a strong-willed child, as were Diane and I, and we’re learning the point at which his will has been tamed in particular situations. It makes for less on-edge and frustrated parents; that’s for sure.

And we love him beyond words. He is not only genuinely reading, but also writing and can form remarkably clear letters and words for his age. He imagines, remembers and pretends, laughs with his parents over silly words and absurd situations, builds tinkertoys and goes for walks with his daddy, helps mommy cook and paint and reads books with both of us. His gestures and mannerisms have more inertia behind them as his body grows, and he looks less and less like a baby and more and more like the boy he is. It’s wonderful to witness.

• Just put this on our queue recently: Primer. I cannot wait to see this film. How it slipped under my radar back in 2004 I’ve no idea, but I’m looking forward to it now.
• Group policy health insurance is a nice thing to have. We took Luke to the doctor last week for a persistent cough he’s had, he received a couple of prescriptions and now it’s almost totally gone. That said, vacation Bible school this week will probably counteract that, but we’re hoping for the best.
• We’re almost done painting the dining room and the kitchen a lovely shade of green. Diane has done an amazing amount of work and the walls look stellar.

Fixed the lawnmower Saturday. It’s an old model, and was in the shed when we bought the house. It has a couple of issues, one being a hot start problem, and it tends to sputter and die if tilted to the right. I correctly hypothesized the latter problem to be an issue with the carburetor, and more specifically the float bowl needle. After removing the whole assembly and hosing everything down with almost a whole can of carb cleaner, the lawnmower ran perfectly–better than it ever has, in fact. It was a real confidence booster, especially given the disconnect between my self-perceived mechanical aptitude and what usually happens. In other words, my “mechanical past,” as it were, is more checkered than I’d care to admit. Oddly, it was good for Diane too, since a fiasco with the lawnmower meant that I likely would have been, um, “strongly encouraged” to take the Volvo to a shop instead of replacing the front brake rotors and pads myself. Performed that task last night and it was refreshing, albeit tiring, to have it done and the shudder under braking completely disappear. Little mechanical victories go a long way, and while my overall fix/break record may be hovering somewhere around .500, events like those this weekend are great.

Been listening to a lot of Everything but the Girl lately, specifically their late-’90s album Temperamental. Talk about electronic-tinged music totally devoid of the coldness that pervades the genre–this is it. Many of their songs have a personal, autobiographical quality that makes them quite accessible and affecting. “Hatfield 1980” details what I surmise was an encounter with violent crime by one of the band members, and the introspective comments near the end of the song resonate and allow the song to encompass a wider scope than merely the detached account of an event. A lot of the lyricism reminds me, weirdly, of U2’s Achtung Baby, in the sense that universal observations are made through personal narratives and snippets. Great album.

Visited the airport yesterday again. I sat on the bench outside the flight school and ate what was left of my lunch after a distressingly long trip to the “nearest” grocery store. Got visited by (what I assume was) one of the administrators of the flight school, making sure I was really just eating lunch and wasn’t up to no good. The mention of friendship with Jethro, previously a regular there, and a private pilot’s license from Sugar Valley seemed to satisfy her. A Raytheon Hawker 800 taxied by about 30 feet in front of me, trundled down to the end of the runway and took off, hurtling by at around 120 mph while its landing gear folded away into its wings. The power the plane’s two little engines crank out is amazing, to accelerate such a massive thing to such a speed and enable it to lift off the ground.

Later, a Bonanza A36 taxied into a parking space and cut off its engine. I craned to see who would emerge, and it turned out to be a couple of middle-aged businessmen. They could have been golfing buddies. I’m not sure quite what I expected.

I have a full-time job here at ImageWorks, with full benefits. I accepted the position yesterday after a slight improvement of the offer from last Thursday. It’s a relief, and is certainly wonderful to have settled. This is a great place to work, with good people who expect a lot from their employees, but also treat them well. The work ethic here is one of the biggest draws. God will do what He wills, but we are so grateful for His provision in everything, and it’s nice to be able to plan things into the foreseeable future with the job in mind. Thank all of you for your prayers.

