The Chronicles of Garnabus

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Best One Yet!


If you read my last post, you probably realize that I haven't blogged in a few days because ALL of my spare time has been devoted to the last book in the Harry Potter series -- Deathly Hallows.

I picked up the book on Saturday afternoon and finally got to crack it open on Sunday after church. Being a new papa, I didn't have much spare time in which to read, so I stayed up late the past few nights -- okay, so by late, I mean 1am on Monday, 2 am on Tuesday, and 3:20 am on Wednesday by which time I simply couldn't put the book down until I read the last page.

Admittedly, I have enjoyed all of the Potter books, but this final chapter in the saga was by far the most amazing of the seven.

I won't do any spoilers here, since I hate that, but anyone interested in sharing their reactions is welcome to comment or email.

For now, I think I need to seriously catch up on some sleep -- Emjay doesn't let us sleep in past 6:30 or 7 these days without a struggle!

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Sermon of 22 July 2007

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Readings: Genesis 18:1-10a, Psalm 15, Colossians 1:15-28, Luke 10:38-42

There was once a young man named Agamemnon. Born the first of two children in a small but growing Midwestern town, Agamemnon had a fairly normal childhood in the post World War II era of the late forties and early fifties. His father said of him that Agamemnon was a very serious and responsible child – that he kept to himself a lot and was always interested more in entrepreneurialism than in childish games.

These skills lent themselves well to the family’s survival when at thirteen, Agamemnon put himself to work to help keep his mother and his younger brother afloat after his father left. Plying all his young skill, Agamemnon helped to make a living for the family as well as finishing high school. His early high school love remembers him as his father does – as a very serious and hard working young man.

His quick mind and determination earned him a place aboard a naval ship during Vietnam, where he again proved his skill by keeping temperamental radar equipment functioning. While overseas, he wrote letters back and forth to his young bride until he finally came home in 1969.

Agamemnon scraped by on practically nothing as a child and vowed to make a better life for his family. When his tour of duty ended, he took a job with the Railroad, working his way up to engineer and eventually being asked to represent the railroad workers with the union. During this time, his first and second sons were born.

Dedicating as much time and energy as he could to his work, Agamemnon worked his way up through the ranks over the years to finally run for vice president of the whole union before he retired. He had a beautiful house, two cars and a pickup in the driveway, money invested in stocks and bonds, and an ever growing retirement pension – all preparing for the day when he could finally retire and enjoy the fruits of his labor.

Unlike his own father, Agamemnon had provided security, stability, and a future for his family. Until the day he came home to find his family gone.

Amidst the terrible stresses of his sixty-plus-hour per week job, amidst the struggling to save and scrape whatever he could to provide for his family and their future, amidst the forty eight weeks per year of office work, weekend business trips, late nights, and week-long conventions, Agamemnon lost touch with his family.

His growing irritability from the rigors of his professional life, combined with his expertly honed arguments from years of union negotiations made him a formidable and intimidating opponent both professionally, and unfortunately at home.

Agamemnon was and is a good man. He is honest, hard working, loving, faithful, and fiercely protective of those he holds dear. But how do you tell someone who has worked their entire life to eek out a solid living for their family that all you really ever wanted was a father?


The kind of hospitality demonstrated in our scriptures today paints a picture for us of the way God intends for us to be in relationship with one another.

Abraham too was a hard-working man – struggling in the desert to find enough resources to keep his herds and his family alive as he followed God’s call to him to leave his home and set out on what often seemed like a fool’s errand. More than once, he thought he was going to die childless and forsaken by God, yet we see in today’s lesson from Genesis that even in the midst of whatever hardships he was enduring at the time, Abraham dropped everything to reach out to the three strangers who appeared at his door. He took of the fruits of his own labor to provide what could only be described as a feast. He sat with them in conversation, heedless of the work that was left undone. He held up a model of hospitality that welcomed the stranger out of a hostile and deadly environment, providing them with an oasis of God’s abundance and safety. Given the option between valuing work and physical prosperity over the needs of these strangers, Abraham stopped what he was doing to engage in relationship – and again and again, we are told, it was accounted unto him as righteousness.

Again, in our Gospel reading for today, we see the familiar story of Mary and Martha welcoming Jesus into their home, providing an amazing model of the kind of relationships God wishes for us.

Martha, the pragmatic, responsible host, busies her self with the work of the house while Mary, the inveterate feminist of the story places herself at Jesus’ feet as a disciple, turning the normal system of her time on its head. The story begs us to make our own judgment as to which sister is in the right, and it seems as though it must be Martha until Jesus comes to Mary’s defense.

