I didn't want to like it. As a matter of fact, after learning about it, I made my mind up NOT to like it, to scorn it. But now I find myself in the unenviable position of having to set aside my previous prejudices and eat my words.
I am speaking of Ezekiel Bread, which I tried for the first time over Thanksgiving at my in-laws' in Charlotte. For those of you that are not familiar with this bread, it is a sprouted grain loaf based on a recipe found in the Old Testament. From the website of the company that makes it, Food for Life, here is the advertising line:
Ezekiel 4:9® products are crafted in the likeness of the Holy Scripture verse
Ezekiel 4:9® to ensure unrivaled honest nutrition and pure, delicious flavors
Okay, so here is the source of my problem with this "Biblical" bread. It is composed according to the verse Ezekiel 4:9 "And you, take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt, and put them into a single vessel, and make bread of them." So it sounds like this is a Godly recipe for sound nutrition, better than your grandmother's timeworn coconut cake recipe jotted down on the flyleaf of a stained copy of Joy of Cooking, a loaf to nourish your body and your soul, right? Well, to get the answer to this heavenly prescription we must read further. Ezekiel is instructed to eat this bread once a day, the measure of 20 shekels, which my research indicates is about 8 ounces, and with it drink 1/6th of a hin of water, which is probably about a pint. Furthermore, he is to form it into a cake and bake it over a fire of human dung, so that the people of Israel will "eat their bread unclean, among the nations whither I will drive them"(Shortly thereafter, Ezekiel begs God that he not defile the bread by preparing it using human dung, to which God relents and allows the dung of cattle to be used). In other words, God's ritual instructions through his prophet are an indicator of what is intended for Israel in captivity in its exile. They will be sent among "unclean" people who are symbolized by their "unclean" food. The paucity of the ration is also a reminder of what Israel will suffer in being besieged before its captivity and in its exile.The back of my loaf of Ezekiel Bread indicates that 20 shekels or 8 ounces weight as a daily meal results in around 550 calories. This scant ration plus a pint of water are NOT a recipe for health and superior nutrition; rather, they barely sustain life, at its most miserable level.
So, Punishment Bread. Forsaken Bread. Tastes Like Crap Bread. Certainly not God's own holy recipe for low-glycemic and gluten-free thriving. When I first saw this product in the high-priced natural-foods section of my grocery store, I was ASTONISHED at the absolute nerve of the manufacturer. HOW could they so blindly miss the mark, miss the point, not read the rest of the chapter, and not understand the import of the Scripture so blithely being quoted. Along the lines of a movie review stating "to say this is one of the best films of the year would be a horrendous lie" being redacted to "one of the best films of the year". HOW could a company so take one Bible verse out of context and HOW could unquestioning sheeple so gobble that crap up?
But.....over Thanksgiving, I had occasion to try Ezekiel Bread at my health-nut mother-in-law's house. Absolutely unexpectedly, it tasted stunningly wonderful. Not weak or pasty at all, it has a nutty, grainy crispness and fullness like the best of homemade wheat bread, and it somehow brings to my mind that little health store in everyone's home town. You know the one, that sells raisins coated with carob-bean chocolate, homeopathic remedies, and blacklight posters and that has a rack of government-conspiracy magazines next to the soy-milk-powder. Biting into it, I could almost smell patchouli-drenched hippies and hear the rustling of bead curtains hung behind the displays of hemp necklaces. Mmmm, mmmm, good.
Looking past the lack of understanding in the application of Scripture to the bread, I must congratulate the bakers on getting the taste and texture just right. They did take liberties with the (ahem) "Biblical" recipe by using sprouted grains rather than following the text exactly, but what they brought forth is full of protein, fiber, and that most wonderful of foodie characteristics, mouth feel. And I realize that even when something is inherently ill-researched and ill-founded and, well, just feels wrong, some good may still come of it. Maybe there is hope, after all, for those of us who begin all wrong-footed with the best of intentions that quickly go off-track.
Anyway, pass me a slice of that bread, will you? But hold the dung.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Maybe not quite the Waltons
Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the frantic holiday season for the Barbers just like for many others. In particular, for us it marks a pilgrimage to my in-laws' house in North Carolina. Wednesday morning we left Texas at 4 AM, bound for Birmingham where we picked up Andrew on break from college, then pushed immediately on. With a few stops-the typical Cracker Barrel stop and several rest area pit stops to climb out of the car and stretch cramped limbs-we arrived in Charlotte around midnight. I felt rather like a clown in the circus when we unloaded the car. Since we made the trip in my 2-door Eclipse, we were jammed in with luggage, gear, Sarah's pillow and comforter that is her traveling comfort must, and food we packed for the trip to ensure less stops and less expenses. I doubt I could have gotten much more than a 3X5 index card added to the load, and we were wedged in like anchovies in a tin.