The birds are gone. We saw them leave Thursday. Diane commented that it is remarkable to have seen the whole process, from nest construction to little eggs to tiny chicks to larger chicks and frenzied mother to adolescent birds, trying their wings for the first time. We walked outside and there they were, huddled on top of the flower basket, as if waiting for some impetus to fly. They saw us, cheeped and fluttered down to the floor of the patio. Their wings weren’t totally capable of supporting them and they hopped into a corner, afraid of the monstrous humans clearly trespassing on their territory. They eventually worked themselves into a corner, and their mother returned and guided them off the porch to a nearby bush for protection. Oddly enough, we’re actually experiencing some empty nest syndrome after having witnessed their entire lives…

Trite as it sounds, I’ve gone from famine to feast with job offers. Almost simultaneously Thursday afternoon, I received job offers from ImageWorks (my current employer) and Davis Furniture. The pay rates for both are good and the benefit packages are great as well. It’s a big answer to prayer. I want to stay at my current job but made them aware of the (higher) offer from Davis in hopes that they will up the ante a little bit. I find out tomorrow. But either way, we will be insured and in a more permanent place than we were. Praise God.

I’ve been listening to an aviation-related podcast lately called “Airspeed,” hosted by a pilot up in Michigan named Steve Tupper. He has his private license, same as me, and is busily working on his instrument rating. He posts about a wide variety of general aviation-related topics. Some particularly noteworthy ones are his play-by-play description of an instrument approach and some thoughts on a budding pilot’s first solo. I’ve enjoyed them, and they really have helped whet my appetite (as if it needed it) for getting back up in the sky. I visited the Winston-Salem airport over lunch a couple of Fridays ago, chatted with one of the instructors there and just gawked at the business planes for a little bit. I called Jethro, a pilot friend of mine I’ve done a good bit of flying with, and hopefully we’ll go up this week sometime. He’s working on his flight instructor rating and regularly flies a Piper Arrow, something with a bit more power than the little 172 I trained on, so in his words I might get some “retrac time” (retrac = retractable landing gear aircraft). And now that the job situation is settling (my self-imposed restriction), a visit to the local Civil Air Patrol squadron may be in order. Exciting stuff.

Diane and I watched The Fountain Friday night. I had been eager to see it for several months, ever since a discussion at work with a fellow film buff. I hadn’t seen any of Darren Aronofsky’s other work (nor do I want to see Requiem for a Dream), but having heard the director’s penchant for taking on challenging material, read the description of the movie and seen the trailer, my interest was definitely piqued.

The film was visually beautiful; that much I can say. The cinematography was arresting, consisting almost entirely of symmetrical zooms and detail shots, with little side-to-side panning, and the way Aronofsky used all the filmmaking tools at his disposal (visuals, sound, editing, narrative, etc) to advance his theme was admirable. I love films that are fleshed out by more than just rote dialogue. One scene in particular was remarkable: Hugh Jackman’s character experiences a traumatic event, is shown leaving the building and passing through scenes of incredible cacophony, but all we hear is a subtle heartbeat. It illustrated his character’s introversion and devastation very well.

The film takes place in three time periods, ~1500, ~2000 and ~2500 A.D. and scenes from all three are interwoven. Themes like death as it relates to the nature of humanity, eternal life, creation, and reincarnation are central. It really is a grab bag of worldviews and philosophies and demonstrates many things, among them how desperate we are to answer these questions in our lives, especially when things we care about are at stake, and certainly also that pure materialism does not, and will never fully explain who we are and where we came from.

