Friday, January 22, 2016

Pinata Justice

It wasn't too many years ago that the family and I attended a church event.  As typical Lutheran nights in the Midwest go, there was a lot of food stretched out across the front of the gym, there were an adequate number of white plastic round tables rolled out across the floor and plenty of end-of-spectrum people noisily getting louder and louder in the acoustically challenged gym.  What I mean by 'end-of-spectrum' is there were a lot of really young kids (accompanied by parents who wanted an inexpensive way to both entertain and feed their ravenous children) and generally older folks (who wanted to both entertain and feed the ravenous children that would be screaming around the gym for a few hours.) 

So, the parents of the children would sit exhaustedly slumped at the white plastic tables holding a white Styrofoam cup of coffee but too tired to lift it to their lips.  Every once in a while they would put their parental periscope up to make sure that their children were not causing damage to themselves or to other children, but most assuredly they were content to be in a safe place to soak up life with others.

I was one of those at the tables.  My girls ages were still in single digits but they were so excited for the night.  Hurriedly they ingested some form of potluck item, a casserole, pasta dish or Jello salad smothered in whipped cream and then headed off for the sideshow row games lining the sides of the gym.  We're not talking about ski-ball, but certainly there was a ring toss, a basket shoot and ultimately, at the very end of the night...

The piñata.

It was an interesting read to look up its history.  Most would probably know the piñata from children's birthdays parties as common as Pin the Tail on the Donkey (another warped tradition but I won't get into that.)  Traditionally, a piñata is a crepe papered animal, stuffed with candy and sweets and hung from the roof, or a higher place, by a string.  One by one, children are blindfolded and given a stick, or broom handle, spun around a few times and then told to strike the piñata.  For the most sadistic of parents, they don't tell the kids that the piñata can actually be raised or lowered so they end up looking quite foolish while sounds of laughter ring in their ears while they are blindfolded. 

The piñata, just like most other things, has two different opinions on its origins.  From the Hispanic Culture website, they claim that the piñata is from the Aztecs or Mayans and that eventually the newcomers from Europe took the piñata back.  From another site called Spanish Town, they claim that the original piñata traveled back with Marco Polo from China and was brought into celebrations under the name 'Pignatta' which means 'Clay Pot.'  For right now, I think the Chinese history one is more interesting to write about because the piñata then made its way across the Atlantic ocean (why they would take piñatas across is beyond me) and the religious missionaries used the piñata to draw in the local people to hear about the ways of God.  They would decorate the piñata as Satan, seven horns and all, and let the locals beat the hell out of the devil with a stick.  What a great evangelical tool, right?

Once someone got a good lick in and the 'clay pot' would crack open, all the sweets would roll out from the innards of the broken toy and the children would happily collect them.  Imagine in those ancient times though, the children holding up a piece of candy and shouting to their priest, "Hey, Father, I'm eating Satan's gall bladder!" 

This night at the church function, the piñata was already strung from a basketball hoop high enough that no person under the age of thirteen (and under the height of 6'6) could get at the brightly colored donkey stuffed with unknown chocolates and goodies.  Every once in a while you could see a circle of smallish children pointing at the piñata and scheming in their own childlike way to see if there was a way they could lift each other on their shoulders to burgle the piñata before anyone else got their broom handles on it.

The time came for the piñatacide and the first vociferous boy who had barged to the front of the line was given strict instructions about 'one hit and don't keep whacking away so everyone else gets a chance.'  Before the blindfold was put over his eyes, you could see the glint that he had not listened to a word the person had just said to him and he made sure there was just a sliver of vision underneath the blindfold where he could get a good look at the target.