This was a tumultuous year for Stacey's dad. Going in to his doctor's office with cardiac concerns, he ultimately ended up spending several months in Duke University Hospital, teetering on the edge of death through multiple heart surgeries and infections. Since he spent so long in the hospital, his wife exhausted her paid vacation benefits and so I went to North Carolina and spent the last several weeks of his convalescence in the hospital with him so that she could return to work. I did little more than sit day after day in the room with him, occasionally walking with him through the corridors or fetching for him from the nurses ice cream to mix with the Ensure they had him taking after every meal, and watching him stubbornly refuse to give up, to fight to get back to his feet and to live life again. So I enjoyed seeing him busy in the kitchen again, astonished at his regained vigor and tenacity.
Thanksgiving in Charlotte is a busy and chaotic time. Too many people jammed in the house. Pull-out sofas, extra pillows and blankets everywhere are the order of the day. Stacey's sister Amy and her husband Adam have their two young children in tow, and this usually means toys pulled out and littered over the floor everywhere. Coffee is consumed at a furious rate, dishes pile up in the sink with a remarkable speed, the door slams with comings and goings to the store for last-minute items, for long walks around the neighborhood. Stacey's dad and stepmom keep up a spirited debate in the kitchen. More coffee, more snacking, kids getting their feelings hurt with each other, old stories aired out for one more telling. By the time Thanksgiving dinner is over with, too many calories and too much conversation and too much ado about nothing results in a stupefaction which extends to the next day, during which we generally do nothing more taxing than a long walk down to the park and back, and the traditional kickoff of the Christmas viewing season with their timeworn copy-VHS, even!-of National Lampoon's Christmas vacation.
And we enjoy Thanksgiving so much we consider the time well-spent to travel for two entire days coming and going the 1100 miles each way. Not only is this our yearly visit with Stacey's parents, but this is one of my favorite times as well. I was fortunate enough to marry into a family in which I was quickly accepted. I have friends who are standoffish and distant with spouses' families, and this to me would be a depressing and lonely matter. I have been related to her family for around 25 years, and I feel about as much a part of their family as I do mine. I was especially close to her grandmother Peggy, and many times would take the kids down to her house in Clanton to visit with her even if Stacey were not able to go while she was finishing up her degree at UAB. Stacey's sister Amy is brilliant, goofy, unabashed, and just plain fun to be around, a lot like my brothers are.
I have so much family that is important to me that it little matters to me whether they are mine through blood or marriage. Very special to me is my Grandmother Burdette, who is the mother of my stepfather who died in the 1980's. Grandmother has inspired me with her deep and loving faith, for showing me that loving God leads to loving other people, not in condemning or judging them. Many a Christmas or Thanksgiving I spent at her house would include a far-flung relative, friend, or acquaintance who was invited in to the holiday table as a matter of course to share love and joy among us. From her opening her home and her heart to anyone who needed companionship and community I learned what it means to be in fellowship with the rest of the world. I can draw a direct line between the dinner table at her house and the communion rail at which I kneel on Sundays in fellowship with others both present and absent, in the knowledge that we are all in this together.
My family is one which kids, plays, argues, drinks, tells the same stupid old jokes and stories, gossips, ridicules, berates, harangues, and laughs. Probably a lot like your family, I bet. Whether born into relationship with each other, or choosing to associate together through marriage or inclination, we belong to each other. The holidays may heap stress on us through travel, chaos, noise, and rubbing elbows in too close a proximity, but it also reveals the generosity of shared memory, a time when we can clear the plates from the table and sit down with a glass of wine or cup of coffee over dessert and ask of each other "So, do you remember the time when we...?" A time to revisit old stories and make new ones, to remember exactly why we turn to each other in need for assistance.
In short, home is where my family is. And, as Robert Frost says:
"Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in."