There is an affecting love story central to the film. One could almost call it the vehicle through which its metaphysical statements are made. The characters experience the whole gamut of emotions and in a way our ability to grasp the philosophical implications of the film is tied to our ability to relate to the characters. A.O. Scott of the New York Times makes a good observation on that point:

The director gives his main actors very little to do. Since their job is to embody a paradoxical romantic axiom — lovers may die, but love never does — they are trapped within a narrow range of emotions. Ms. Weisz’s role is to glow and sigh, while Mr. Jackman registers various forms of anguish and desperation. The intensity of their feeling never breaks the surface, and the frame encases them like a vitrine. It’s hard to sympathize with their hunger to overcome death, since neither one is credibly alive to begin with.

Interesting film. Diane and I agreed that it’s one Schaeffer would have watched. Definitely representative of the prevailing philosophical trends of the times, and worth watching if for no other reason than that.

“Her children rise up and bless her; her husband also, and he praises her.”

I will praise my wife. It’s been a long holiday weekend, but a good one, with lots of time outside and out and about. Luke got sick last night, though, his first real vomiting spell, and Diane was, and is amazing. She showed such unending and totally selfless concern and love as he threw up every 30-45 minutes over a several hour span. I tagged along and provided what meager help I could, but she demonstrated motherly love far beyond what I could ever (and rightfully so, I think) muster. But I still stand amazed and I will still praise her. Ordeals like that prove, as if it needed more confirmation, that however she may deny it while in the throes of pregnancy, her beauty transcends her entire character. She is worthy of honor, and I am so thankful for her and pleased with her.

A couple of months ago Diane hung flower baskets from preexisting hooks on our front porch. They really liven up the front of the house and add a lot to its attractiveness. Recently, a bird family has taken up residence in one of the baskets. We discovered the nest, and soon after found some eggs in it. Based on their coloring and patterns we found we had an Eastern Towhee family. We’ve kept an eye on the eggs since (as much as we can without frightening the mother bird) and a few days ago they hatched. Five baby birds were alternately sleeping and cheeping furiously whenever the mother was around. Diane expressed concern that when they decided to leave the nest, the concrete floor of the porch might be a hazard, and that concern was shown yesterday to be well-founded. Luke and I decided to play in the yard for a little while before supper, and as soon as I walked out the door I looked over and saw a baby bird struggling on the porch’s grey surface. Its little feather-less body and still-shut eyes were the most forlorn sight imaginable. I immediately asked Diane for a paper towel and scooped it up, placing it back in the nest. Diane found a blanket and we put it underneath the flower basket area. It was a moment of minor panic in the afternoon. I hope the birds leave under the auspices of their parents next time, when they’re ready. Goodness.

I love podcasts. I listen to them often here at work through iTunes and have been addicted lately to “Travel with Rick Steves.” It’s a quality program and full of a lot of insight about travel around Europe and the world at large. This morning I was searching the directory for a little variety and came across a whole swath of aviation-related podcasts. And…here’s one about aviation in French. Whoa. Like I said, this is technological progress I can relate to.

Diane and I were talking a few nights ago about music. Our conversation invariably turns to classic rock and touches on, if not a direct comparison of the two bands, at least a mention or two of Led Zeppelin and the Beatles, of which Diane and I are avid fans, respectively. The night in question, though, we branched out, started talking about the Doors and, in doing so, agreed that their music hasn’t aged nearly as well as LZ’s or the Beatles’ (the latter in particular post-“Ticket to Ride”). We agreed that the band was overrated and while being able to write anything coherent while on acid is impressive, Jim Morrison’s influence and work was overrated. We concurred that his legacy is a classic example of the “James Dean effect,” or the act of over-praising the work of an artist of any discipline instead of admitting their appeal comes mainly from the fact that they are just really good-looking. People don’t want to admit (to themselves too) their fandom is based on something as shallow as physical attraction, so they inflate the artist’s contributions, however meager, in their discipline of choice until they seem more well-rounded. James Dean wasn’t the first to produce this effect but he seems like a good archetype. As mentioned, Jim Morrison was another, as was definitely Kurt Cobain. A young death isn’t necessarily a prerequisite, but it helps. And it doesn’t mean the artists in question are completely devoid of talent, just that the fascination lavished upon them passed into the realm of being at least a teensy bit unmerited.