The leader of the piñatacide backed all the children out of the blast radius and then the children began to shout to the boy, "Hit it!"  "Kill it!" "Hurry up!"  If we weren't in a church you'd have to wonder if the police wouldn't be showing up.  The young boy was spun around a few times and then given free reign to eviscerate El Senor Burro.  Pretending to be dizzy, the young boy staggered slightly and looked under his blindfold, squared up and swung.  WHACK!  Dead hit, but the boy drew back again and swung again and again.  The leader was yelling for him to stop, but no one dared get in the way of the deadly instrument being waved back and forth at random.  Finally, a voice came from the back, "STOP IT NOW!"  It was the boy's mother and upon hearing not only those words but the condition of her embarrassment, the young man dropped the stick and ripped off his blindfold.  After being welcomed into his herd, the boy accepted congratulations for stymieing the adults.

The next of the boys wanted to shove his way in but the facilitator of death barred his path and thought a little more deeply about it and lined everyone up in size order, from smallest to biggest.  Theoretically, this would allow even the tiniest hands to be involved in the piñata smiting.  The littlest girl was placed forward; she was probably only eighteen months old, could barely walk, but she was cute and you could hear the crowd oogle and google over the diminutive would be slayer.  I rolled my eyes a little bit because we were wasting time and as I watched as the parents took out their video cameras and record the syrupy sweet event, I knew that the little girl not only had no interest in being blindfolded, but she really didn't want to hit the donkey either.  She wanted to cuddle it.  All those bright colors...  But, they put the whooping stick in her hand anyway and snapped photos for a good twenty seconds until the girl's parents said they'd gotten enough pictures and gave permission for the next child to beat the piñata.

On and on it went.  Impatiently, some of the ten-year-old boys danced back and forth, foot to foot, wanting to be the glorious victor who cracked the belly of the beast.  After forty-five minutes of little children tapping the piñata, the boys finally got their chance.  The piñata, after swinging motionless (or mostly motionless) from a string and absorbing small amounts of punishment, was beginning to look a little worse for wear.  The last boy, put on the blindfold and before even being spun about decided to swing.  It was a slow motion nightmare.  The stick traveled quickly through the air but slowly through my mind and there was another smaller boy standing beneath the piñata staring at its beauty and wondering about its innards.  Broom handle met back of the head with a sickening thud and a gasp.  Can anyone say, "Is there a lawyer in the house?"

The mother ran to her screaming child.  No blood, thankfully, but a nice little bump on the back of his head.  The mother pulled her boy out of the blast radius, raised her hand and said, "He's all right.  He'll be fine!" and motioned with her hand to continue the sanctioned violence against the stuffed toy.  A sigh of relief issued from the crowd and the young man who had just issued the blow was given strict instructions to swing only when give permission and, when the piñata did crack to stop swinging immediately. 

It only took one more swing.  El Senor Burro could not absorb any more abuse and he cracked majestically from the neck.  Tragically, the head stayed connected to the string and the rest of the body fell to the floor disgorging its sugary contents onto the gym floor.  There was a mad scramble; little kids pushed out of the way.  One young man claimed a small heap of candy lying on top of it as if he had just conquered Mt. Everest. 

I could only look at the decapitated head of the piñata hanging morosely from the basketball hoop.  What a world we live in.

Sometimes our present day digital culture treats justice in the same way that we treat piñatas.  Someone makes a mistake, whether on Facebook or Twitter, writes something that can be taken out of context, or was just inappropriate, and people then share the Tweet or Post.  Within minutes or hours (depending upon the inappropriateness of the words) hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of people have lined up for their own shot at this 'rude' person.  Some might call it vigilante shaming, I would call it piñata justice.

A person has been hung mostly motionless from a string of their own making.  A person just as full of sweetness and goodness like anyone else.  But they've done something wrong - they don't know it at the time because they've just done what everyone else does: they post every detail of their life on line hoping for a response, a like, a care, anything that signifies 21st century relationship - but they didn't think it through.  Take, for instance, Holly Jones, a woman who just wanted to have a good meal at a restaurant but was annoyed by that which she thought was a 'druggie who had the audacity to have a heart attack during her meal.'