This was a tumultuous year for Stacey's dad. Going in to his doctor's office with cardiac concerns, he ultimately ended up spending several months in Duke University Hospital, teetering on the edge of death through multiple heart surgeries and infections. Since he spent so long in the hospital, his wife exhausted her paid vacation benefits and so I went to North Carolina and spent the last several weeks of his convalescence in the hospital with him so that she could return to work. I did little more than sit day after day in the room with him, occasionally walking with him through the corridors or fetching for him from the nurses ice cream to mix with the Ensure they had him taking after every meal, and watching him stubbornly refuse to give up, to fight to get back to his feet and to live life again. So I enjoyed seeing him busy in the kitchen again, astonished at his regained vigor and tenacity.
Thanksgiving in Charlotte is a busy and chaotic time. Too many people jammed in the house. Pull-out sofas, extra pillows and blankets everywhere are the order of the day. Stacey's sister Amy and her husband Adam have their two young children in tow, and this usually means toys pulled out and littered over the floor everywhere. Coffee is consumed at a furious rate, dishes pile up in the sink with a remarkable speed, the door slams with comings and goings to the store for last-minute items, for long walks around the neighborhood. Stacey's dad and stepmom keep up a spirited debate in the kitchen. More coffee, more snacking, kids getting their feelings hurt with each other, old stories aired out for one more telling. By the time Thanksgiving dinner is over with, too many calories and too much conversation and too much ado about nothing results in a stupefaction which extends to the next day, during which we generally do nothing more taxing than a long walk down to the park and back, and the traditional kickoff of the Christmas viewing season with their timeworn copy-VHS, even!-of National Lampoon's Christmas vacation.
And we enjoy Thanksgiving so much we consider the time well-spent to travel for two entire days coming and going the 1100 miles each way. Not only is this our yearly visit with Stacey's parents, but this is one of my favorite times as well. I was fortunate enough to marry into a family in which I was quickly accepted. I have friends who are standoffish and distant with spouses' families, and this to me would be a depressing and lonely matter. I have been related to her family for around 25 years, and I feel about as much a part of their family as I do mine. I was especially close to her grandmother Peggy, and many times would take the kids down to her house in Clanton to visit with her even if Stacey were not able to go while she was finishing up her degree at UAB. Stacey's sister Amy is brilliant, goofy, unabashed, and just plain fun to be around, a lot like my brothers are.
I have so much family that is important to me that it little matters to me whether they are mine through blood or marriage. Very special to me is my Grandmother Burdette, who is the mother of my stepfather who died in the 1980's. Grandmother has inspired me with her deep and loving faith, for showing me that loving God leads to loving other people, not in condemning or judging them. Many a Christmas or Thanksgiving I spent at her house would include a far-flung relative, friend, or acquaintance who was invited in to the holiday table as a matter of course to share love and joy among us. From her opening her home and her heart to anyone who needed companionship and community I learned what it means to be in fellowship with the rest of the world. I can draw a direct line between the dinner table at her house and the communion rail at which I kneel on Sundays in fellowship with others both present and absent, in the knowledge that we are all in this together.
My family is one which kids, plays, argues, drinks, tells the same stupid old jokes and stories, gossips, ridicules, berates, harangues, and laughs. Probably a lot like your family, I bet. Whether born into relationship with each other, or choosing to associate together through marriage or inclination, we belong to each other. The holidays may heap stress on us through travel, chaos, noise, and rubbing elbows in too close a proximity, but it also reveals the generosity of shared memory, a time when we can clear the plates from the table and sit down with a glass of wine or cup of coffee over dessert and ask of each other "So, do you remember the time when we...?" A time to revisit old stories and make new ones, to remember exactly why we turn to each other in need for assistance.
In short, home is where my family is. And, as Robert Frost says:
"Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in."
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Underdogs and square pegs
Through circumstance or conviction, through accident or design, I have spent much of my life as a member of a minority position or unpopular view, as an outlier who embraces heterodoxy. I grew up a liberal in the vastly conservative state of Alabama, then recently moved to uber-red Texas. In the midst of fanatical Alabama fans who rated their identity and self-worth by the fortunes of their team, I was an Auburn man, mindful to be grateful for success and gracious in win or loss. In a religious landscape dominated by Baptists and Methodists, I became an Episcopalian in my adulthood.
