More bad words

I'm about to use more questionable language. Everyone brace themselves.

Regular readers of my blog (Hi Mom!) may remember that there was a recent incident in which I may have indirectly or directly participated involving a reverent cathedral, Christmas Eve, and the word "crap." Tonight, however, I'll be writing about a different bad word. The word is...nipple.

It's important to note, however, that I will not be using this word lasciviously, but purely in an anatomical or equally inoffensive manner.

EXAMPLE OF LASCIVIOUS USAGE:
Jessa brushed a strand of blonde hair out of her face and sized up Derek with a look of yearning desire. She licked her lips and ran a single finger down his muscular back as he turned off the kitchen tap and placed into the drying rack the baby's plastic bottle and rubber nipple.

EXAMPLE OF ANATOMICAL USAGE
GMAT Question 917: Why do men have nipples?

Rest assured, I'll be writing about nipples almost entirely in the 2nd sense.

You see, I noticed on the very first time I drove to Hanover, PA, that there was a brick building in Liverpool, PA (a little town on Rt. 15 north of Marysville) with a big sign that reads NIPPLE Convalescent Home on the northern face. This would have been back in December of 2004, when I was driving down to Hanover for the first time to meet J's parents. At the time, I simply smiled at the quirks of Pennsylvanians and continued my drive south.

Here is an unrelated example of Pennsylvanian quirkiness that happened just yesterday. We were filling up at the Sheetz gas station in Littlestown on our way back to New York, and I went inside to get some snacks. There was a middle aged man in a Baltimore Ravens jacket inside who sidled up next to me as I looked at the various types of Combos in the snack rack.

Pennsylvanian: Are you a Yankees fan?
Me: I beg your pardon?
Pennsylvanian: Do you root for the Yankees?
Me: No, I don't really follow baseball.
Pennsylvanian: Oh, I saw you had New York plates. The Giants then?
Me: No, I'm not from that part of New York.
Pennsylvanian: Oh. The Jets, then?
Me: The Buffalo Bills. (I move towards the drink cooler, casually ending the conversation.)
Pennsylvanian: (following) So, does O.J. Simpson still play for the Bills?
Me: No, he hasn't played for the Bills for a very long time.
Pennsylvanian: Do you think he did it?
Me: I'm really not sure. (I stop making eye contact and move to another part of the store.)
Pennsylvanian: (following) I mean, how long does it take to do a DNA test, you know?
Me: (still trying to escape) Mhm.
Pennsylvanian: (following) You know, I was in a medical study once. They told us we couldn't smoke. Then the doctor said he smelled smoke in the men's room, and we all had to pee in a cup. They had the results back in 10 minutes, and they threw 4 of the guys out right then for smoking!
Me: (taking out my cellphone and pretending to get a call) Hello? Yes, this is he...

But anyway, back to nipples. I first noticed the giant NIPPLE on the side of the brick building in Liverpool in 2004, and assumed that J, being a veteran pilgrim of Rt. 15, knew all about it. We continued to make trips back and forth several times a year, and a number of trips later she asked why I was sniggering.

"Because it says nipple on the side of that building."
"What?"
"The side of that building back there says nipple on it. Haven't you ever seen it?"
"I try not to look at the advertisements for those sorts of places."
"No, it's not one of those signs. It's for an old folks home. Nipple must be the last name of the proprietor. But it's really big, and it's in capital letters."
"Huh...I've never seen that before."
"You're kidding! It's huge."
"I'm not sure I believe you..."

And so it happened that every time we went through Liverpool I would laugh at the big nipple, and J would miss it. (It's much harder to see it when you're coming up from the South, so we didn't always remember to look for it then.)

In recent years we'd start to look for it ahead of time, but J seemed to be unable to see it. ("I mean, it's a huge NIPPLE on the side of the building.") Our predicament was not helped by the fact that I had trouble remembering whether the building was in Liverpool or Marysville, and the additional problem that these two towns come up in the most soul-sucking and boring stretch of the drive south. We looked again on our Christmas night trip, hoping perhaps to see NIPPLE softly illuminated in festive colors or adorned with wreaths. I saw it, but J didn't.

On the way back, everything was working against us. J was in the backseat with James, who was requiring a lot of attention. It was snowing pretty steadily, so visibility wasn't great. It wouldn't have been easy coming from the north, and we were coming from the south. Without being able to see it myself, I indicated to J when we were around the right group of buildings. She craned her neck out the back window and then shouted excitedly:

"I SEE IT! I SEE THE NIPPLE!"

We definitely high-fived from the backseat to the front.

Christmas Plunder

I'm sure you've all been wondering who "won" Christmas this year, at least in terms of awesome gifts received. Wonder no further, friends...the Smith household has triumphed again, thanks largely to the gift-giving talents of our amazing families. If your present does not appear in the list below or you feel the accompanying humorous comments do not accurately reflect our thankfulness for your gift, we will pay you back in leftover wassail and figgy pudding the next time you visit.

Stocking stuffers for James. The socks are easily the most exciting part. If you think that regular person socks are easy to lose, wait until you're searching for three missing matches of teeny-tiny baby socks.

This cow creature was also in the stocking. James was not sure what to make of him.

Various clothing gifts for James. The John Deere shirt says "Future Farmer."

Not only are we excited about the fun book, but we like to encourage the fun message that car trips are cause for excitement, and not whining.

Not sure how to rotate this picture. If you have trouble bending your neck, the title is Go! Go! Go! (This is James' motto in life)

Lots of clothes for James Bear. They're all great, but the overalls are especially fun because they have a TRAIN on them. (James' great-grandfather showed him a working model train in Maryland.)

A sled from Grandma and Grandpa Davis. James tried it out already with Grandma.

From left to right: The jumper cables we tossed inside when we were hurriedly emptying the car on Xmas day, a new toy tractor, a yarn ball from Aunt Pam, a magnadoodle, and a stuffed puppy that sings Sleigh Ride in an annoying sing-song voice. Naturally, this is all that James wants to hear whenever he sees the puppy. The puppy may have not last until New Year's.

Wonderful blankets from various family members. The musical one was made by Kylie and Pax.

More books (the Lewis Letters are for me, not James) and awesome boots from Aunt Kylie

Homemade jam from the Dudleys, specialty coffee from Dan and Emily, a harmonica from Sam and Kaitlyn, and an egg shaker from Papa. (Papa taught James how the egg shaker works on a recent visit.)

A stand clip for J's iPad, a stylus/pen, a Neil Postman book from Lux, a flashlight from Mom and Dad, a ducky sort of book, and lentil soup from Calvus and Beka.

