Worth a short read...

Here is a bit of wisdom from a writer and teacher that I admire, Edward Fudge.

"If there ever was a time for turning our eyes and hearts to God, current events scream that this is that time."

What he said.

"The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us."

- Paul Valery

Required Reading

I’m going to instruct you to grab a box of tissues, and head over to Angie Smith’s blog on the life of her daughter, Audrey Caroline. This is not a request, but a serious charge to have your faith both shaken and strengthened by the story. Start from the first post back in January of this year, and read your way to the latest posts, from today, Audrey’s birth day.

Angie’s words of pain and struggle and faith have blown me away as I read all of her posts today. This is a woman whose faith in God is so strong, it makes me feel as if I can trust God even more than I ever have before, even in the face of the worst kinds of challenges.

Enough of my words. Go read Angie’s. I’ve got some praying to do.

An Open Letter to My Sister-In-Law

Dear Karla,
        First of all, I would like to thank you for the very nice shirts which you have given me for the past three Christmases. It is obvious that not only are you an excellent seamstress, but you also know my tastes in clothing quite well. The style of the shirts is perfect for me, the fit is excellent and quite comfortable, and the choice of materials has always been fantastic.
        I certainly don’t want you to get the idea that I am not grateful for the shirts; quite to the contrary, they are among my very favorite items of clothing; I wear them frequently, and almost always get great comments on them from others. I do hope to receive such shirts as gifts for as long as you enjoy making them, as for as long as giving them as gifts keeps you from turning toward unfortunate gifts, such as soap-on-a-rope.
        However, I feel the need to point out a disturbing trend that I have noticed with regard to their design. It is relatively minor, and I hope that I do not offend by pointing it out. I do not mean to criticize, but to state the observation, and hope that it is merely coincidental, and not indicative of a greater trend.
        The first shirt you gave me, for Christmas 2005,with the eye-popping pattern of alternating gold, purple, magenta, and cyan stripes, with small stars among them, had two chest pockets, one on each side. In 2006, the shirt I received for Christmas had swirling blues and whites, and it had a single chest pocket, on the left side, as is quite common. This past Christmas, the shirt again had wonderful blues and whites, in stripes and swirls, and had no pockets. Two pockets, one pocket, no pockets.
        Please do not misunderstand; it is not the absence of pockets on the most recent gift that is of concern. I don’t have to have pockets on my shirts, though at least one is nice to have from time to time. I am, instead, somewhat unsettled by the trend in the decreasing amount of fabric being used to make the shirts.
        Again, the shirts have all been generously sized for my more-than-ample frame; none of them are uncomfortable when I am sitting, and none of them is in danger of losing buttons for having to stretch across my mid-section. If the amount of material were to decrease along the trend shown by the previous shirts, I am sure that you would not skimp in this way; neither you nor anybody else wishes to see my white belly peeking out between the buttons of a shirt that is too tight for me.
        No, I am more concerned that the decrease in material will be evidenced in other unfortunate ways. If, for instance, you were to change to a tab collar instead of the traditional men’s collar, it would lend an air of unfortunate formality to a design that is quite casual and to my liking. Or, as another example, you were to make future shirts sleeveless, that would, of course, require me to either wear a t-shirt underneath, and roll up a pack of cigarettes in one of the t-shirt sleeves, or to get a rather large tattoo on each arm. Being a fan of neither smoking nor of tattoos (and the unfortunate encounters with tattoo artists required to get them), that would be distressing for me. For the sake of family harmony, and to honor your gift, I would, of course, do one or the other, but it would be a burden which would mar the spirit of giving.
        Ultimately, the trend toward using less material would, of course, lead to you giving me a tie. This would, in my mind, be unacceptable. I do not wear ties. I refuse to wear them. They serve no practical purpose, they are uncomfortable, they have the unfortunate tendency to get caught in paper shredders, and they bear a frightening resemblance to a hangman’s noose. Were you to give me such a gift, it could permanently mar our relationship, and since you are married to my brother, would escalate the tension in an already rancorous sibling rivalry, leading me to stay awake nights coming up with ways to continue to prove my superiority. You wouldn’t want that on your conscience, now, would you?
        Again, I do not wish to be considered ungrateful. I do love the shirts you have given, and admire your talent for making them. I hope you will give proper consideration to my concerns.
        Sincerely,
                Your Brother-in-Law, Tim Castle

Guess where I am?