One of the most profound changes I underwent was my entry into junior high school. Prior to this, I attended schools on the less-affluent side of town. In my early schooling, the students were taught more or less together, and I was grouped with kids I had gone to school with from first grade. Upon entering seventh grade, we were separated into different levels, and I was tracked into high-level classes. It seemed as if the great majority of my classmates were kids I had not gone to school with before, who had known each other for six years and who represented a higher socioeconomic class than I did. I was always very conscious of the fact that I was poorer than a lot of the other students; I did come in for my fair share of ridicule, as most kids that age do, but my own self-consciousness played me false as well. I can joke now with no shame whatsoever that I came not only from a trailer park, but from the back end of the trailer park closest to the dumpster, but living through the differentness was mortifying. It set me to identify with the poor, the oppressed, the set-apart.
I read heavily and constantly, and consumed television uncritically and voraciously as well, with all the desperate hunger of a child who wanted to be someone else other than the ungraceful and unlovely socially awkward kid in the mirror. Although my fiction and fantasy world was varied and universal in its scope, I absorbed many common lessons from books, from TV, from movies: The true test of a man was to treat everyone fairly, most especially enemies because everyone treats friends well: Real riches lay not in amassing possessions and power, but in surrounding oneself with people that matter, in doing actions to benefit other people: Modesty and graciousness are more powerful character traits than boastfulness and anger. It can be argued that watching too much TV and movies have ruined generations of Americans, but there are powerful lessons there for anyone watching. You would be hard-pressed to find a story in which the protagonist triumphs because of a hard, uncaring, abusive personality. From my constant immersion, I learned all these lessons and more. My focus grew to be on supporting those in trouble, extending a hand of kindness to anyone who needed it, to reverence for the underdog who fought even though the cause might be hopeless.
By the time I graduated high school, I was a full-blown dissenter of every type. One of my favorite truisms is that one should always comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. But once in college and in the presence of other people of modest means and unpopular political views, I found that I was not all alone on the continuum of politics and class standing. Joining the Episcopal Church, which practices the "big-tent" philosophy, taught me that I can be part of a religious community with people of very diverse needs and views who may be called to serve and worship God in many different modes. In the presence of others with some of the same beliefs I hold, I lost my sense of being surrounded and embattled. The whole of the family of humankind is similar-there are so many divergent views and approaches and needs evidenced by our actions, but our commonality holds us together.
So in the final analysis, the beliefs I hold and the associations I have built matter less than the commonalities we all share. Through experience and through conviction, I break bread with all manner of folks. Although I may vote or believe differently than some of my friends, I respect what they hold to be dear. I still know that other people can teach and affect me.
I know that as long as my heart is open my mind cannot be closed. Aren't we in all this together?
One of the most profound changes I underwent was my entry into junior high school. Prior to this, I attended schools on the less-affluent side of town. In my early schooling, the students were taught more or less together, and I was grouped with kids I had gone to school with from first grade. Upon entering seventh grade, we were separated into different levels, and I was tracked into high-level classes. It seemed as if the great majority of my classmates were kids I had not gone to school with before, who had known each other for six years and who represented a higher socioeconomic class than I did. I was always very conscious of the fact that I was poorer than a lot of the other students; I did come in for my fair share of ridicule, as most kids that age do, but my own self-consciousness played me false as well. I can joke now with no shame whatsoever that I came not only from a trailer park, but from the back end of the trailer park closest to the dumpster, but living through the differentness was mortifying. It set me to identify with the poor, the oppressed, the set-apart.
I read heavily and constantly, and consumed television uncritically and voraciously as well, with all the desperate hunger of a child who wanted to be someone else other than the ungraceful and unlovely socially awkward kid in the mirror. Although my fiction and fantasy world was varied and universal in its scope, I absorbed many common lessons from books, from TV, from movies: The true test of a man was to treat everyone fairly, most especially enemies because everyone treats friends well: Real riches lay not in amassing possessions and power, but in surrounding oneself with people that matter, in doing actions to benefit other people: Modesty and graciousness are more powerful character traits than boastfulness and anger. It can be argued that watching too much TV and movies have ruined generations of Americans, but there are powerful lessons there for anyone watching. You would be hard-pressed to find a story in which the protagonist triumphs because of a hard, uncaring, abusive personality. From my constant immersion, I learned all these lessons and more. My focus grew to be on supporting those in trouble, extending a hand of kindness to anyone who needed it, to reverence for the underdog who fought even though the cause might be hopeless.
By the time I graduated high school, I was a full-blown dissenter of every type. One of my favorite truisms is that one should always comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. But once in college and in the presence of other people of modest means and unpopular political views, I found that I was not all alone on the continuum of politics and class standing. Joining the Episcopal Church, which practices the "big-tent" philosophy, taught me that I can be part of a religious community with people of very diverse needs and views who may be called to serve and worship God in many different modes. In the presence of others with some of the same beliefs I hold, I lost my sense of being surrounded and embattled. The whole of the family of humankind is similar-there are so many divergent views and approaches and needs evidenced by our actions, but our commonality holds us together.