An amazing handmade bag from Martha and a beautiful Robert Frost poem set in a picture she painted of a starlit night framed by bare tree branches. (Come see it in person if you haven't already)

New tupperware. J says No Bears Allowed

Delicious homemade fudge from Sam and Kaitlyn

My stocking stuffers. Many gel pens and cribbage, a game from my Northwestern days that I'm keen to learn again

Lots of Italian food and good music

I also received a bottle of my favorite wine from Mom and Dad, and J's father is in the process of finishing two gorgeous end tables for us. We took a look at the mostly-finished product while we were down visiting and helped pick out the final shade of stain. They are incredibly beautiful, even to we who are relatively ignorant about furniture. They will be far and away the nicest pieces in our house when they're finished.

But most importantly out of all of our gifts...

Steven Bear (left) and New Steven (right). We opened up New Steven while James was otherwise occupied and still haven't let on to him that we have a replacement. Still not sure how/when we're going to introduce him, but we are VERY thankful to Calvus and Beka for finding a backup.

 

 

 

The Holidays

CHRISTMAS EVE

In the Smith house Christmas Eve is a night of solemn and reverent observance, a time for reflection, and most of all, a chance to make a lot of money in a hurry. Like Easter morning, it's a time when the big downtown churches are willing to pay through the nose to have a trumpet player participate in their service and enhance the worship experience by playing descants on hymns and repeatedly shouting out bad words. (More on that later.) This year I played three Christmas Eve services, a 5:00 service at a Catholic church downtown, the 8:00 service at my church in Gates, and then back to the Catholic church for midnight mass. Midnight mass doesn't start at midnight--it starts at 11:00 PM, and lasts for 25 hours until midnight of the next day. At least, that's what it feels like when you're actually in the service and waiting to drive home in the snow and go to bed.

All three services went well, except for the questionable language part. At the 5:00 service I sat down in the choir nook--this probably has a proper name like Chancellary or Vestibulillum, but I don't know it--and waited patiently through the prelude. When it was time for the processional, the priest asked the congregation to stand and to sing "O Come All Ye Faithful," number 481. I was already standing up as he asked this, holding my trumpet in my left hand and pulling up on the top of my music stand with my right. I gave it a jerk, and all of a sudden the entire top of the stand, music still perched, went flying up in the air. I managed to catch it in my right hand, but not before yelling (much more loudly than I expected to) "Oh CRAP!" Emitting a bad word in near silence helps you to appreciate the acoustic engineering of those classic Catholic cathedrals. The CRAP reverberated throughout the Chancellary, the loft, the ornate stained-glass windows, and round the sculpted heads of Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus in the life-sized nativity. The three kings did not look impressed.

"Crap" was one of those words that we were definitely not allowed to say when the older batch of Smith children were growing up. Also forbidden were "sucks," "shut-up," and "oh my gosh." The rules have definitely loosened over time. It wouldn't be surprising at all to hear my parents respond to a tale from Martha's school day with "Well crap...that sucks." I try not to slip up too often around James with those sorts of borderline words. (This is hard when you "cheer" for the Buffalo Bills.)

Anyhow, the rest of the service went pretty well. I drove back to Gates, and managed not to curse at any point during the service. This was not easy, because I definitely made a "behind" of myself during the prelude. Our organist can be a little flighty, and he started the prelude for the service in the wrong spot. (Variations in service order are very offensive to Presbyterians, most of whom have followed the exact same Christmas Eve ritual since 288 B.C. The actual birth of the Christ child, being a break with tradition, was frowned upon in committee meetings of that particular year.) Knowing that I would have to be the fearless leader and cue in the choir for their Introit out of the regular order of the service, I stood up to ask the choir to stand...just as the bell choir was starting their prelude number. (Fortunately I covered my misstep rather seamlessly by sitting down immediately, pretending that I was smoothing out my robes, and turning bright red.)

I had enough time after the 8:00 service to drive home and see J's progress with the gift-wrapping, and then went in for the final Catholic service in a steady Christmas Eve snow. I sat patiently through the prelude, noted with some pleasure that a former professor of mine was serving as the priest, and stood up with the congregation to sing the processional hymn, "O Come All Ye Faithful." I pulled up on my stand.

"Oh CRAP!"

CHRISTMAS DAY

James isn't yet old enough to wake us up with Christmas Day excitement, but he did get up earlier than either J or I had intended on Christmas morning. She brought him into bed with us and we had a drowsy family snuggle in bed until 7:30, when we went downstairs to open presents under our Christmas shrub. We bought the shrub when we lived in North Carolina, and waited to set it up until James had gone to bed on Christmas Eve. (With good reason...the first 10 seconds he was left near it unattended he seized and broke an ornament.) There was fresh snow on the ground, and the shrub had never looked more festive. James helped unpack his stocking, and then J and I opened ours. (I'll be saving a full account of our Christmas loot for a later post, hopefully with pictures and braggy comments.) After we'd had some french toast for breakfast I brushed off the truck and we made ready to go to Christmas Part II at my parent's house.

Everyone passed out presents, we had plenty of coffee and pastry snacks, and there was much merriment in the Smith living room. James was not particularly interested in opening presents after his first or second turn, so J and I alternated chasing him around the house while everyone passed around the piles of gifts. I think my family is particularly talented at gift giving. There were just the right number of presents per person, and they were all very thoughtful. (As I said, the official list will follow later.) After most everything had been opened we recorded all 10 children/spouses and 2 grandchildren singing the Twelve Days of Christmas, and made ready for the Christmas feast. Somewhere along the way I kicked over my coffee cup, and walked around for most of the morning with only one sock on, while the other one dried. We also discovered a walnut ornament hanging on the tree that someone had stowed a message inside of through a small crack at the base. We made vain efforts to retrieve it without breaking the shell, but finally gave in, and found a little slip of paper that said: To the Dark Lord, I have removed the real horcrux, and I intend to destroy it as soon as I can. R.A.B. The kids all laughted uproariously, and Mom and Dad didn't have any idea why.

James went down for a nap (with J helping) after our enormous lunch, and I went to Christmas part III (the Grandparent Smiths) with an envoy. We wished our safe travels to the soon migrating Grandparent Smiths, caught up with some cousins, and nibbled on the remains of their Christmas Feast. A Very Uncles Christmas was distributed, and more loot was gotten, some of which hasn't been opened yet. (More on that later.)

We were back in Albion for Christmas part IV (Dudley Christmas in the barn) by supper time, and there were innumerable aromas there teasing our already overburdened bellies. The three feet closest to the barn floor at Dudley Christmas is an area scientists call the "toddlershphere." There are at least 20 small Dudley great-grandchildren, and I think several more might have been born and started to run about while we were there for Christmas. They all shout very loudly and want to run in circles clutching their new toys. Most of them are from farming stock, so between their clothes and their toys the barn looks like what you might expect the corporate day-care to be at the John Deere company. We left with a year's supply of free homemade jam and even avoided last year's tragic upending of the cold fruit-cup into J's lap. (Hayden sat with her own parents this year.)