Latest musical interest: The Weepies. Dumb band name, sure, but as in the case of the Beatles, the music seems to transcend whatever lameness is bound up in the name. “World Spins Madly On” is particularly noteworthy.

Been rereading Mere Christianity. It’s a more compelling read now that I’ve dabbled in the history of philosophy and learned about the thinkers who pushed these divergent trains of thought to their end. If nothing else, they tried to craft a consistent worldview based on their assumptions (erroneous they might have been), which contrasts with the piecemeal, pragmatic shards of thought we assemble to make sense of things in our day to day. In Mere Christianity, Lewis lays out the reasonable case for Christianity from the ground up, making observations about the world and defusing potential objections. And many of the objections have the flavor of something a Locke or a Rousseau might say, or something we might say, not having thought through the implications of our statement as thoroughly as those men did. So not only does it help place Lewis’s thinking on a continuum of philosophical thought (which is not to imply parity with the those who preceeded him) and understand the foundations of his defenses better, it also provides a point of contact between other worldviews and the one carefully laid out in the book. In other words, having a knowledge of Lewis’s apologetics, should someone approach me with one of the counterclaims he volunteers, I can respond with something to the effect of, “So what you’re saying is…” and more easily trace the implications of their statement. It’s whetted my appetite for more original authors.

The interview went okay. Having recently learned that my true strengths and interests lie in (imagine this) the thing I went to college for 4 years to study–design–the revelation has been liberating and confining all at once. It’s liberating because I don’t have to present myself as a jack-of-all-trades in job interviews, since while I do have experience with engineering and prototyping, I am far from an engineer or a fabricator. I am free to be unapologetic about my penchant for the conceptual side of industrial design. But it is confining in that it reduces the range of job options, at least nominally.

But the interview was passable. My interviewer was quite affable but the place as a whole seems like a worse fit than here, at ImageWorks. This really is a great situation (how God has abundantly provided): 10 minute commute, family people, great work ethic, talented folks, varied and interesting work that I enjoy very much. We’ll see what comes of this.

Sometimes I feel like I should have accepted the interview offer at Indian Motorcycle. They recently opened a plant in King’s Mountain, NC, about half an hour west of Charlotte, and while the initial phone call was quite enthusiastic, I ruled them out as too far of a commute. But it would have been in a beautiful part of the state, that’s for sure. And moving… Well, moving’s moving.

Diane and I have been avidly following the French presidential election process, and were excited that “Sarko” won. His prioritizing of the integration of Muslims into French society is a very clear-headed approach, one that other European countries will hopefully follow. And while some of his other policies aren’t so commendable, he seems like the right man for the job. We have faith that he is, given God’s sovereignty over the affairs of men and the leaders of men. We’ll be praying for him.

Drove to the “car store” (i.e. Advance Auto) earlier with Luke. I had to recycle a couple of containers of used oil from the cars’ oil changes this weekend, something Luke loves to observe (the pouring of the oil into the tank in the back of the store is a big draw). He also knows that when we go to the car store and he has a good attitude, he gets a quarter to put into one of the candy machines at the front of the store.

He was happy as a clam the whole time, as usual, and then came time to get the candy. I gave him the quarter, he danced around excitedly as he decided which machine to deposit his hard-earned quarter in. He chose a gumball over the Runts, put the quarter in the slot and turned the knob. Out came a purple gumball. He was happy with it and started eating it as we walked to the car. But about halfway to the car, he decided it was “shoowie” (our family word for yucky or dirty). He got agitated as he tried to wipe the taste off his tongue, and he handed me the remains of the gumball. I threw them on the ground (out of his sight), calmed him down and strapped him in the car. But I remembered I had another quarter in my pocket, and after explaining to Luke very clearly it was the ONLY time I would do this, we returned to the store and repeated the candy selection ritual. He decided to give the gumball machine another try, put in his quarter, and turned the knob. I had a premonition, and it proved true–another purple gumball. His face fell, he said, “No thank you” in his way and tried to push it back up the chute. I felt his disappointment but kept the gumball, explaining to him that sometimes these things happen and it’s okay, and that he hadn’t done anything wrong.