So in the final analysis, the beliefs I hold and the associations I have built matter less than the commonalities we all share. Through experience and through conviction, I break bread with all manner of folks. Although I may vote or believe differently than some of my friends, I respect what they hold to be dear. I still know that other people can teach and affect me.
I know that as long as my heart is open my mind cannot be closed. Aren't we in all this together?
Monday, November 12, 2012
Driven to distraction
It is that time feared by every parent since coaches and carriages gave way to combusting coupes and wagons. I am teaching my child how to drive. The youngest child, in this case, and unless I am called upon to teach a grandchild to navigate a car down the roadway-probably have jet packs and personal helicopters by then, right?-this is IT for me. Texas requires a drivers education course for all new drivers prior to licensure by the state, but schools don't teach driver's ed, unlike in Alabama. For those who don't want to pay several hundred dollars for a driving school (and who have the time or inclination to keep up with mandated tracking logs and tests) they offer a parent taught course, in which you pay about 50 bucks, download the forms, and do it yourself. Note: if you figure in the cost of printing out the booklet and the tests and the forms, which is gonna run to a new toner cartridge and a couple of hundred sheets of paper, I'll be lucky to break even on my money-saving scheme.
I had forgotten just how much is taken for granted when driving. I'm a stubborn old traditionalist, so I firmly believe in starting a kid on a manual transmission. Cause the time will come when that skill will be vital, and it better be there. My time came when Stacey and I were 2 hours away from home and she tore a contact and couldn't drive due to lack of depth perception. I got a crash course in grinding gears, downshifting, and stalling as a 2 hour drive turned into almost 4 torturous hours. There are a lot of things worse than driving down old highway 280 from Birmingham to Auburn and stalling out in Dadeville, but I never thought I was going to be able to get out of the parking lot of the old Hardee's right in the curve. You know, where you have to start from a redlight in gear sitting on a 30 degree slope?
Sarah has done so well-so far. She has it much easier than Andrew did 5 years ago, because since his learning days I have had the clutch replaced and it's now so smooth you can shift into first, tap the gas, and feather the pedal out as it engages smoothly. With Andrew, the pedal was so hard and unresponsive that the clutch was either engaged or disengaged, no middle ground. Consequently, it would rocket into gear under his untrained acceleration and we would screech away across the parking lot. Glad that Stacey handed off his training to me, and she wasn't there for those burnouts. Otherwise he would have been removed from the Motorcar Training Programme, forbidden ever to drive, and be taking a bus everywhere.
Pam, my oldest child and thus my first student, had it better than the other two-and worse. I made the mistake of showing her how to run a stick shift while on vacation in the woods one time, and she drove the two of us a shaky 1/2 mile in the old Isuzu Trooper when she was about 11 or 12. Not a popular choice with her mom, of course. When she did began driving, we no longer had a manual transmission so she did all her training on an automatic. Later on, when my brother moved to town, we got him to show her how to drive his manual gearbox Mazda pickup. I think she probably ground his gears about as badly as he ground mine when I showed him how to drive a stick years earlier, so I reckon we're even now. Never asked her how it went driving with him. He can either be extremely patient, or extremely nervous. Probably not EVER gonna ask her how it went....
Some of the best stories I have come from driving incidents. Like the time I strapped a Christmas tree to the roof of my old VW Camper. One of the old ones with the pop-up roof complete with a canvas cot in it that rolls out and side flaps that would do a tent proud. Those pop-ups are held in place with little rubber tabs, and the shelf-life on those little rubber tabs is defined as "until you subject them to any resistance." Once up to the top VW speed of 54 mph, the wind resistance stood that tree up like the mizzen-mast of a schooner, popped the tabs loose, and opened the pop top like a giant rotting canvas parachute. Which it more or less was. From the driver's seat, I felt the whoosh of air into this sail push me all over the road, and saw the tree twist over the side in a tangle of broken rope to be dragged behind until I managed to bring the whole mess to a halt. It was really fortunate that I had several people with me that night, because it took us all to get home. One holding the roof top down since the tab holders were ripped out. One hanging an arm out of the open sliding door to help hold the tree down to the roof. With my left hand out the driver's side window also holding the tree down, and feeling it try to stand up again every time I drove over 30 mph. The tree still held together, and it still had at least four more needles on it than Charlie Brown's Christmas tree, so everything was OK.