Okay, I get it - this is about the least appropriate thing you could think while someone is clinging to life and although it represented an interruption in her life, it's one thing to think it, but it's a completely different thing to put thoughts to Twitter.  Within hours, Holly Jones had been so thoroughly publically shamed, she would go on to lose her job and most of her social respect. 

Yes, she made a mistake, but in the ensuing days after her Tweet, people lined up for miles in the digital piñata line waiting for their turn to take a blindfolded swipe at this person that they'd never met, but somehow it made them feel better to 'beat the hell out of her.'  The people in the piñata line were blind to Holly - they'd never met her before; they didn't know what she'd been through, but now that she was a static target, it was time to whack away at her for her transgressions.  What point was to be proved, I'm not sure, other than be very careful what you post online.  But also, I think, be very careful which piñata line you join.

Here's the deal.  Some Pharisees and teachers of the law brought a woman (piñata) to Jesus and metaphorically strung her up before the Teacher.  She had been caught in the act of adultery.  The law said that she should be (piñata -ed) stoned for her wanton act of lust, but what did Jesus think?  Jesus, at first, didn't seem to even listen to this; he didn't want to step in the piñata line.  Jesus, in fact, was quite content to take the blindfolds off their eyes and let them see their own transgressions which he posted in the dirt with his finger.  "If any of you haven't done anything - ever - that you were ashamed of, by all means, here is the stick," points at the woman, "there is the piñata." 

The Pharisees wanted to break this woman open.  They wanted to see the sweetness of this person spilled on the ground to make a point, or, in this case, to trap Jesus.  She was just an object to them, and a convenient excuse to pull God's vision away from their own mistakes.

They all left.  They didn't throw stones because they weren't without sin. 

So why do we?  Why do we in this world of public hatred continue to crack people open and leave them hanging in their damaged state spilling whatever goodness that they had on the ground so that other people can roll in the gore of their life and claim it for themselves, or claim that 'they were the one who brought the darkness to light?  Why do we do this?

I'll let you ponder your own role in piñata justice.

Friday, January 15, 2016

Different

This year will be different. 

I suppose I end every year with the same sentiment, wanting the next three hundred and sixty-five (this year, 366) to be better, or, in some sense, happier.  Surely, I attempt to think I will be healthier, although the attrition of time is inevitable; I want to be wealthier, I think, or at least that's what I'm conditioned to believe that somehow wealth will make things easier for me; I want to be wiser - most assuredly, for in wisdom we find the most contentment in life.  That's why Solomon chose it.  Wisdom, and its genesis with the fear of God, is invariably where we find that life can be different.

But something else different has shifted in me, like the leading edge of a fault line and even though the earthquake (or lifequake in this instance) might not move the Richter scale, I feel like this forty-third trip around the sun will transform me.

Let me start again.

I watched a movie last night - About Time.  It was probably a mistake to watch it before I went to bed because the import of it confounded my dreams throughout the night and the waking moments of my today.  I won't spoil the entire movie, but it's essentially about a young man who is told, on his twenty-first birthday, by his father that he can travel backwards in time and with just a 'rumble, stumble and a flop around' he can go back to change little things in his life without upsetting the time/space continuum.

This is not a science fiction movie, but it is an incredible dialogue between living in the past and loving in the present.  So, the first question I asked myself was, "If I could travel back in the past to 'fix up' any of the more embarrassing or shameful things that happened, would I do so?"  The quickest response would have been 'yes, indeed.'  I would have loved to have avoided various points where I did not come out as the brightest spark from the fire.  The pain of embarrassment is one of the great motivating factors in life and to avoid them, well, let's just say that no (rational) human enjoys pain, whether physical or otherwise.

But the question I asked was the wrong one: It's not 'would I go back in time?' but 'how do I pay attention in the present?'  That's really the point of the movie and it is done in a masterful way; the desperate attempts to understand relationships and how love develops is where my mind should go, and I find myself essentially swimming in a shallow pool of guilt, because there are times when I believe that 'paying attention' has a price to it.  The more I reflected on the laps that I was making in this pool, the more I realized that 'paying attention' is really the only free thing that we do.  Everything else costs, whether time, energy or money - even love, which necessarily costs a beautiful sacrifice if done well. 