We returned to the car and I put him in his car seat. He asked for the gumball and I gave it to him, ready for another minor crisis. We drove the long way home with the sunroof open and to my surprise, he ate most of it, determined to consume his candy even if he didn’t like it.

Going for a walk with Luke is great for meeting people in the neighborhood. Walks are one of Luke’s most favorite things to do, so we’ve met quite a few of our neighbors. They’re a diverse bunch–young, old, all different walks of life and incomes. There’s a retired couple across the street, an older lady and her son next door and a mom and her children on the other side. Two houses down are a twentysomething couple and a roommate, and both the husband and the roommate are car enthusiasts. Justin (the husband) has a modified Mini Cooper and Brian (the roommate) drives a ’69 Camaro. They were installing a lip spoiler on the trunklid of the ’69 as Luke and I were walking yesterday, and we stopped and chatted for a little bit. It feels good to talk cars, even if only for a while. The fact that I had helped with John’s ’69 Camaro provided a neat common ground to start from.

I guest-taught Sunday School yesterday morning. We’re going through 1 Peter, and my passage was chapter 3. The couple who oversees the class allows many guest leaders in an effort to cultivate teaching abilities that will be brought to bear later on. Diane and I had only been attending this particular class for a few months, so I was honored that they would ask me to guest-lead so soon. I was nervous, but Diane’s even keel and great advice about my lesson planning helped me through. And the class makes it easy–they’re all young married couples and aren’t bashful about engaging in discussion. I didn’t speechify too much but organized the time around a series of questions about the passage, an approach that seemed to work well. I told Diane last night that I’m not too proud to admit that despite my typical doom-and-gloom apprehensiveness beforehand, I was completely in the wrong, had a lot of fun and would gladly do it again. God continually shows His strength in the midst of my weakness.

Got an interview for a permanent position with Davis Furniture on Wednesday. We’ll see what they say. I broke the news of the pending interview to my supervisor earlier this morning and his eyes became wide with mild alarm. It’s not like we didn’t broach the subject of a possible third-party interview when my contract was renewed, but it’s clear they didn’t apprehend how serious I was about it… We shall see.

Do you ever get the sense that there’s an inevitability to those things which eventually become your favorites? I do. Maybe it’s just a function of my personality and my penchant for systematizing my world, but when I view a painting or a film that is to become a favorite, I have the distinct sense that they could not have done it any other way. Or when I hear a song that I grow to like very much, even the first time I’ve heard it, I feel like I’ve heard it before. It’s similar to déja vu, but instead of a mild mysticism it’s an overwhelming sense of purpose. To give a cheesy example, listening to Amy Grant’s “I Will Remember You” over the weekend, all the elements of the song have the quality of inevitability–there’s something in me that could anticipate the melody or the choices of instrumentation even if I hadn’t heard the song before. It explains why a song like Bach’s “Variations on the Kanon” is a favorite–there’s a deliberateness about the sequence of notes that aligns with something in me. I think we develop a personal logic about things of beauty in our lives. It makes me think the subconscious and other parts of us we consider fundamentally irrational might not be so, or they are at least organized according to their own native teleology, running in parallel with our conscious mind. We are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Still here. Tried to start a post last night but it fizzled. Something about the keys clicking away in the darkness, Diane already in bed, made me a tad self-conscious, hardly a mood condusive to writing.