The key piece of the story for me today came from Christ’s explanation that “there is need for only one thing.” While Martha worried and distracted herself with the many tasks of making her home, she neglected the one thing that her guest needed – her presence. As unfair as it seemed that Mary chose to sit at Jesus’ feet rather than helping Martha with the busywork of tidying the house, Mary was the one that demonstrated the value she placed on the relationship with her guest. In the moment of choice between leaving her guest to sit while she helped to scurry around the house, giving him only passing attention, and letting go of the business to focus on Christ, Mary chose the relationship. And as was the case with Abraham, it was accorded unto her as righteousness – “Mary has chosen the better part,” Christ explains, “which will not be taken away from her.”

What kept Martha from similarly sitting at Jesus’ feet was only her sense of duty and responsibility to provide for her guest. She was certainly not a bad host, nor was she in the wrong for trying to provide for those dear to her, but amidst the stresses of completing her daily chores as well as providing additional resources for her guest, amidst her commitment and dedication to the traditions of her time, amidst her valiant attempts to complete her work so that she could then get to the business of concentrating on relationships, Martha risked losing touch with her guest.


We will doubtless each find at some point in our lives that we are concentrating our energies so much on a single task that we begin to lose sight of the bigger picture.

Whether it be school, work, taking care of the kids, creating the “perfect” life, or even caring for a loved one during a time of illness or reaching for a life-long dream, we will one day be forced into the realization that we are out of balance. It comes in the form of high blood pressure, heart attack, and other stress induced diseases of the cardio-pulmonary system; it comes in the form of alienation from friends and family, it comes in the form of one day finding oneself surrounded with every material thing ever hoped for and suddenly finding them empty without deep and lasting relationships that feed the heart and the soul, and it comes in the form of crises of the soul.


I phoned Fuego on Friday night from the car. I was on my way home from shopping for a retreat, picking up pacifiers for Emjay, stopping by the office to check my email, picking up change for a youth group parent from our trip to the water park earlier in the week, picking up tickets to the new Harry Potter movie, and was on the way home to scramble through the house and get back over to the theater for the 7:00 showing – where I was due in a half hour. This kind of thrilling scavenger hunt through town pretty much described my daily life as a young adult. Scurrying from place to place, always rushing to make it to the next destination in my overbooked schedule between working 50-70 hours per week at Intel, leading youth group, Sunday school, the acolyte team, the healing team, and acting as clerk for the vestry at church, attending five to seven martial arts classes per week, and squeezing in one or two meals and up to six hours of sleep per day. I lived for the chase and went about two years without a vacation. Then I met Fuego. Suddenly all the terribly important details of my franticly paced life seemed trivial. And as I began to slow down and enter more deeply into relationships, not only with Jane but with friends I hadn’t spent any truly quality time with since high school, I found myself feeling more alive than I had felt in years. So as I drove home on Friday, feeling stressed out and tired from just a few hours of what used to be my whole life, I called Fuego to tell her affectionately, “honey, you’ve ruined me.”


For all the emphasis I put on becoming instruments of God’s kingdom, the true heart of Christ’s ministry, and the core of bringing God’s kingdom to each other is found in relationships with one another and with God.

“Mary chose the better part” by seeking the balance of working toward the end of furthering the relationships that feed our very existence in ways that ‘a job well done’ simply cannot.

With Martha, we are called today to examine the emphases in our lives. We are called to take a close look at where our energies are concentrated and strive to make the changes necessary to find a balance between the work that sustains us in the world, and the relationships that feed us and feed God’s own community amongst us.


And as for Agamemnon? Well, I still think he works more than he should for the balance he needs in his life, but I sincerely believe that he has come to recognize that Mary’s part is at least a close second to Martha’s. And when it comes to his grandchildren, Christ himself would be proud to see Agamemnon sitting at his feet.


It is up to us too to choose the better part. It is never too late to seek the balance in life that draws us to sit at God’s feet.

Amen.

Potter Mania

The latest installments of Harry Potter are afoot! Having just seen the film this past Friday (probably the last person in all of D-town who was seeing it for the first time), and just picked up the new book on Saturday afternoon, I feel as though I am well under way toward meeting my, until now, pitifully underachieved fantasy quota for the summer.

As with the previous four films, I was impressed with the film, not for its strict adherence to details, nor for its completness (both of which could only stand to disappoint), but for its ability to capture and forward the plot while dazzling moviegoers with special effects that bring imagination to life. Nothing in the films is ever quite as I have pictured it, but it's similar enough to be a whole lot of fun!