Paying attention is without cost and just because I notice one thing, that does not mean that my entire focus is absent from everything else.  For instance, I continue to recognize that my eldest daughter is now in her last year of high school and just lately, I've been seeing her in a different light, the bouncing curls of her hair which are so reminiscent of that small girl from fifteen years ago; the lilt of her voice and the ring of her laughter:  this does not distract my understanding of how my other two daughters, both of whom are loved equally as much, their own qualities of character; Josephine's steadfast sense of humor, the happy scrunching of her nose and how Greta's eyes light up at the thought of reading a book on the sofa all day long - I can think about those things all day long, how they used to be.  That's what photographs are for and sometimes we get lost in them because they are silenced happy echoes of what used to be.

Losing ourselves in photos is a necessary thing sometimes.  To remember is to be human, but it also allows us one more thing - to feel.  To feel and to sense is that which makes life completely livable. 

That's why this year will be different - all from watching a movie on a night when no one else was in the house.

Last night I spilled a glass of red wine all over our cream colored carpet.  First response?  A rush of blood to the brain and a resorting to muffled profanity while watching the wine drip down over my arms and down on my legs, like a hairy Plinko board, and soaking in to the carpet.  It looked like an artery had exploded in my arm.  I hurried to the kitchen to try to find anything that would soak it up; I had the forethought to leave the beautiful kitchen towels to grab rags and as I attempted to blot up the spilled wine, I paid attention to everything that was happening.

To be able to feel anger - it's blessing.  To be able to see the wine on the carpet - a blessing (mixed one at that).  To be able to hear the wind switching through the wooden slats - a blessing.  To feel the wine drying in red blotches between the moles on my arms - yes, a blessing.  You see, all these things, even though seemingly inconvenient, were an opportunity to remind me that to sense anything at all is what makes life livable. 

I would guess that most people don't pay attention, whether consciously or unconsciously, because they believe that what comes next is more important, and, more to the point, that the moment will come again.  But that's the tyranny of time, isn't it?  There might not be another opportunity, there might not be another day. 

I had a raspberry this morning and I tasted it's tartness like I'd never experienced it before and the walls of my soul were enlarged.  I smelled the freshness of the rain on the breeze - I closed my eyes and it reminded me of the early spring at my parents' house when the snow had been erased by the first warm day and the scents of the earth rose from a seemingly unlocked box.  I heard the BeeGee's this morning and although I find their sound variously fun and annoying at the same time, I reflected on why humans enjoy music.

This year will be different because I'm recognizing how fast it seems to be traveling.  If I could go back in time I would go back to that last Christmas my Grandpa Nacke was alive and I would hug him longer than I ever had before.  He always used to make a grunting sound as if I was squeezing him too hard but I always knew that was his way of saying "I love you."  In fact, I would go back to every important person in my life and embrace them for just a few brief moments longer than proper (probably) just to take in their feel and their touch, the sound of their breathing, the patterns of their voices and memorize them again.

But that's then, this year is different.  Perhaps this year I'll live life like I mean it.

Instead of spending days of my year on screens, which is the ultimate irony as I spend a good segment of the morning typing this in response to watching a movie, I'll power down and love up.  It sounds relatively cheesy, but love is the one thing we were truly made to do.  Instead of taking a nap, I'll take advantage of those who are in the immediate vicinity, because the time in which we cross paths may never come again. Our rivers might be divergent.  I'll play more board games with my kids; I'll hold my wife's hand at all possible opportunities; I'll Skype my parents and siblings; I'll give lots of gifts and enjoy the feeling of being wealthy beyond measure because I have made someone else happy.

I will refrain from swimming in my shallow pool of guilt because it does me no good - there is no benefit, no healthy exercise, in it.  I'll pay attention to things that have more value than guilt, which is everything else. 

In essence, I will be different.