Eventful and uneventful couple of weeks. Luke’s been learning a lot the hard way lately. He accidentally spatula’ed some piping hot pumpkin pie onto his foot last weekend, and last Friday ingested an undetermined but large enough amount of children’s Robutussin to cause mild alarm and precipitate a short trip to the hospital. But he shrugs it all off–the medicine didn’t even cause any discernable effects. He is more responsive every day as his world expands at a rapid pace, and he thinks well-nigh visibly, working things out. He has mastered phonics and with a little coaching can work out most words on his own. He certainly understands the principle behind the endeavor and it excites him to be able to figure things out. If only he were as excited about being potty-trained… Sigh.

Still here at ImageWorks. As I mentioned in a previous post, they decided to extend my contract by another three months. Less than ideal, but it’s a steady (and good) job in the meantime. Still trolling for permanency, and I have a good chance of an interview for a position here. It’s a longer commute and less design-y, but if nothing else if they make me an offer I can leverage that with ImageWorks in hopes of a counteroffer. I don’t like to have to do that–companies should know themselves well enough to know whether or not they need help–but I have little recourse and a fair amount of urgency. But we’re well.

Some days it’s difficult to bear in mind a longer-range view of life. Espicially with a child (and another on the way), as Diane says, life is very daily and, dreamer and closet visionary that I am, the encroaching myopia can be hard to clear. Having married a fellow dreamer helps, though–she won’t immediately dismiss my musings amid the tide of the day-to-day, but dreams with me. Indeed, when married not only is it the only way to dream (together), but I don’t want to keep these things to myself. I want to share them with her, and doing so emphasizes our unity and closeness and by association the design and care God has vested in marriage. Bottom up theology? No–we wouldn’t have an idea of intimacy or community if He had not placed it in us as a reflection of His own character.

my mind’s distracted and diffused
my thoughts are many miles away

Accompanied Diane and Luke to an ultrasound for our baby today, and… it’s a GIRL! Diane cried; she was overjoyed, and I am very happy too. I’m so excited about all the things we will get to do together, about learning and growing and protecting and interacting and just meeting this new eternal soul with hopes and dreams and fears and loves just like the rest of us. It made it very real. I was in a daze all day and was grateful for the slow day at work, which gave me more time to reflect. We had already (sort of) chosen a name a month or two ago on the way back from a trip to Charlotte. We didn’t even seriously consider boys’ names and jokingly felt today that it was a little prophetic that we didn’t. Barring any last minute changes of heart, her name will be Penelope Wynn (“Penny” for short). Diane has an affinity for Greek names and I love the mythological Penelope’s character, her love for her husband and the faithfulness she has become a paragon of. As for “Wynn,” it is Welsh in origin and connotes “fair, pure, joy.” We’re excited. Our little family grows.

so much time gets lost in my mind
but I know now what I must rely on

Completely exhausted after a long weekend and two successive nights of sub-par sleep. Diane and I have been mightily congested, whether from allergies or colds or a combination, and it’s not fun. I think it’s truly a sign that we are relatively newlyweds that I can make comments like, “In five years we’ll be remembering this as the first time we got sick together.” Heh. Luke is well, though, which mitigates the situation somewhat.

The wind blows in fearsome gusts today, almost doubling trees over. It can’t help but remind me of days with similar conditions a little over a year ago, when I would drive down to the airport, even though flying was out of the question, and do some cross-country planning or study inside. I remember a couple of times walking down to the shelter under which the planes were stored. They were securely tethered although still exposed to the wind, and I could hear the creaks and strains of their wings against the ropes, and even of the shelter’s steel roof. I would walk into the hanger too and pace around the airplanes stored in there, some more intact than others as they underwent maintenance, running my fingers along the leading edges of the wings and sitting in the cockpit if the doors were unlocked and the seats still present. It would feel more like a past life except for the copious numbers of airplane books that litter our home. There is a longing, but it is a content and patient longing. God provides opportunities and opens and closes doors. I’m so grateful that He does not give us what we think we need, but what we truly need.