A bonus of going to see Order of the Phoenix was a piquing of my interest in this, my least favorite, installment in the saga. A few casual details caught my attention enough that I will be excited to reread book five on my next read-through of the whole series (after I finish book seven), to see if they might be as intreguing as they seemed in the film -- of course, by then, I'll know how the series ends, so I'll also know if my hunches are true or not already ;o).

I won't make any comments on what I think may or may not happen in book seven, I'd rather just enjoy it as I make my way through without expectation.

Of course, I may have to preface a not-to-distant future post with "PLOT-SPOILER!" to spark a bit of discussion between those who've also finished the last book!

Enough! I have 708 pages left to read and they're not going to read themselves (it's fun to be so excited about a book =o)

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Tuesday!

Instead of working in the office all day on a beautiful Tuesday, why not consider taking a few teens to the water slides?!

This was my Tuesday...

I picked up the three kids and one other adult who were free (a sad testament to how busy kids are these days!) at about 9:30, drove to the coffee shop and ordered a Decaf Soy Latte and a hot breakfast sandwich (I generally discourage frequenting Starbucks, but they do have a drive through window and now offer breakfast sandwiches... I caved, what can I say). We got gas (for the car, not from the breakfast sandwich), and hit the road at about 10. A short 38 minute drive later we arrived to find that the park opened at 11 during the week (excellent timing).

We got our tickets, changed, and applied sun block liberally -- just in time for the park to open!

Never have I been to a water park this cool. I'm pretty sure I was at least as excited as the kids to get to play in the sun for a whole day!

Most of the slides used inner-tubes (single, double, triple, and even quad tubes), which turned out to be pretty awesome. Mind you, I haven't been to a water park since Marine World was in Redwood Shores and they had the "Tiger Mountain Rapids" water slides, so I've never really been to a water park that used inner-tubes -- or that had fully enclosed water-slide tubes, jets of water that propelled you uphill, vortices that attempted to separate your plasma from red cells, parabolic slides with a fifty-foot drop, and pitch-dark slides that ejected you into a funnel and eventually dumped you into an 8-foot deep pool.

Mighty-8-bit, Punky-spice, and I went on every slide at least once and made it to our favorites twice (they had about ten different slides), but what ended up being one of the 'funnest' attractions was the circular "river" that you could just float down on old fashioned truck inner-tubes. There were several points at which there were waterfalls and we would try to force each other under these to get soaked -- but primarily it was a great way to chat, so we killed about an hour and a half just floating around in circles chatting.

All in all... not a bad day's work!

Monday, July 16, 2007

Grasshopper's Jesus Year

Yesterday Fuego and I went down to visit Grasshopper, Red Hot, Ladybug, and Mini-me to celebrate Grasshopper's 33rd Birthday! Muddy and Designgirl were there, as was Red Hot's step-dad. We sat in the garage and drank great homebrew, sat outside and drank good single-malt while we ate, drank other stuff while playing one-handed catch with four foot balls, and then got downt to the serious matter of acting the sum total of our individual ages (roughly between six and seven).

What began as an innocent game of catch soon became a four way game of 'chuck-balls-and-whatever-else-we-can-find-at-each-other.' It was a good rousing game as Red Hot and I (and sometimes Ladybug) faced off against Muddy and Grasshopper (and Design girl for a while too). We progressed from small foot balls to larger ones, to soccer balls, large inflated rubber balls, and eventually peaches from Grasshopper and Red Hot's peach tree. All in all it was a pretty great game -- no children were injured and adults were only slightly sticky.

Sadly it's all fun and games until someone loses a testicle... or at least until someone bends it like Beckham around the side of the house, lands it (it being a large bouncy ball -- not a testicle) in the middle of the lunch table, and obliterates a fairly expensive wine glass, propelling red wine incredible distances that reach inside the open glass door to the house, onto and under the kitchen table, and hitting at least one chair.

(Okay, ya, it was me.)

Game over man.

Anyway, it was a pretty awesome day and we had a great time celebrating Grasshopper's 33rd!

Saturday, July 14, 2007

A Hard Year on Dads

Fuego and I attended Mr. Cagiva's dad's memorial today. That's the third friend my age or younger who has lost their father this year, but as I practically grew up in EAG's house from 7th grade through high school this one was hard on a personal level as well as hard to watch my friends go through.

Mr. Cagiva and I met in 7th grade -- actually we cut the last day of 7th grade together, I remember riding on his handlebars as he peddled us down the levy for a day of mischief that ended with our fathers out looking for us.