Maybe you'd like to join me.  Pick up a pen and paper, enjoy the tactile contentment of the patience it takes to scribe words to someone you haven't spoken to in too long.  Eat something you've never tried before.  Go somewhere but don't take a picture of it.  Enjoy the present-ness of it.  Forget Facebook and selfies; refrain from Twitter and find other people to chat with without snapping.  Meet your neighbors and forgive your enemies.

Be different.

Friday, January 1, 2016

A Christmas Letter

Hello everyone,

Happy New Year from sunny Queensland, Australia.  I hope you had a blessed Christmas and a safe New Year celebration.

As it's the 21st century, I'm posting the Matthias Christmas letter on the blog.  I'm also beginning a new series on Two for One (the blog that Ryan and I share) called:  Stories I've Forgotten - Bible Episodes that I Don't Remember Reading, or Wanted to Forget.

Welcome to our family.


2015 – Twelve Mostly Factual Things That Happened.  (Inspired by real events)

1      January


(entry taken from Reid’s fictitious 2015 journal – none of these thoughts actually were written down, but they should have been…)

I woke up in fear this morning.  I’m old, well, old-ish.  Forty-one years old and now, starting today, I’ll have three daughters in high school.  Jeesh, where did the time go?  Elsa’s in eleventh grade; Josephine, ninth; Greta seventh.  I keep looking at all the baby pictures and those cherubic faces of little girls gracing our walls.  Up to this point I’ve done a pretty good job of ignoring the fact that now there are a gazillion bras on the line every time we do the laundry.

Now that I’m in my forties, I should probably think about when the mid-life crisis is going to swerve at me out of control down the highway of life.  I would guess that I avoided one of them just this last week:  I got a call to be a pastor at a school/church in Western Australia.  Christine and I flew out there to visit – the five hour flight was not my beautiful wife’s favorite thing.  I didn’t know fingerprints were strong enough to leave indents, but let’s just say my forearms bear the marks of her terror.  We didn’t take the call (every time it’s called that, I think of Tarzan calling the apes to himself), but it did reinforce the imposition of our own roots here in the Lockyer Valley.   When we returned, Elsa, especially wanted to know if we were going to take it.  Her words were, “Whatever God has planned for you, I’ll accept that,” which is pretty amazing for a kid entering her 11th grade year of high school, but her face told a different story.  “Dad, if you move now, I’m going to start wearing dark makeup and dating boys named ‘Biff.’”

We made the right choice.

2      February


Okay, so now I’m forty-two.  It’s just a number, right?  Well, it is, until you think, I’ve double the number of years since my twenty-first birthday party.  That gets me back to reflecting.  We had my twenty-first birthday at my grandparents’ house in Frederika, Iowa.  I won’t go into incriminating details, but let’s just say about twenty of us including our parents and high school baseball coach stayed up well past the bewitching hour.  Twenty-one.  Now, that I’m twice that age, I can barely stay up at night until 21:00.  Where did my nocturnal stamina go?  Where is my ability to socialize?  Where is my hair?

The girls participated in the swimming carnival today.  I don’t know why they call it a ‘carnival’ in Australia.  Its origins are Latin – you know, Carnivale, must have something to do with meat.  Every time I think of a carnival, I think of clowns and elephants, the circus.  But when applied to swimming… Well, I guess it’s kind of a circus.  There were a few kids swimming in tutus, a Batman outfit and angel wings.  Our girls did well – Greta won overall; Elsa and Josephine finished second in their respective ages.  Pretty good swimmers obviously taking after their mother because my ability to swim came from years of training at Wood’s lake amidst the frogs and bugs and fear of putting my head under the water for fear of incubating e coli. 

3      March


Ah, the march of time.  Josephine is now a teenanger.  I mis-wrote that; it was supposed to be teenager, but the slip is completely Freudian.  She’s not angry in any way, but the thought that she is no longer a little girl is, as Rusty and Audrey would say from National Lampoon’s Vacation – Weirdorama.  Working with teenagers every day of my work life perhaps is where more of the ‘teen-anger’ issue comes from.   We live in a world that is strangely enamored with rage.  I was pondering that the other day – there was even an article in the paper that Lego doesn’t make toys with smiles on their faces anymore.  Superheroes don’t laugh – only the supervillains. 