We were on our way out. James was fried. We were both weary and over-full. We had been everywhere, we had seen everyone. We had been up way to late the night before. My Dad showed us a radar image of the storm that was coming in the next day, and we both got the same crazy idea. We debated it the entire drive back to Spencerport, and J (obviously) won. We would, after playing 4 Christmas Eve services between the two of us, then attending 4 different Christmases, drive to Pennsylvania that night with an overtired 13 month old in the back seat. Brilliant.

Actually, James did great. We turned around at our house in less than 20 minutes (though, of course, we forgot a lot of stuff) and he fell asleep almost immediately. I recaffinated and J, for whom I had brought 1000 Greek flashcards, for the purpose of keeping me awake and alert throughout the course of the drive, came up with lots of interesting discussion questions. (We didn't have to use a single flashcard!) We made the trip with no traffic, no red lights, and no pit stops. It took us 5 hours and 10 minutes.

And that was our Christmas

ST. STEPHEN'S DAY

Obviously, we slept in. We had Davis Christmas (loot list to follow) once we got up, and spent most of the day in pajamas. (Well, J was in pajamas...we forgot to bring two sets in the haste of our quick turnaround.) James loves the wide open spaces at Grandma and Grandpa Davis's house. He spent most of the day doing laps through the kitchen, dining, and living rooms while holding two plastic red spoons and shouting. (He likes to hear his echo.) He also found his favorite houseplant (the one he's not allowed to dig in) and a new houseplant that Mom and Dad said nothing about. (He dug out about a pound of dirt onto himself and the dining room floor before we found him.) Special honor was given to Steven Bear, since it was his feast day.

ST. JOHN'S DAY

We slept in again. James dug in his favorite plant again, and then ran in terror when we pulled out the vaccuum to clean up his mess. In a stroke of brilliant parenting, Grandpa Davis left the vaccuum parked in front of the plant. James hasn't been near it since. We also went down to the Great-Grand Weitzels with Uncle Dan and Aunt Emily to consume copious amounts of red meat, and (in J's case) shrimp. We went to bed at 8:30.

The Neon Goes Too

I think that the Mayan apocalypse actually happened two days ago, but its effects were limited to our driveway. If you're a regular reader of my blog--this would be my wife and maybe my Mom--you know that we've recently been having lots of trouble with our PT Cruiser, also known as "the Gaxmobile." My parents have been kind enough to lend us their pick-up truck to get through Christmas Eve, so Julie took that to her church job in Warsaw today. Because you aren't supposed to put carseats in pick-ups, I loaded James into our well-loved 2000 Dodge Neon and drove off to my church job in Gates.

Almost as soon as I pulled out of our driveway, I noticed something was wrong. The car was making a funny sound and felt very sluggish. I pulled off to the side and fiddled with the sometimes sticky parking brake. Nothing. After a few more minutes of trying to disengage the parking brake, I put my four-ways on, and (being sure to check for traffic) stepped outside to go through my usual auto-trouble ritual. My auto trouble-ritual consists of kneeling down, looking under the car, making a thoughtful face, and calling someone for help. There was no one else around except James, but I still feel better when I make my concerned face. One of these days I might actually see something under the car that I understand (currently I only see magical calculus problems) and then I'll be glad that I've practiced a facial expression that conveys to everyone around me "I see that something is wrong which has caused my car to stop working."

As it happened, I did recognize the source of my automotive woes for the morning. My driver-front tire had no air in it. I'm not a tire expert, but I understand that it's usually inadvisable to drive your car without air in your tires. I stood up, made sure that James was okay, then engaged the parking brake, secured the rear tires with props, jacked the car up, and replaced the flat tire with our spare.

I am, of course, totally kidding. I am a pathetic girly musician-man, and I wasn't about to change a tire in my only half-decent suit on a hill with my infant son in the back. So I called AAA and asked them for some help. It was probably a good thing I didn't attempt to change the tire anyway, because, as our AAA representative informed us, our spare tire currently doesn't have any air in it.

My pastor drove out to rescue James and I when she heard about our predicament, and drove us into church with enough time to make most of choir rehearsal. James was great through the whole mess, never fussed, and happily exclaimed "yeah!" to every question she asked him. I left the Neon unlocked with the key under the visor, cursing (not out loud--we were with our pastor) our simultaneously broken vehicles and very relieved that we have such a well-behaved son.

I fielded phone calls from AAA, the tow truck driver, and from a Firestone clerk throughout the church service by ducking out during the hymns. Firestone was the only local tire shop open today, and certainly the only place that would be open tomorrow on Christmas Eve. I knew that we were overdue for replacing the very bald tires on the back of the Neon, and we ended up agreeing to replace all 4. (It was buy 3, get 1 free.)

I picked up James from the nursery, where the nursery worker told me that he had been very well behaved and that "he sure does love that bear." Yes, we've noticed that too. I collected all of his snacks and diaper bag and Steven and binky and carried all of those things at once with him over to his car seat, and as I squatted down to put on his coat

RIIIPPP

...there is now a hole in the crotch of my "only half-decent suit."

Uncle Pax and Aunt Kylie came to rescue us from GPC and drove us home after stopping by Hilltop to pick up the finished copy of A Very Uncles Christmas on the way. (We did not remember to pick up James' missing bottles.) The Uncles sounded good. James makes his presence known on the last track. On the way back I got a call from the Firestone rep.

"Hey, did you guys have a tire-rod replaced recently?"
"Yes, we had one replaced about two weeks ago."
"Well, they didn't align it properly afterwards...that's probably what caused the flat. We'd recommend our standard alignment."
"Okay, how much?"
"That's another 79.99...which will bring your total to $420."
"...Okay, go ahead and do it."

Once we got back I gave James some peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. He was a great sport, and even insisted that he feed me some of his sandwich. (This is cute, but also a little gross. His food travels many miles before he eats it or offers it to anyone else.)

J got back around 12:30 and we waited for the call from Firestone that our car was done. Around 1:00 my phone lit up.

"Hello, Mr. Smith?"
"This is he. Is the car done?"
"I'm afraid not. We found significant rust under the car, and it looks like we're going to need to replace another tire rod."

The total came to $575.

 I will say this about today and about all of our recent auto troubles: We are very thankful for cellphones. I can't imagine how we would have done this sort of day without them. We are thankful for Pax and Kylie, who rescued us again. We are thankful for Christmas gigs, which keep money coming into the bank account. We are thankful for neighbors who are willing to watch James while we run to the mechanic. And we are thankful for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and little boys willing to share them. That may be all we're eating for the next few months.

The Unexpected

If the ghost of Jacob Marley had appeared to me at this time yesterday evening and told me that within the next 24 hours I would be making 11 PM travel arrangements, coercing confidential information from a security company, and playing the drumset, I'd have been at least a bit skeptical.

As it happened, J and I were turning the lights out around 10:30 PM, and she had just reminded me that I needed to pick up some of James' bottles and utensils that were left at Hilltop when I visited the next day. I was perfectly comfortable under the covers and quilts, knowing that my alarm wasn't going to go off early tomorrow and that my Christmas break had begun..