I should have learned my lesson about carrying crap on the roof, and maybe I did for a while, until we traveled with a baby about 10 years later. Had to have a crib, you see, and it wouldn't fit in the car. So I tied it nice and tight to the roof rack of the Trooper I had at the time. All the way there, 200+ miles, and no incidents. I suppose I tempted fate, because within 20 miles of beginning the return trip, a gust of wind caught the support board and stood the frame up vertically. Well, for the second time in 10 years I got to sail a car for about 30 seconds until the bungee cords broke and the whole apparatus blew off backwards. Of course it was run over immediately and turned into matchwood as it landed. The whole event spoke a lot about preparation. That, and the value of having a spare portable crib, another of which I picked up at a yard sale when we got home.
So I hope that Sarah continues to do as well as she has so far, paying attention to the road around her, being paranoid about the other drivers, and respectful of the hunk of steel under her control. Because there is ALWAYS something radically unexpected about to happen while you are driving, and how well you have mastered the basics, committed them to memory, and trained your muscles to automatically respond while your brain solves the new crisis has a direct correspondence to whether your driving surprises result in charming anecdotes or in tragedy. And I would far rather that she have a whole bunch of stupid stories like mine as the only result of her unintended consequences.
I had forgotten just how much is taken for granted when driving. I'm a stubborn old traditionalist, so I firmly believe in starting a kid on a manual transmission. Cause the time will come when that skill will be vital, and it better be there. My time came when Stacey and I were 2 hours away from home and she tore a contact and couldn't drive due to lack of depth perception. I got a crash course in grinding gears, downshifting, and stalling as a 2 hour drive turned into almost 4 torturous hours. There are a lot of things worse than driving down old highway 280 from Birmingham to Auburn and stalling out in Dadeville, but I never thought I was going to be able to get out of the parking lot of the old Hardee's right in the curve. You know, where you have to start from a redlight in gear sitting on a 30 degree slope?
Sarah has done so well-so far. She has it much easier than Andrew did 5 years ago, because since his learning days I have had the clutch replaced and it's now so smooth you can shift into first, tap the gas, and feather the pedal out as it engages smoothly. With Andrew, the pedal was so hard and unresponsive that the clutch was either engaged or disengaged, no middle ground. Consequently, it would rocket into gear under his untrained acceleration and we would screech away across the parking lot. Glad that Stacey handed off his training to me, and she wasn't there for those burnouts. Otherwise he would have been removed from the Motorcar Training Programme, forbidden ever to drive, and be taking a bus everywhere.
Pam, my oldest child and thus my first student, had it better than the other two-and worse. I made the mistake of showing her how to run a stick shift while on vacation in the woods one time, and she drove the two of us a shaky 1/2 mile in the old Isuzu Trooper when she was about 11 or 12. Not a popular choice with her mom, of course. When she did began driving, we no longer had a manual transmission so she did all her training on an automatic. Later on, when my brother moved to town, we got him to show her how to drive his manual gearbox Mazda pickup. I think she probably ground his gears about as badly as he ground mine when I showed him how to drive a stick years earlier, so I reckon we're even now. Never asked her how it went driving with him. He can either be extremely patient, or extremely nervous. Probably not EVER gonna ask her how it went....
Some of the best stories I have come from driving incidents. Like the time I strapped a Christmas tree to the roof of my old VW Camper. One of the old ones with the pop-up roof complete with a canvas cot in it that rolls out and side flaps that would do a tent proud. Those pop-ups are held in place with little rubber tabs, and the shelf-life on those little rubber tabs is defined as "until you subject them to any resistance." Once up to the top VW speed of 54 mph, the wind resistance stood that tree up like the mizzen-mast of a schooner, popped the tabs loose, and opened the pop top like a giant rotting canvas parachute. Which it more or less was. From the driver's seat, I felt the whoosh of air into this sail push me all over the road, and saw the tree twist over the side in a tangle of broken rope to be dragged behind until I managed to bring the whole mess to a halt. It was really fortunate that I had several people with me that night, because it took us all to get home. One holding the roof top down since the tab holders were ripped out. One hanging an arm out of the open sliding door to help hold the tree down to the roof. With my left hand out the driver's side window also holding the tree down, and feeling it try to stand up again every time I drove over 30 mph. The tree still held together, and it still had at least four more needles on it than Charlie Brown's Christmas tree, so everything was OK.