This explains why I've been craving fish sticks!

Natalie

Hamming it up at the San Diego Zoo.

Somethin' doesn't add up...

Have you ever noticed that the people who "suggest" that the music at church is too loud are the ones who wear hearing aids? Seems like they would be the ones who could handle that better than the rest of us. It also seems like in churches where "women's participation" (i.e. including women in the active roles of Sunday morning worship) is being discussed, the ones who are most opposed to it are usually women.

I just have no patience for intolerance!

This pretty much sums up how I feel about politics

"There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president."

- Kurt Vonnegut

Your car needs a power-up

We’ve all gotten used to the12-volt “cigarette lighter” power ports in our cars. If you’ve seen a car built before 1995, you may even have seen one with an actual cigarette lighter, instead of just the little cap over the top. They’re still in our cars because we’ve come to need them to charge our cel phones, iPods, GPS devices, radar/laser detectors, portable DVD players, and all the electronics we tote around with us these days. Most new cars have more than one; our van has three, two in the front, and one in the back.

I’ve noticed that a lot of cars are also packing built-in power inverters and standard household power plugs, so you don’t have to use the 12-volt plugs, or a separate inverter. That’s pretty handy. I hope that gains in popularity.

But my beef (for today) is with the form factor of the 12-volt plugs. Since fewer and fewer of us are smoking in cars these days, can we come up with a different kind of plug, less bulky and cumbersome than the old kinds? Why not use the EmPower ports, the ones found on some airplanes these days? The adapter kits are already out there for portable devices, so it’s just a matter of auto makers starting to make the change.

I guess I’m just bugged by the bulkiness of the ports. If they were half the size, you could put twice the number of them into the dashboards and consoles of most cars. Considering that I’ve occasionally had to shuffle around with plugs, when my wife needs to charge her phone at the same time that I’ve got my GPS unit and iPod cradle plugged in. Yes, I know I can get a splitter, but that just adds to the jumble of cables in the front of the car.

Does this make sense to anyone else? Are there technical hurdles to work through, in addition to the long-term logistical work of changing something the American (and probably world-wide) car-buying public has gotten used to?

Hard things

One of the things about being involved with leading worship at church is that you get asked, at times, to sing at the funerals of people you don't know. I don't know if you consider it a good thing, or a bad thing, but it's starting to feel more comfortable in my "good" column. Mike Cope once mentioned that it's an honor to be invited into the "sacred places" in peoples' lives: hospital bedsides, weddings, prayer vigils, and funerals. I'm learning to understand the wisdom in that.

Monday evening, I sang with some other folks from church at the funeral for the mother of a young lady from our church. I was given the job of finding some songs to sing, which is often quite difficult for funerals. It's easier when the family has requests, but in this case, they left it up to us to choose the songs. I went through the list of songs that our praise team knows best, and finally settled on two: Hortaio Spafford's "It Is Well With My Soul," and Matt Redman's "Blessed Be Your Name." They both spoke to me of the faith that we need to get us through hard times, like the death of a loved one.

We all have hard times in our lives. Sometimes they're momentary, but generally the real hard times last far longer than we think we can manage. These "hard things" in our lives turn into "firm places" -- stepping stones, if you will. They are the things on which we can track our walk through life, and indicators of the growth of our faith. In a lot of ways, our lives would be more difficult if we didn't go through the problems. We usually think it's the opposite: "If my problems would just go away, life would be easier." That's a silly idea. The troubles in our life help us learn to navigate trouble.

I have had a tendency to think very negatively of moments in my life that I made mistakes, or embarrassed myself. I'm starting to rework that thinking, and learning to live with less regret over those moments, and with more thankfulness for having learned a thing or two along the way.

Tools

I'm not a real handyman. I don't even play one on TV.

I am, however, a homeowner, which gives me license to pretend to be one every now and then. Lately, that has entailed much drywall and joint compound, prybars and shovels for wet floor underlayment, a caulk gun, and more than a few broken utility blades. It has also found me making more than a few trips to the hardware stores in the area, and that always leaves me starring glossy-eyed at rows of shiny, happy, ready-to-be-purchased power tools!