....


....


BUZZ! BUZZ! BUZZ!

I started awake and looked at my phone without my glasses on. I couldn't see very clearly, but then I made out "Davis, Tim" as the caller ID. What did my brother-in-law want at 11:10 PM? Whatever it was, it could wait until tomorrow morning. I turned it off and rolled over, trying to fall back asleep.

BUZZ! BUZZ! BUZZ!

This wasn't my phone. It was J's, and it was Tim calling again. She picked up, and Tim very excitedly offered to drive up from PA first the next morning to fix our broken PT Cruiser. This information took awhile to penetrate my sleep-soaked brain...I still was trying to figure out what time it was. But when I came to and realized what was actually going on, and I was amazed at Tim's generosity. He'd already made arrangements to tow a dolly up with him and use a friend's garage and lift, doing all of the labor for free. We knew that there would be a storm coming in, so we left it until tomorrow to confirm.

The next morning was perfect until about 9:30 AM. James slept in, and then snuggled in bed with us for about 20-30 minutes with hardly any of his wonted 13-month-old wiggling fits. We had a leisurely breakfast, brewed coffee, and held him up to windows to watch the snow coming down and blanketing the fields around us. We lit a scented candle in the kitchen, put on Christmas music, and played with blocks. And we called our mechanic, telling him to please hold off on replacing the timing belt in our PT Cruiser, since J's brother was available to do that for us. We didn't hear back, so we called again and left another message. And we didn't hear back, so we called again. Nothing

It's a six hour trip from PA in good weather...we know we needed to make sure that the Gaxmobile was accessible if Tim was to make that substantial of a trip, so I drove over to the shop to confirm that the car was parked outside.

Alas, into the cold outside. The snow looked beautiful from inside our warm house with pajamas on, but stepping outside in it was unpleasant, and soon my shoes and socks were soaked from scraping off the car in our unplowed driveway. I slipped and skidded my way through the half-plowed roads into the village of Spencerport, and arrived at the mechanic's to find an empty lot. The cruiser was sitting in a bay with the hood propped open, locked away quite securely.

Now when I say "our mechanic," I really mean "the mechanic that AAA was willing to tow our car to." We have our own regular mechanic, and though we'd met the gentleman in Spencerport once before, we've had no regular contact with him. We don't know his name. We don't know his home phone number. We have no means of contacting him when he's not at the shop. I checked all around the dark office windows and even asked around at the fire station next door, but had no luck. (All they knew was that he didn't work on weekends.)

The only number I could find was the contact number for General Security, which had a decal on his front window. I called them, gave them my address, and explained the situation. I begged and pleaded for a home phone number.

"Sorry sir, but we aren't allowed to give out confidential information."
"What about a name? If you gave me his name I could try to find him in the white pages."
"No sir, we aren't allowed to do that."
I stretched the truth a little bit.
"This is the vehicle that we were going to use to get home for Christmas...is there any way that you could call him and let him know that we're trying to get in contact with him?"

As punishment for my slight prevarication about Christmas (we're perfectly capable of getting to Pennsylvania in the Neon) we never received any calls back, even though the kind but inflexible security rep did promise us to call his home number and pass along my message. We called Tim and let him know not to come. He may still travel up with us after Christmas to work on the Gaxmobile, which would save us lots and lots of money. I think that the last chapter in this story has not yet been written. It would all be very interesting if it was happening to someone else.

I arrived home cold and slightly put out to J, James, and lunch. Since J was doing the last of the Christmas shopping with her best friend in the afternoon, James came with me to the Flock of Uncles recording session scheduled at Hilltop. J helped us to bundle up and reminded me to pick up the missing bottles while I was there, and we drove off to meet Calvus, Pax, and Lux.

Some people might think it's an unwise idea to bring a small child to a recording session, but they've never met James. It turns out that he's a very sensitive child who only wants to watch and listen to his Father and his Uncles play jazzy Christmas tunes. We had considerably more problems from the Uncles than from the baby. (Also, many thanks to Kylie and Nicole for their babysitting help.)

When J is asked to describe the Uncles sound, she calls us "improvisatory." By that she means that we do almost everything in a chaotic and unorganized fashion flying by the seat of our pants and reading music (if anyone remembered to bring music) from a single stand (if anyone remembered to bring a stand) and relying mostly on telepathy to arrange the finer details of a tune, such as when everyone is going to stop and start and what key we'll be playing in. I've done a couple of recording sessions this year, but today's was the only one in which the members of the group were recording music they had never seen on instruments that they had never played before. It turns out that the mandolin isn't that difficult.

Also, I played the drums for the first time. I've been getting to paid to teach other people how to play the drums for the past two years, so it's actually a bit of a relief that I can kind of play them. I played the drumset (read: a high-hat and a snare drum with one wire brush) on an up-tempo rendition of Joy to the World. James thought it was great. He danced with his eyes shut and one hand up in the air, which he usually only saves for his favorite Celine Dion recording. (Potential album title for the next Flock of Uncles recording: Almost as Good as Celine.)

I heard a little bit of my drumming afterwards, and I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. I wouldn't want to do it very often, though. As I held the drumsticks and pumped the high-hat pedal, I could feel my attention span decreasing. The music seemed to blur in and out of focus, and all the dynamic markings seemed to look like "forte or fortissimo" to me. Drumming good. Drumming very good. Hit things with sticks. Hit things with sticks louder! Hunt meat! Hunt meat for food!

Sorry...got a little carried away there with my drumset playing.

We finished the project (A Very Uncles Christmas) and Pax is mixing it down right now. We intend to give it to our older relatives, especially those who are unlikely to listen to it or have developed significant hearing loss. Our "improvisatory" style of performing doesn't always carry over very well to the recording studio. We finished the whole thing in less than five hours, and when I bundled up James to go home he hadn't interrupted a single track.

Of course, we forgot the bottles.

Three good, three bad

GOOD
1) I have 70 minutes left of LCS this month, and nothing to do but wrap up my practicing for the day. I have no private students, no Hochstein, no orchestra gigs, and no more Wednesday choir rehearsals until January. Vacation is about to start, and it is most welcome. I'll sleep in, play with James, lounge around in sweatpants, and make lots of coffee. There are still a few church gigs to be played here and there, but those won't be so bad. The holidays really will be lovely this year. We have a beautiful green wreath up in the living room, and soon the whole house will smell like cinnamon bread. (It smelled like pumpkin chocolate-chip muffins when I came home yesterday.) Yum.