I should have learned my lesson about carrying crap on the roof, and maybe I did for a while, until we traveled with a baby about 10 years later. Had to have a crib, you see, and it wouldn't fit in the car. So I tied it nice and tight to the roof rack of the Trooper I had at the time. All the way there, 200+ miles, and no incidents. I suppose I tempted fate, because within 20 miles of beginning the return trip, a gust of wind caught the support board and stood the frame up vertically. Well, for the second time in 10 years I got to sail a car for about 30 seconds until the bungee cords broke and the whole apparatus blew off backwards. Of course it was run over immediately and turned into matchwood as it landed. The whole event spoke a lot about preparation. That, and the value of having a spare portable crib, another of which I picked up at a yard sale when we got home.
So I hope that Sarah continues to do as well as she has so far, paying attention to the road around her, being paranoid about the other drivers, and respectful of the hunk of steel under her control. Because there is ALWAYS something radically unexpected about to happen while you are driving, and how well you have mastered the basics, committed them to memory, and trained your muscles to automatically respond while your brain solves the new crisis has a direct correspondence to whether your driving surprises result in charming anecdotes or in tragedy. And I would far rather that she have a whole bunch of stupid stories like mine as the only result of her unintended consequences.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Oh, what can you do with a sentimental heart?
I am one of those men much given to sentiment. Or perhaps much taken by sentiment would be a better description of the state in which my emotions can put me. Carried along on a wave of empathy, sympathy, or what was old-fashionedly termed "tender regard", I am apt to become misty or teary, to feel a lump in my throat and to feel my heart swell within my chest.
I suspect that men are actually more prone to this than are women. While women are characterized as much more emotional than men, some studies have shown that men may actually be more prone to such "womanly" stereotypes as emotional stress over a relationship or to falling in love at first sight. My own experience is that women are much more practical and levelheaded than popular images suggest. The myth of stoic manhood may be due to the fact that men often confine their sentiment into accepted channels. Even the strongest man can weep at the ending of "Saving Private Ryan". Even the most stiff-upper-lip Englishman shows unabashed emotion in regard to his dogs, his horses, or his Jaguar. The same maxim holds true for sports events and the birth of children, we are encouraged to show trembling chins and flushed faces at these at the very least.
In my own case, my own strongest sentiment seems to come about through grace, when I am aware of God's presence working through or around me. I remember several years ago sitting at the midnight Christmas service transported at Chip Dawson's solo rendition of "O Holy Night", eyes tightly closed and tears streaming down my cheeks in the glow of candlelight from the sconces around the sanctuary and from the altar, not able to do anything but to gasp at the glory of it all. I remember having a horrible day driving to work one morning, distracted and impatient and unappreciative, to be shocked by a sudden and brief flurry of snowflakes that did nothing more than to dust my windshield, but which opened my eyes to the miracle of beauty revealed in the midst of dreariness. I remember working at Birmingham's downtown soup kitchen several times, how I trembled at the joy of feeding all those hungry and smiling homeless men, how my heart filled with the honor of sharing food and fellowship not with poor broken-down wretches but with fellow humans down on luck and in need of being treated as treasured guests at the table. I remember meeting with a lady visiting her infant cousin's grave in Elmwood Cemetery where I worked, that I gave her a ride out to his grave. When I asked her his name, she was unsure of the spelling, and had to roll up her sleeve and check the spelling on the poorly-done tattoo on her arm which memorialized him. I heard her story as we drove out to it, how he had died at the hands of his mother's boyfriend, how the mother defended the boyfriend and fractured the family, how the mother was unwilling to even put a grave marker to remember her little boy so that his cousin got her tattoo so he would not be forgotten, how she took a bus across town and then walked to the cemetery to visit him and then always had to ask for assistance to find his unmarked grave. I stood by her as she prayed over his grave and left flowers on the bare little plot, then gave her a ride back to her home so she would not have to take another bus, and when I left her at her little public housing apartment with the dented metal chair and broken flowerpot on the porch I pulled over into a gas station parking lot and wept at her loyalty, her love, and her selfless devotion to his memory.
I hope I never become so inured to all this that I lose my ability to be astounded at life. That I always feel a lump in my throat or a tear in my eye when I am learning a new lesson in humility, that I am always thunderstruck in the presence of sublime music and beauty, that God's grace in action to heal others always makes my heart stir.