Well, at least my girls aren’t angry – in fact, they are quite happy to be reading and playing music.  They have all been invited to be part of the school musical, Back to the ‘80’s.  I’m not sure we’ve ever left.  Elsa’s got a lead part and I’ll be looking forward to seeing ‘high hair’ back in the house.  Christine was looking back over some of her photos from the ‘80’s and by golly, she had some incredible height on her fringe.  Sky-scraper.  She could have made it rain with that hair.  I’m jealous.

So, my lovely wife is now a year older than I again.  She continues to be awesome.  A steadfast, beautiful, fluid force in my life.  She’s working hard roving between schools as a substitute teacher.  Not an easy gig, but she’s good at it.

4      April


On our way to South Australia.  We’ve been in Tasmania for nine days.  I’m writing this on our last night on the little island.  It’s been incredible to walk by Cradle Mountain, to ‘hang glide’ across a river and cruise the north coast near the ‘Nut.’  I really enjoyed the wombats.  Sometimes I feel like a wombat – always approaching the fine line of perpetual hibernation.  We trod on a wooden walkway and were delighted to see the lumbering beasts walking close enough to us that we could reach down and scratch them.  They grunted with either pleasure, or amusement (maybe even disdain) that we were scratching their backs.  I should try that with Christine – sidle up, grunt a few times, move my hairy back next to her hand and see if she’ll scratch it.

So now we’re finishing up in South Australia at a camp for high school kids called ‘Novo.’  What an incredible experience.  The kids are having a great time, not just running around and playing games, but real-life biblical learning.  The leaders have been excellent; I wish we could have this kind of worship and youth experience every weekend.  There’s something truly invigorating about spiritual renewal.  I’m almost ready to be done with holidays.

5      May


It’s May already.  For some reason I’m surprised, but that’s kind of silly, like waking up one morning and saying, “I can’t believe it’s Wednesday already,” even though for as long as I know, Wednesday has followed Tuesday.  It was good to get back to school, but I think I’m already looking forward to the two weeks off at the end of next month.  The girls are entrenched in the musical and I’m playing in the band.  We haven’t had practices yet, but the girls have been singing ‘Walking on Sunshine’ and I feel as if I’ll pull out the last three hairs on my head if I hear that song again.  I sure hope the voices can keep up with the songs.  “We Are the World” could be a real train wreck, high school voices left strewn all over the adolescent vocal highway.

Weather changes in Australia, not like the extreme swings in the Midwest of the United States, more like the little kiddie swings at the park where you have to strap the infant in so that they don’t fall out.  The seat can only go about four feet off the ground, but for someone who has not experienced that four foot drop, it can be scary, I guess.  Queenslanders have this skewed understanding of what cold is.  The other day a few of the kids were wearing their thick sweaters, coats and long pants.  After they were blowing on their hands, I asked them if it was really that cold.  They assured me that fifteen degrees Celsius is a real ‘shock to the system.’

6      June


Here we are at the halfway point of the year – June 2.  It’s like the half-life of a radioactive substance; it just keeps breaking down halfway at a time.  If you halve the distance between two ends at set periods, theoretically, the end should never get there.  That’s the way this term has felt.  I don’t know why term two is always like that.  Maybe it’s because I’ve been helping to teach religion and ethics this year.  I don’t remember classes to be like this – certainly it probably has to do with the fact that about .5% of the population at school want to talk about religion and even less than that feel a great desire to discuss ethics.  I asked the class three months into the year what the word ‘ethics’ means and I was greeted with the same expression as cows looking up while they chew cud.