BAD
1) The Gaxmobile (our PT Cruiser) is smelling more and more like a lemon. We bought it two months ago from a family friend in PA, and it's already needed two major repairs. J's mishap yesterday turned out to be a timing belt problem, and it will cost at least $600 to fix. I don't exactly why this is so expensive, but it's something to do with the way the front is engineered. Apparently the engine block (correct use of that term?) is so compact that everything has to be taken out before you can tinker around with it. This didn't seem to be a problem to me when we bought it, because my automotive tinkering skills are limited to checking/adding oil. As far as I know, the rest of the car runs by magic. Or calculus. Or some form of wizarding calculus you can only learn at Hogwarts. At any rate, this means that whether we have to replace a timing belt, recharge the defibrillator, or add more gurdyroots to the cosine, it's always going to be labor-intensive and budget-breaking.

GOOD
2) Tomorrow Flock of Uncles is recording "A Very Uncles Christmas." We have never actually sat down together and attempted to record the same musical number at the same time on purpose, so this will be an interesting experience. Since we need a quiet environment without distraction Hayden and James will be coming. Man-paste will be made, festive drinks will be passed around, and all musical ventures will surely be successful on their first attempts. If we can get a few tracks we like, the CD will be an excellent gift to the many relatives who we love dearly but can't afford to exchange gifts with on any regular basis. (Especially on the Dudley side, this would be like trying to get individual presents for the entire population of Portugal.)

BAD
2) J and I have five different Christmas Eve services between us, and only one functional car. The Gaxmobile, of course, will not be completed before Christmas Eve. (The bobotubers have to soak overnight before they form a parabola.) We aren't exactly sure how Christmas Eve will work. I suggested last night to J that I could drive her (and James) down to Warsaw at 3:30 and drop them off with enough time to drive back for my services at 5, 8, and 11. If I leave straight from midnight mass at 12:15, I should be able to pick her (and James) up by 1:30. Maybe we'll see Santa!

GOOD
3) We have money in the bank. We have money in the bank. I admit with some embarrassment that we are not particularly good at budgeting. We usually have some money left over at the end of the month because we are both thrifty by nature, but we are very VERY bad at sitting down with the bank statement and figuring out month-by-month exactly how much is left over in each budget category. (Or, in the case of groceries, how much we're in the red.) Thank goodness we've had lots of gigs and extra work these past few months, and we've had a little left over even after buying a PT Cruiser and a plane ticket to San Francisco and repairing the PT Cruiser the first time and buying Christmas presents for everyone. I sense, when I think about it, that we have no idea how fortunate we are most of the time.

BAD
3) We have a cute advent calendar hanging in our kitchen with little chocolate pieces inside the flap for each "day." We give James the advent chocolate after dinner every night, and he has decided he LOVES advent. He reminds us of the calendar several times a day, especially when he's in his high chair. There's an extra big piece for Christmas Eve, but a storm might be brewing when we get home on Christmas Night and the advent calendar has disappeared. The current plan is to get him really REALLY tired at Smith/Smith/Smith/Dudley Christmas and have him totally sacked out by the time we get home. (This won't be hard...I usually don't make it through the 3rd Christmas either.) Then we'll leave super early in the morning on December 26th (presuming we have a working vehicle) and maybe by the time we return from Pennsylvania he'll have forgotten about chocolate.

Or maybe we'll just keep more chocolate in the house. It doesn't seem like a bad idea.

Haircuts

Is there something that you do that's childish? Immature? Absurd? And even though you know that you're being a terrible sport, you do it anyway? Like being snarky to department store underlings with no authority whatsoever, or maybe sending back beverages that are 2 degrees too cold? You should really get over yourself and just get along with people.

Just kidding.

I mean, you probably should be nice to underlings and accept slightly imperfect beverages without complaint, but I am in no position to judge you. Every three months I behave disgracefully. I am puerile, absurd, and an embarrassment to my wife and son. (Especially my wife.) I am a terrible sport about getting my hair cut. My Mom used to bribe me (and her other sons) into the tonsuring chair with the promise of chocolate chips afterwards. Then I went to college, and there are lots of pictures of my college days in which I'm sporting a completely unruly bird's nest. (I don't actually remember how/when I got my hair cut in college...maybe my Mom snuck into my apartment and did at night.) J and I got married, and for reasons of "appearing presentable" I was asked to visit the barber's every few months. I was not good at following through on this request.

For one thing, we were newly married and quite overwhelmed with the hectic pace of our single-job no-children no-responsibilities extended honeymoon. That, and I didn't want to leave the house very often when we lived in the freezing tundra of North Chili and I had a cute wife to keep warm at home. The mop continued to grow, however, and J decided to save us money/take control of the hair-cutting decisions by purchasing a home hair-cutting kit.

This would be a great opportunity for an anecdote about how she botched my haircuts but because of our newly found connubial bliss I forgave her. Actually, though, she gave good haircuts from the start. And I was a poor sport from the start.

"Roy, you're looking pretty scruffy. Why don't we give you a haircut tonight?"
"Hmm...do we have to do it tonight? How about we wait until the weekend?"
"We're going to be in Pennsylvania this weekend."
"Well okay, we can just do it the weekend after that."
"That's what you said two weekends ago."
"Hm."
...
"So, we'll give you a haircut tonight?"
"No, I think we should relax tonight. Let's worry about the haircut some other time."

This would go on for several weeks until J was positively insistent, and then I would moan and complain the entire time about all the other things I'd rather be doing and how I didn't want to sit still for 20 minutes without anything to do ("Why don't you talk to me?" "Because you should be concentrating on cutting my hair.") and how the hair was scratchy on the back of my neck and I didn't want to have to take another shower later, because that was wasting water.

Over time, however, I grew to see how childish my behavior was, and I decided that I'd accept haircuts with dignity and patience.

Actually, I'm just as bad or worse now. J has moved on from chocolate chip bribery to a conversation carte blance which promises she will talk about anything I want, including topics that she normally finds dull as dirt. (Note: This would be the time that I would use to talk about football if J was at all like the stereotypical wife who only tolerates Sunday afternoons. My wife, however, is awesome, and loves football just as much as I do...thus we don't need to use carte blanche time to talk about the Bills.) We talk philosophy and theology and languages, and she is always very sincere in her interest. She will have a conversation about anything.

And still, I'm a terrible sport the next time the haircut comes around. So now it's 8:17 on a Thursday night, and I'm waiting for her to get back from a concert, knowing that tonight is the fateful night when I'll have to give up twenty whole minutes of my precious time to sit in a chair and talk with my wonderful wife about Billy Budd and/or the Hebrew numbers I'm supposed to be memorizing with Calvus and/or sex. I really have it rough.

J actually did have a pretty rough day today. She was supposed to go to a playdate with her Thursday ward and our cool new Australian friend (the ward's mother) but our brand-new-to-us shiny red PT Cruiser pooped out a mile down the highway, and she was stuck in an unheated car with a un-napped baby for 45 minutes until I could renew our membership with AAA and a friend of ours could pick them up. No word yet on the severity of the Cruiser's illness, but this will be the first major repair we've put into it since bidding adieu to the Sexy Beast, our hideously ugly but indestructible '95 Buick Century. Updates to follow.