I love power tools. I wish I needed one of everything at Home Depot, just to have them around, taking up space in the garage, being dusted off occasionally to do some minor project far beneath their limit of usefulness. Practicality, however, limits me to purchasing only the tools that I can make my wife believe I'll actually have a use for.

My first power tool was, of course, an electric screwdriver, back when I was an apartment dweller, and didn't need anything more than that. You need understand, though, that the electric screwdriver is the "gateway drug" of tools. It seems nice and harmless, but pretty soon, it doesn't do the job for you anymore, and you need something more to get you revved up: you need a reversible, variable-speed, cordless drill with forty-leven bits with which to drill and fasten your world into submission. It only gets worse from there.

When you become a homeowner, you look around at the walls that you (and the bank) own, and you realize that you can put as many holes in them as you want, and nobody's going to complain. Until, that is, the walls are covered with more empty space than paint. Then you have to fix them. And while you've got the walls open, you see that the wiring isn't quite up to the standard of today's electronics-loaded life, or that there isn't any insulation in them, or that there is a mystery wire that doesn't seem to connect to anything. Every little thing escalates into something more than you expected.

For instance, take the example of our master bathroom. One day a few years ago, my wife decided that she was going to paint our bathroom. She asked me to take off the baseboards, so that she could pull off any wallpaper, and see what else needed to be done. When I started, several weeks had passed since she had first asked me, but that's not the point, the point is that when I put my catspaw prybar up to the wall to start gingerly pulling off the baseboard, it went right through the wallboard, which was mushy and soft, due to water from the shower penetrating through the grout around the tile, and turning the whole wall into a big spongy mess. I think the wallpaper was the only thing holding it up. Digging in further -- literally -- I found more water damage. Tiles started coming off WAY too easily, and wallboard crumbled off leaving exposed some rather damp wall studs. The floor covering was linoleum, but underneath was a particle board underlayment, and it was soaked and crumbling. The farther I got into it, the worse things got. In the outside wall, once I had pulled off the tile and wallboard, was termite damage.

What started out as painting finally became a near-complete gut of the bathroom. I took the shower walls and one of the interior walls down to the studs, in order to properly insulate the exterior walls, and sound-insulate the interior wall. We replaced the underlayment and put down vinyl tiles. We replaced the toilet, and had the shower and vanity counter done in a solid-surface product. We even replaced the lighting, exhaust fan, and toilet paper holder. And it only took us two years to finish everything.

With every home-improvement project escalation, the only solution is to buy a bigger hammer. Or maybe a power saw. Or an air compressor with a nail gun. At least, that's my solution. I suppose a rational person would say that the solution is to get it done with the tools you have, but what fun is that?

My tool collection has grown from one lowly electric screwdriver to include a circular saw, a compound miter saw, a rotary cutter (Roto-Zip), a rotary tool (Dremel), a 1-gallon, 100 PSI air compressor, with nail gun, and most recently, the most useful tool a home owner can have, a reciprocating saw, or "sawzall."

I don't think there is any way to overstate how useful a sawzall is. It's the appropriate tool for so many different jobs; it's even more versatile than a leafblower! Taking down a wall? SAWZALL! Removing a door jamb? SAWZALL! Tearing out an old deck? SAWZALL! Neighbor's tree hanging over your fence? SAWZALL! Neighbor's car parked over the property line on your side? SAWZALL! Day-old bread just a little too hard? SAWZALL! Nose hairs growing out of control? SAw... wait a minute, maybe just tweezers for that one, and save the sawzall for those bushy eyebrow hairs.

Granted a sawzall isn't that great when you're building; it's mostly for tearing down. It isn't precise enough to cut lumber to length, or cutouts in plywood. I guess one of those chainsaw sculptor guys could probably make use of it pretty well, but that's not me; the last time I tried to sculpt anything, it was made out of salty dough, and though it was supposed to look like a relief map of the state of California, it ended up looking more like the cat threw up.

What I'd really like now is a router table. I don't have a need for it, really. I'd just like to round over the edges of various scraps of wood laying around the place, so nobody hurts themselves if they fall on them. I tried doing that with the sawzall, but it didn't go too well.

Had to share this one, which I saw on a friend's blog.

Having posted this, I will return to my “nothing” box.