Our girls are precariously balancing all their activities whether music (the new piano we have is marvelous which has increased their practice times), musical (I have heard some of the songs now that I’ve been playing with the band – I’ve got nightmarish visions of the end of Dirty Dancing occurring when “I’ve Had the Time of My Life” is being sung) and academics.  Girls are doing great.  Elsa loves her math classes, Josephine has been enjoying legal studies and Greta loves the arts.  All three are really good at German and Elsa is already counting down to when our German exchange student arrives in a few weeks.  Elsa goes to Germany at the end of the year which will be an interesting thing.

7      July


It’s July and I’ve been to Adelaide for pastors’ conference.  Big decisions to be made in October regarding the future of the Lutheran Church of Australia.  James and I stayed in a bed and breakfast in the little town of Hahndorf.  It was strange staying in a quaint, romantic little house with one of my co-pastors.  When he looked at my four poster bed, I think he got a little jealous because he stayed in the ‘pink’ room with the nice curtains surrounding the bed. 


The musical went off with very few hitches other than one of the spotlight boys threw up in the booth causing a good deal of commotion and odor.  Fortunately, there was someone to, ahem, pick up the pieces while the ensemble did their thing on stage.  Elsa sang a solo and was one of the leads while the other two were part of the chorus.  The last night Josephine came down with something akin to laryngitis and couldn’t sing her solo.  So, big sister Elsa, already having heard enough of Josephine’s solo in practice, did a lip sync a la Milli Vanilli, or Blues Traveler.  No one could tell because their voices are so similar.  I wish I could have seen it, but I was busy playing in the band.  We all dressed up in 80’s gear; I pulled out the old high school baseball coat, rolled my jeans and donned a big black wig.  It was nice to have hair again, but very itchy.

Eline has come to stay with us, a very nice young lady from Wiesbaden in Germany.  Her English was fantastic; she enjoyed the sights and sounds of Australia and it seemed that she didn’t really want to go back to Germany yet. 

8     A ugust


Two words.  Elsa… Driving…  The first time I took her out, I’m not quite sure who was more afraid, Elsa or all the cats in the neighborhood.  She did pretty well other than a few issues with braking, accelerating, changing lanes and parking.  Sweet sixteen.  I remember when I was sixteen.  Kind of.  The Berlin Wall was just about to come down and it had been three years since the Mets had won the World Series. 

We celebrated our eighteenth wedding anniversary.  This, too, has been a shock to think that two decades have come and gone since I met the love of my life. 

Now that the musical is done, we’re having difficulties figuring out how to fill our time.  Not.  Someday we’ll soak in the fact that there is such a thing as a ‘weekend,’ which I think means, literally, ‘that there is an end to the work week.’  It seems like volleyball, weddings, church commitments, family outings – all good things – create a nice steady stream for life.

I hope we don’t drown.  Or, if we do, there is some nice person in that crazy little red and yellow hat strapped under their chin (the beach life guards wear these things even while they swim!  It’s awesome; some of the life guards wear these tight florescent pink tank tops.  All the better for the sharks to see them first.), who could perform CPR. 

9      September


Officially – tired.

We finished up the third term at school; the girls are truly on their way to getting great grades and I am seeing how difficult the job of teaching really is.  Christine has been laboriously working at both Peace and Faith (Lutheran Schools) but laboriously working at both of these fruits of the Spirit also.  Peace of mind has come now that we have journeyed to our second home, an apartment right on the beach at Tugun.  There is something completely and wonderfully amazing about standing in the place where the ocean meets the shore, planting your feet there and let the water sculpt the sand around your toes.   For hours, we could listen to the relentless roar of the waves, watch the cloud dapple sky change from brilliant blue, to sparkling orange and enjoy the ocean breeze as we decompress from a school term.  Christine’s family has come for fiftieth birthday parties and are staying just up the beach also.  I have stayed back a couple of times to watch my AFL team lose to the most hated team of all – the Hawthorn Hawks.  Bad umpiring.  It always is.