While she was gone I took out the vacuum cleaner to see if James' paralyzing fear of it had abated at all. As soon as he saw it he ran sobbing to the door and tried to pry it open. I put it away immediately, and when I came back to the foyer he was trying to hide in the closet. I might be a terrible father.

Question for anyone with literary insight: Is snuck a word? (As in, perfect of sneak?) Blogger's auto-correct is telling me that it isn't.

J just walked in and started singing"The Barber of Seville." I'm off to meet my fate.

Some changes?

James started walking about two months ago, but he's given it up all of a sudden. After all, why would you walk anywhere when you could run instead? Last night he was tearing around the living room as fast as he could go, enjoying his newfound speed far too much to care about the fact that he was bouncing off of furniture and walls (steering doesn't really matter to him) and faceplanting on the carpet. If either of us shouted at him "I'm gonna get you!" as he sped by, he'd roar with laughter and take off into the next room. <pit-pat-pit-pat-pit-pat-FLOP...laughter>

This is a hard development for J, who has recently become an invalid. She messed up her ankle again (neither of us know exactly what's making it swell and change colors) and she's been limited to sparing/painful use of it for the past few days. This is the fourth or fifth time she's injured this particular ankle, although it had been a few years since the last major flare-up. (One of the first times was playing racquetball with me on our first official "date" as a couple.)

Things that help J's ankle feel better:
Keeping it elevated in an ace bandage on the couch
Naptime
Dark chocolate
Visits from friends who talk pleasantly about subjects of general interest
Having a conscious spouse inside the house

Things that make J's ankle feel worse:
Chasing a 2'6" sprinter throughout the downstairs
Temper tantrums about being denied access to the iPad/phone/Celine Dion recordings
Endless ill-paying Christmas gigs
Single parenting
Dirty diapers

If any of you who read this happen to be pleasant friends with interesting things to talk about, I'm sure she'd appreciate a visit during naptime. (Generally 10 am-11:30 am and 2 pm-3:30 pm, or from the starting time until there is a loud noise, creak in the foundations, stiff breeze, or bad dream) Bring some dark chocolate.


I think that this blog is going to change trajectory.  When I started out two years ago I intended to use it as a vehicle for "serious" writing. That's worked out okay, but it turns out that I don't have nearly as many "serious" things to say about the world as I thought I did. I have lots of half-finished opinions, of course, but not very many sustained and thoroughly worked-out whole points of view. The half-finished opinions change all the time, and most of the sustained thinking really isn't my own...I've just parroted someone else. This isn't to say that I won't every do anything like the Romans project again, but I've decided that funny anecdotes about life with James and J are more enjoyable to write and probably more enjoyable to read. This had been brewing for awhile, and the events of last Friday in Connecticut reminded me again that for all of my highbrow reading and "deep" opinions about "important" things, I have very few explanations for why the world is the way it is, what to do about it, or even what to tell my wife and my son about it. This doesn't mean that I'm off the hook for being a responsible reader and thinker. It does mean that neatly typed three-point topical posts that pretend to wrap up an issue are "as straw to me."

Chapel at LCS

Given at LCS on 11/30 for 6th-12th grade...

You may put away your Bibles. Please take a hymnal from the pew in front of you and open with me to the following numbers:

533

Sing the wondrous love of Jesus, sing his mercy and his grace, in the mansions bright and blessed He’ll prepare for us a place When we all get to heaven What a day of rejoicing that will be When we all see Jesus we’ll sing and should the victory

311

This world is not my home I’m just a passing through my treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door an I can’t feel at home in this world anymore O Lord you know I have no friend like you if heaven’s not my home then Lord what will I do? The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore v.4 Just up in glory land we’ll live eternally The saints on every hand are shouting victory Their songs of sweetest praise drift back from heaven’s shore and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore

536

Don’t think me poor or deserted or lonely I’m not discouraged I’m heaven bound I’m just a pilgrim in search of a city I want a mansion a robe and a crown I’ve got a mansion just over the hilltop In a bright land where we’ll never grow old And someday yonder we will nevermore wander But walk the streets that are purest gold.

What’s going to happen to you after you die?

Most Christians, including myself for a very long time, have assumed that the great question about death is how to get to heaven when we die—to escape this earth and to go off somewhere else to live eternally. Yet the New Testament says very little to support this idea. Before we get into the New Testament we’re going to get some context from other ancient literature about life after death. The first example is the Iliad, which many of you have been studying recently. If you don’t know about the Iliad, it was one of the most important texts for the ancient Greeks. This is the view of death in the very beginning of Iliad chapter 1.

1) Iliad

 Sing, O goddess, the destroying wrath of Achilleus Peleiades, which brought innumberable woes upon the Achaians, and flung forth to Hades many valiant souls (psuchas) of heroes, and made the men themselves (autous) spoil to all vultures and hounds, and accomplished the will of Zeus.

When we use the word “soul” in English, we use it to refer to the “real” person, to which the body is an outer shell. We call the soul immortal, and the person that is “Mr. Smith” or “Mrs. Wendlant” or “Ethan Paszko” dwells within the flesh and blood that we see. In the ancient world, it was very much the other way around. Homer says that the souls of the heroes went to Hades and when he writes a visit there later in Odyssey book 11 he describes not disembodied “persons,” but merely echoes—they’re often translated as “shades.” They can’t speak in anything but gibberish unless given an offering of human blood—sort of like my percussionists--and their dwelling is in Hades, which is the home of both the righteous and the wicked, not at all like our heaven and hell. It’s a permanent stupor where only the faintest memory of the real person carries on. By contrast, the men themselves (autous) lie on the battlefield being picked apart by vultures and dogs. Do you see what’s happened? The ancient world has it the other way around from us. The physical body is the real person, and the spiritual substance that survives is only a grotesque memory, like bones in a grave. Next is a passage from Plato’s Apologia. The philosopher Socrates has been put on trial before the Athenian senate, and has just received news that his death sentence was confirmed. This is an extraordinarily sad and beautiful passage as he reflects on his own imminent death.

2) Apologia

Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good…as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another…if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead abide, what good can be greater than this?

Socrates’ description sounds quite a bit like what most Christians believe! Does the soul pass on from this world to a spiritual place the dead live together in peace? We don’t have time to examine the rest of Plato’s writings, but if we did we’d find them to be dualistic. That means this world, the visible, physical world is bad, and the spiritual world is good and desirable. In short, the goal of a dualist/Platonist is to escape this world and to become more and more spiritual until passing off into the spiritual world altogether into death. This is the sort of view you’d expect from the hymns we read, isn’t it? “This world is not my home?”  “I’ll see you across the golden shore?” “We’ll meet when we all get to heaven?” Dualism is the view of life after death we have accepted in place of the New Testament view.  The New Testament view is all about one thing: resurrection. We’ll get to that in a moment, but we’re going to look first at one more ancient text, chapter 7 of II Maccabees, a Jewish book about the defeat of the Syrian megalomaniac Antiochus Epiphanes IV, who was the sort of man you might expect to be the child of Darth Vader and Lord Voldemort. Antiochus defiled the Jewish temple, in this rather grisly story about seven brothers and their mother being tortured to death for their faith you’ll hear what the Jews of the 2^nd century thought about life after death.