My dad found us around dusk outside of one of the local markets -- we were in pretty big trouble and were both grounded from each other for about two weeks (our parents independantly decided that we were a bad influence on each other ;o).

Although EAG was taller and considerably more physically imposing than my own dad, I soon found out that he was really a pretty amazing person. He welcomed me into his family, took me on trips with Mr. Cagiva to go ATV'ing, to go to his lake cabin and go tubing behind his speedboat, to Great America, and many other places, and was always ready to listen or offer advice. I remember many a conversation in their living room that lasted late into the night -- especially if there was something mechanical that he was working on that Mr. Cagiva and I could help clean or otherwise reassemble. I learned a lot from him over the years and it's hard to know that he'll never get to meet Fuego or Emjay.

Mr. Cagiva and I have basically been brothers for over 20 years and although EAG and the rest of his family moved, Mr. Cagiva has kept me up to date on both his dad and his younger half-siblings. It was hard to be there today, but everyone was wonderful and although the circumstances were tragic it was great to see everyone again.

Friday, July 13, 2007

iEnvy

Fuego and I attended our good friends' wedding last weekend. It was a wonderful celebration with friends coming from far and wide. We got to stay in the same hotel as Mama-doo and Fireboy (and found out later that BananaSlug and The Professor were there too!), so we had a blast hanging out and enjoying time together. We even got to have an afterparty in our room after the reception was over (Fuego was ecstatic!).

At the wedding, and again at brunch the day after the wedding, Captain Technology introduced me to his iPhone...

PDA, Phone, Internet, iPod (both audio and video), Camera... everything that clutters my pockets on a daily basis (and more) all come packaged in a single, sleek, intuitive, responsive, and beautiful device with a pricetag that rivals the Palm Treo at its release but is infinately cooler.

CT told me (okay, "us" as there were several of us listening) the story of his wait in line and the triumphant moment of obtaining the coveted device, and as I sat in rapt silence I knew that I too would some day have an iPhone.

Until then I remain in iEnvy and iAnticipation.

Thanks for keeping me up to date on my gagety aspirations, Captain, I salute you!

Missed Milestones

So... ya... I never mentioned that:

I DID finish my thesis (The Ethics and Theology of Homosexuality in the Anglican Communion)...

I did graduate with my second Masters (Ethics and Social Theory)...

BroHead graduated with his BA from CSU Hayward (he had the courage in his late thirties to go back to college and graduated with honors this past June -- GO BROHEAD!)

Emjay rolled over without assistance for the first time this past Tuesday (Those who know won't miss the significance of the day... those who don't will be asking me in my comments ;o)

Fred, who at first merely deigned to allow Emjay to coexist in the same house with him, began sleeping on her blankets and anything else that smelled like her and just this past week he allowed her to touch him when I laid her down in her cosleeper for a nap (where he had been napping before her arrival). I actually had to physically remove him as he seemed perfectly content to have her head laying on his side as she slept (go Freddo!).

Fuego's 30th Birthday weekend was AWESOME! Camping got rained out, so it seemed like it might be a bust, but our friend ScienceBoy offered his house as an alternate party destination and I booked a room at the Hawthorne Suites in Walkway so we could stay near by and party with Some-of-the-time-girlfriend and Loopy before (and SOTTG and Weeds after) the party at Scienceboy's house. I had brewed a special keg of homebrew for the occasion (which was fun to bring through the hotel lobby), and Grasshopper ended up bringing a keg of home brewed root beer too (it was awesome). The party was an all day event with BBQ, Beverages, and pretty close to all of Fuego's closest friends. The homebrew was actually better than the store-bought bottled beer that we had to turn to when the keg gave out at about 11pm (had to throw that in there ;o) The party was everything Fuego hoped it would be, and it was even better that we got to continue the party back at the hotel with Some-of-the-time-girlfriend and Weeds afterward. We all met up for breakfast the following morning and Fuego and I and Weeds went over to the beach for a while before we all had to part ways and go home. (Whew!)

Six is a good start... I'll post more when I think of some that I've left out.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Lost Sermons Index


Realizing that I've been remiss in posting the sermons that I promised to post on a regular basis, I am composing a list of "lost sermons" that can be found in my Blog Archive under the dates listed below (I won't pretend that I actually posted them on these dates, but since you can change the date of your posts, it at least keeps them in a format that suggests the time of year in which they were written).