10 October


After the disappointing decision at the national synod (women’s ordination voted down by fourteen votes – only 64% voted in favor of it) we’ve come back to school and enjoyed the last few weeks of Greta’s confirmation experience.  In some ways, it would have been good to have triplets: confirmation done in two years.  But, we’ve had girls in confirmation since 2010.  It’s not like I want to avoid confirmation, I really like, but it’s good to have the confirmation part done and now they are (hopefully) going to invest their time in service and worship.

It’s been a month into the Fantasy Football Season already.  Christine thinks I’m addicted.  If I were addicted I’d have more than five teams.  My team at school has been a great source of enjoyment and community.  There are lots of things in reality that are as fun as fantasy, but during fantasy football season, it’s harder to see them.  Reality:  Elsa is still driving and the only difficulty she has is an inherited gene from me – straight parking.  Josephine is really enjoying her friendship group and is constantly with them during school breaks.  Often, I am on playground duty.  I volunteer not because I love it, but because I’m checking up on my girls to make sure that the boys are understanding who’s the boss.  Greta has made some good friends and all three are in the chapel bands enjoying the music/worship life of the school.  Well, maybe ‘enjoy’ is a strong word, but they like the comraderie. 

11 November


Ah, like the sweet smell of the spring after the winter snows have melted and the earth is releasing its dormant scent.  The school year is almost finished and what a year it’s been.  The girls have all received academic awards which I take full credit for – well, the credit is for driving them to school.  They’ve done the rest.  But getting them there, that’s a big deal.

On top of academic awards, they received music and athletic awards.  All of the girls have done well – real renaissance women (pronounced in Australia ‘re-nay (accent on ‘nay’)-saunce.’  Australians pronounce all sorts of things differently like ‘shedule – they forget the ‘c’ and even ‘maroon’ pronounced ‘maroan.’  I just go with it.  It’s the beauty of a multicultural family. 
 

We had Christmas this weekend because Elsa is flying out to Germany.  I remember when we flew to Europe for the first time.  It was February and the plane threatened to break apart from the newly acquired polar caps on the wings.  It wasn’t quite as cold this year, but Elsa still took along her winter coat from our last year’s trip to the States.  She’s going to be staying with Eline, the young lady who came to stay with us.  Eventually she’ll spend time at the school, go on a tour of Salzburg (the Sound of Music Tour – Eline’s cousin is named ‘Louisa’.  I wonder if Brigitta will be there too?) and a skiing adventure into the Italian Alps.  I guess they call this an ‘educational’ experience.  She’ll have a great time. 

12 December


It’s New Year’s Eve. 

We have been watching movies, playing games and desperately trying to stay awake for the last couple of hours.  It’s 10:00.

We’ve had a whirlwind adventure of a December.  Not only did school finish well, but we’ve had multiple opportunities to sing Christmas carols and revel in the Christmas spirit.  Enough of this bah-humbug-there’s-no-such-thing-as-joy-to-the-world.  We’ve reveled in traveling to Melbourne to visit Christine’s brother, cousin and aunt.  I’ve petted more dogs in those ten days than I have since I was growing up.  The highlights – a yacht experience with friends of Russell’s who took us out into the bay.  It was a little rough, but the girls stood at the front of the boat on the (jeesh, I wish I was a sailor) pointy thing sticking out from the bow and rode it like a roller coaster.  We went on an old steam train called the Puffing Billy.  I naively thought that because Australians make up names for all sorts of things, that a ‘billy’ was another word for a train.  But it’s not – they just called it a billy.  A billy can mean a multitude of other things include a can in which you heat water, a goat, a place that is far far away (to billy-o) and I’m sure other things that I have not yet encountered.  It was great to spend time with family and friends. 

 
I was able to talk with some of my family by skype today – they look happy and healthy and wise.  I am grateful to God for this year and for all the adventures with which we have been blessed.  I’m raising a toast with the new wine which I bought for my Christmas present – Happy New Year to all!

The Pit

In the beginning was the pit. Yesterday, I did something I hadn't done in a quarter century. To be entirely frank, that quarter century ...