3) II Maccabees

The king brought the brothers and their mother before him and tortured them, and their mother encouraged one another to die nobly. The king killed the first brother, and then did the same to the second, who with his dying breath said to Antiochus: ‘You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws.’ When the third brother was brought forward he held forth his hands and said ‘I got these from Heaven, and because of [God’s]  laws I disdain them, and from him I hope to get them back again. Then the dying fourth brother said: ‘One cannot but choose to die at the hands of mortals and to cherish the hope God gives of being raised again by him. But for you there will be no resurrection to life!’ And all the rest died similarly…
To sum up, we read a passage from Homer which expressed a belief that the soul only carried on as an echo. We read a passage from Plato that said the disembodied soul was the real self and the hope for eternity. And last we read of this Jewish hope of a great resurrection of the righteous at the end of history. It’s expressed in the dry bones of Ezekiel 37 and the dead rising to shine like stars in Daniel 12, and it was, until the 1^st century, unique to Judaism. And then, something happened that Death did not expect. A small group of peasants and fishermen, after their leader was executed under Pontius Pilate, came out and declared that one man had already been resurrected from the dead right in the middle of history, and they began to write and talk about their own resurrection as well. Let’s take a look at what St. Paul says about resurrection in I Corinthians 15. (p. 1139 in your pew bibles)
³ For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, ⁵ and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. ⁶ Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time,
We don’t have the time to do a full analysis of of Jesus’ resurrection in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—a difficult task anyway—but remember three points about Easter morning. 1) Jesus really was dead on the cross and in the tomb. 2) Jesus was bodily raised. His hands can be touched. He was recognizable to those who know him. He could eat a piece of boiled fish. 3) Even though he returned in his body, it was changed in strange ways—Jesus apparently traveled great distances instantly, passed through a locked door, and could disguise his physical appearance and “reveal” it to the disciples he encountered—but it was a physical body, which was witnessed by well over 500 people. Let’s return to the text in verse 12.

The Resurrection of the Dead

¹² Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? Paul goes on to argue that if there is no resurrection, therefore Christ was not raised, and then in verse 17: ¹⁷ And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. ¹⁸ Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. ¹⁹ If in Christ we have hope^[b] in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
I don’t doubt that you all believe in the resurrection, but if we buy into what some of those hymns are saying we are passing on the resurrection—we are passing on reclaiming our physical bodies.
²⁰ But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the (first installment) of those who have fallen asleep. ²¹ For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. ²² For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive……²⁶ The last enemy to be destroyed is death
Note that through Adam came the curse of the body dying.  Jesus works out that problem, defeats death, and offers the promise that our bodies will be made alive. Now you and I will all die at some point, because we still must pass through it—but the promise of Jesus is that we’ll come out the other side. That’s what resurrection is.
²⁹ Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf? ³⁰ Why are we in danger every hour? ³¹ I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day! ³² What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” ³³ Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.”^{[d] 34} Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame.
Ask me about vv. 29-34 sometime in private for an explanation

The Resurrection Body

³⁵ But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” ³⁶ You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. ³⁷ And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. ³⁸ But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. ³⁹ For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. ⁴⁰ There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. ⁴¹ There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.
Paul compares it to a seed that goes into the ground and dies.
⁴² So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. ⁴³ It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. ⁴⁴ It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. ⁴⁵ Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”;^[e] the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. ⁴⁶ But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. ⁴⁷ The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. ⁴⁸ As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. ⁴⁹ Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall^[f] also bear the image of the man of heaven.
So what about natural and spiritual? Is Paul saying that the resurrected body is spiritual only? If you are reading from your own bible and have a pencil with you, you might want to take it out and make some notes about these words. Verse 44 reads that “it is sown a natural body,” and the word that the translator has rendered “natural” is psuchikon. In contrast, it is raised a spiritual body, which is a translation of pneumatikon. If you’re reading the RSV or NRSV, I believe that your translator decided on physical, and then spiritual. No matter what translation you’re holding there’s a twofold problem that’s led to some confusion about what St. Paul is really saying. The first problem is just deciding on how to take the word Paul was using in the 1^st century and then to translate them in a way that conveys the closest possible meaning in 21^st century English. The adjective psuchikon in the first part of the verse comes from the Greek noun psuche, which is translated throughout the rest of the New Testament as “soul” or “life.” (As in, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world yet lose his psuche? Or, you fool this very night your psuche is required of you) Psuche is the same word that we heard in the Iliad passage we read, when we heard that the souls of the warriors—the echoes of them—went down to Hades while the men survived. The second word, pneumatikos, is an adjective from “pneuma,” which is spirit throughout the New Testament, as in the Holy Spirit, the hagia pneuma.  The most literal translation you can get of this verse is “it is sown a soulish body, but raised a spiritual body.” This brings us to our second difficulty in translating this passage—there’s no clear way to render in English that Paul is describing the animation, and not the composition of the bodies. For example, when I offer you a balloon, I can describe the composition of the balloon by calling it a rubber balloon or a leather balloon, but I can describe it’s animation by calling it a helium or a hydrogen balloon. What Paul writes in vv. 44 is that even though our bodies are sown with the soul—our own broken personhood and frailty as its animating principle—the animating principle when it is raised will be the Spirit, with a capital S. Please read it again with me in this light. It is sown a body animated by ourself our own soul, but it is raised a body animated by the spirit. And if there is a body that is animated by the soul, there will be a body which is animated by the spirit. The first man Adam became a living life…a living soul…a living being psuche. And the last Adam became a life giving pneuma. But it isn’t the spirit first and then the soulish, rather the soulish, and then the spiritual can come. The first man was animated from the dust of the earth, but the second man from heaven.

Mystery and Victory

⁵¹ Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, ⁵² in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. ⁵³ For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. ⁵⁴ When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
⁵⁵ “O death, where is your victory?
    O death, where is your sting?”

Death must be swallowed up in victory. It is not a victory to jettison our bodies and exist only as disembodied spiritual vapor. That is the definition of death. Victory over death is to undo what death and corruption tried to do, not only in us but in all of God’s good creation. Victory over death, which we share with the death-conqueror Jesus, is the ultimate undoing of Death and eternal life in the resurrected body and the restored creation.

III.

So what? Here are six thoughts about what this means for you who are sitting here in the pews.