24 June 07
12 June 07
27 May 07 (Pentecost)
22 May 07
15 May 07
29 April 07
17 April 07
1 April 07 (Palm Sunday)
27 March 07
13 March 07
25 February 07
18 February 07
13 February 07
9 January 07

Economics of Treehugging

I love Fuzzi Bunz! For those who haven't heard of these little miracles, they are "cloth" diapers consisting of a water-proof outer shell, a fleece liner, and a cotton-pad insert. They have two snaps per side, making them as simple to use as disposables with velcro and allowing control of how tight the gathering is in their thighs. The fleece does an amazing job of wicking away moisture (as the hikers and backpackers out there can certainly attest!), and it is amazingly gentle on Emjay's skin. The cotton pads themeslves are amazingly soft, even though they never come into direct contact with her skin. They're simple to clean, easy to use, environmentally friendly (especially since Fuego and I use a front-loading, low impact washer and envronmentally friendly laundry soap), and Emjay loves them!

So... now the economics:

To outfit Emjay with enough Fuzzi Bunz in the correct sizes to keep her out of disposables up to 35 lbs (roughly around age 3+), it will be an overall investment of about $720.

Doing a little math... she goes through about eight diapers per day, so it would only take her about a week to ten days to go through a $20 package of diapers. Thus in one year if she made it ten days on a single package of diapers (which is unrealistic since they diminish in number per package for the same price as she increases in size), we would have to buy 36.5 packages to make it through a single year, costing $730 (or $10 more than the 3+ years worth of Fuzzi Bunz). Plus the fact that when Emjay came to us she had diaper rash from her disposables and hasn't had it since with her Fuzzi Bunz!

Now the best part: We know friends who have used the same three sets of Fuzzi Bunz (S, M, L) on three consecutive children without having to replace ANY. So for a year's cost of disposables, the investment in Fuzzi Bunz has the demonstrable potential save us about $720 per year for the next eight years worth of kids (beyond three, we'll have to see how many kids can use the same set before they wear out... we do want to adopt about five!).

It's good to be a tree-hugger =o)

Posts Posts Posts!!

Since I haven't even mentioned Emjay on my Blog yet, it is time to admit that I've been terribly negligent in my electronic duties and get to the business of making amends.

So... the drive-by version.

I had mentioned in a previous post (many long moons ago when the world was young...er) that Fuego and I were anticipating a call "any day now" to let us know we had been matched with a baby to adopt.

The call came almost exactly three weeks after our home study was completed. Our social worker, Stork v1.0, woke us up Thursday morning (12 April) to let us know she thought she had a match for us in a beautiful little girl who at the time was two-months old. She sounded perfect, and it was a low risk case, so Fuego and I felt confident saying "we don't need to 'think about it,' we want her!"

Six days later we drove up to Feliz-ville and met Emjay for our first visit. She was everything we could have imagined and she seemed to be very comfortable with both Fuego and I. Since she was from a different county, we couldn't be "placed" with her until a court hearing was held to determine that she could be placed "out of county," but she did get to come home for the whole weekend on another "visit." Although it was very difficult to take her back to her foster home, we got to pick her up again the following Friday for another weekend visit and were told that our "visit" could last until the court hearing on 2 May (so our weekend was from Friday to Wednesday).

That Wednesday we got a call asking if Emjay was here... it was the court social worker. She said "good... she's home, you can keep her!" We signed the foster parent agreement the following day and Emjay was officially "placed" with us (i.e. we're her Foster Parents until all the pending court hearings and due process happen to make Emjay legallyl elligible to be adopted by us).

Suddenly I found myself in the position of being a Papa *dramatic "dun dun duhhh"*!

For those of you who know Fuego, it's no surprise that she was (and continues to be) ecstatic and quite natural at being the world's best Mom, but I really didn't know what to expect from myself, having had no real previous experience with infants. Fuego actually had me "practice" changing diapers on a cabbage patch kid before Emjay arrived so that I might at least be able to pretent I knew what I was doing - it was still a couple of days before I was ready to go solo on the diaper changing... but there were no catastrophic failures ;o)

Emjay has been home now for about two and a half months! She is now five and a half months old, she has gained five pounds, and has grown out of all of her 0-3 and 3-6 month stuff. As for me, I am officially a pro at diaper changing (both disposable and "Fuzzi Bunz"), I get up most mornings to dress Emjay and play with her before I go to work and then play with her again when I get home until bath time when Fuego and I share in giving her a bath. We take turns with her bedtime feedings and I get up in the night if she wakes and needs a bottle (happens very seldomly -- we're pretty stoked about that!). I made her laugh for the first time, filmed her rolling over for the first time, and got to wear her in her sling for the first time. All in all, I'd say I'm doing okay so far... and I love being a Papa!

More later!