1. First, your ultimate hope is not to escape from this earth when you die and to live in heaven forever. Your ultimate hope is that after you’ve died God will resurrect you from the dead, just as he resurrected Jesus. These hands, these faces, and these fingernails have hope for eternal life. (The idea that you’re the steward of a body with an eternal future ought in itself to convince you to never eat fast-food burgers again)
2. Secondly, we’ve pushed back hard against the idea of heaven as a final destination, but this is not to distress those of you who have lost a loved one or know Christians who have passed away. While the New Testament doesn’t have anything to say about a disembodied heaven as our ultimate home, it does promise very clearly that those who die are “with Christ” in some sense, basking in the comfort of his presence. Life after death for the believer absolutely involves heavenly comfort. What we’re talking about when we discuss the resurrection is life after “life after death.”
3. Thirdly, it is your task going forward from here to think about this stuff again before Easter 2013. You need to be, in a humble and loving way, critical thinkers when you sing worship songs, listen to sermons, and read jokes about three men standing before St. Peter and pearly gates. Study the relevant biblical passages, and—again, in humility and gentleness—examine every lyric you sing and every book you read to see whether it is in harmony with Biblical theology or dualism.
4. Fourthly, if you take seriously the notion that God will resurrect not only your own bodies, but will also fulfill his promise s in Romans 8 and Revelation 20&21 to restore all of creation, the task of caring for God’s good earth is much more important and interesting. I know that many to most of you in this room are Republicans, and American Republicans have not always done a very good job acknowledging the real dangers to God’s creation. Environmental concerns are thought to be the business of the Left. If God wants to redeem and remake and heal his whole creation, we can’t treat it like it’s all going to be chucked into dustbin, as if therefore strip-mining and whaling and polluting don’t matter
5. Fifthly, on a related note, a robust resurrection theology makes some punctures in the Left Behind view of the end times, where we all get raptured away from the Earth, and it doesn’t matter since God blows it up at Armageddon anyway. This is deeply controversial stuff, and I won’t pretend to have all the answers. I will say, however, if staying faithful to I Cor. 15 is damaging to our assumptions about the end times, so much the worse for our assumptions about the end times—let’s begin reworking them in light of the resurrection hope we share in Jesus.
6. Finally and most importantly, it all comes back to Jesus. Read the gospel accounts of his resurrection. That’s the hope we have. That’s what we believe is going to happen to us and to the world. And what happened to Jesus wasn’t just a divine magic trick to pull one over on the Pharisees who thought they’d finally gotten the best of him—the resurrection of the crucified son of God was and is the key to God’s plan to rescue us and creation. If escaping off to heaven isn’t the name of the game, what is it? It’s the stone rolling back and the resurrected Jesus coming out of the tomb.

I’ve covered quite a bit in the last 20 minutes, and I’ve done so with very broad-brush strokes. This is such explosive stuff, and I’ve left out and summarized so much, there must be some questions. We’re going to pray, and then I’d like you to take 30 seconds to buzz with the person on your left and 30 seconds to buzz with the person on your right about one or two things you found interesting, exciting, confusing, or heretical, and then we’ll gather in again and have a few minutes for questions and comments.

Heavenly father, we praise you for the mighty victory you have won over death for us and for all your creation in raising your son Jesus from the dead. We pray that you would give us wisdom and understanding to work this amazing event out in our own lives and in the world around us. Help us to be resurrection people, and sustain us in our hope that you will one day clothe us with immortality and animate us with your holy spirit. We thank you for the incredible hope with which you have blessed us, we thank you in all the joy that comes with that hope, but most of all we acknowledge your great and eternal love made manifest in your Messiah. Bless us and our work this day. We pray these things in the mighty name of Jesus the death-conqueror and our great King, Amen.

Homage to Steven Bear

A dark, quiet room.

A man and a woman are sleeping silently in the early hours of the morning. There is no light but the faintest illumination of the moon, no sound but their slow and sleepy breathing. The air is cold, but the blankets are warm with several hours sleep.

All of a sudden, a cry pierces the night like a siren. Both parents stir, and the father rubs his eyes. The cry comes again, broken-hearted as only a child's cry can be. The baby wails again from the next room, even louder, and the father swings out from beneath the warm covers. He treads sockfoot into the nursery in the next room, where he a little boy is standing and sobbing in his crib, little tears glistening in the dim glow of his night-light.

Still half sleeping, the father sees the binky in the boy's mouth and kneels on the floor. The tears continue as the father crawls around the edges of crib and reaches blindly underneath. He coos soft comfort to the baby, but the little boy only cries harder until...the father's hand finds something soft and small. It is a grubby white bear, which he hands over the railing to the sobbing boy. Immediately the boy stops crying, presses the bear to his face, and hums a cheerful, satisfied hum. He kneels in his crib, then faceplants hard onto the mattress, using the bear as a pillow. With his bottom still sticking up in the air and his face buried, he returns to peaceful sleep in less than a minute.

Easier to love when you can't smell him

This is Steven Bear, and he is James' best friend in the entire world. Steven was a gift from Uncle Calvus and Aunt Beka last April, and he instantly became James' favorite toy. He has a little tag on his bottom that says "Steven Smith Company," so his name was obvious. The first full day of Steven's life with James was a six hour car trip to Pennsylvania, and James spent the entire trip snuggling Steven as tight as he could, as well as holding conversation in six month old coos. Steven instantly became James' bedtime companion, and held a powerful ability to instantly turn fussing and crying into happy snuggles when produced by a parent. He was, for the first few months of his life, a beautiful bright white.

Then James learned to crawl. And got his first cold. (Steven was probably more helpful for James' first cold than either of his parents...but in a really gross way.) I don't know what color we'd call Steven now, but it certainly isn't white. He's aging quickly. Sometimes we'll give Steven a "bath" in the washing machine, but if James is supposed to be taking a nap during this terrible time of separation we can forget about any kind of sleep. (Puppy and monkey, to whom James has shown some affection on occasion, are NOT acceptable substitutes, apparently.) Worried about this, J at one point called the Steven Smith company to ask about a "back-up Steven." Unfortunately, the Steven Smith company only sells in bulk. (Calvus tells us that our bear came from a CareNet fundraiser) This might explain why Steven is so flimsy...his neck is getting wobbly, his stitching loose, and he has a few holes in his fur. As James has learned to walk (and fall) things have only been harder on poor Steven, and James' latest teething trick seems to be biting Steven's nose. It's hard to know how much longer Steven will be with us before he needs some sort of major surgery.

With that said, J and I have grown to LOVE Steven Bear. It's really touching to see just how big James' little heart can be. Nothing makes him happier than finding Steven lying on the ground, and no playtime is complete without Steven playing along. He sings to Steven, snuggles Steven, and even talks to him. (His name is Dy-dy to James.) I think that James even understood what the word "Steven" meant before "banana," "binky," or "bath." Steven has become so much a part of our family that I'll say "I'll see all three of you later" when I head out the door for the day. J, who has been subject to pregnancy jokes from my brothers for our entire married life, doesn't think this is funny. I think James and Steven love it.

Back when he was actually white

Best friends sitting together

Ready for a trip in the carseat

Playing with the "stroller"

Deep in conversation

The only way to sleep