What no man can own, no man can take
Take this heart
Take this heart
Take this heart
And make it break
-U2, Yahweh
A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
-Ezekiel 36:26, Revised Standard Version
I suspect that men are actually more prone to this than are women. While women are characterized as much more emotional than men, some studies have shown that men may actually be more prone to such "womanly" stereotypes as emotional stress over a relationship or to falling in love at first sight. My own experience is that women are much more practical and levelheaded than popular images suggest. The myth of stoic manhood may be due to the fact that men often confine their sentiment into accepted channels. Even the strongest man can weep at the ending of "Saving Private Ryan". Even the most stiff-upper-lip Englishman shows unabashed emotion in regard to his dogs, his horses, or his Jaguar. The same maxim holds true for sports events and the birth of children, we are encouraged to show trembling chins and flushed faces at these at the very least.
In my own case, my own strongest sentiment seems to come about through grace, when I am aware of God's presence working through or around me. I remember several years ago sitting at the midnight Christmas service transported at Chip Dawson's solo rendition of "O Holy Night", eyes tightly closed and tears streaming down my cheeks in the glow of candlelight from the sconces around the sanctuary and from the altar, not able to do anything but to gasp at the glory of it all. I remember having a horrible day driving to work one morning, distracted and impatient and unappreciative, to be shocked by a sudden and brief flurry of snowflakes that did nothing more than to dust my windshield, but which opened my eyes to the miracle of beauty revealed in the midst of dreariness. I remember working at Birmingham's downtown soup kitchen several times, how I trembled at the joy of feeding all those hungry and smiling homeless men, how my heart filled with the honor of sharing food and fellowship not with poor broken-down wretches but with fellow humans down on luck and in need of being treated as treasured guests at the table. I remember meeting with a lady visiting her infant cousin's grave in Elmwood Cemetery where I worked, that I gave her a ride out to his grave. When I asked her his name, she was unsure of the spelling, and had to roll up her sleeve and check the spelling on the poorly-done tattoo on her arm which memorialized him. I heard her story as we drove out to it, how he had died at the hands of his mother's boyfriend, how the mother defended the boyfriend and fractured the family, how the mother was unwilling to even put a grave marker to remember her little boy so that his cousin got her tattoo so he would not be forgotten, how she took a bus across town and then walked to the cemetery to visit him and then always had to ask for assistance to find his unmarked grave. I stood by her as she prayed over his grave and left flowers on the bare little plot, then gave her a ride back to her home so she would not have to take another bus, and when I left her at her little public housing apartment with the dented metal chair and broken flowerpot on the porch I pulled over into a gas station parking lot and wept at her loyalty, her love, and her selfless devotion to his memory.
I hope I never become so inured to all this that I lose my ability to be astounded at life. That I always feel a lump in my throat or a tear in my eye when I am learning a new lesson in humility, that I am always thunderstruck in the presence of sublime music and beauty, that God's grace in action to heal others always makes my heart stir.
What no man can own, no man can take
Take this heart
Take this heart
Take this heart
And make it break
-U2, Yahweh
A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
-Ezekiel 36:26, Revised Standard Version
Monday, November 5, 2012
Connections (How many friends are too many?)
Occasionally, on the social media to which I subject myself, namely Facebook, I find that people often embark upon a periodic process of streamlining or simplifying friend lists, to "get back to the basics", to drop casual acquaintances in favor of profound friendships or family only. This tendency was exemplified last year by my son's then-girlfriend who expressed her dissatisfaction with people who engaged in social null sounds, who would greet her briefly in passing or ask her how her day was going but with whom she had no real connection. The issue at point was if anyone really cares to have an honest answer to the question "How are you?" and what it all means in the light of humanity's inability to communicate one with another in the absence of real concern.
These two related issues have me thinking about relationships and connections. Having recently moved 700 miles to a city where I knew no one except my wife and daughter, I have had to begin anew my social connections. Meeting neighbors, joining a church, talking to people at the gym; all of these I have done to rebuild my social life.
And I realize anew that all connections and relationships I make are important to me. Humans are inherently intensely social, depending upon a varied and lively contact with others for sustenance. Every day we seek out other people on many different levels. Casual acquaintances, family relationships going back decades, profound and deep friendships, love affairs and marriages, all are variations of the constant of two people talking to each other in a common tongue.
Too many casual relationships can bring a feeling of disjointedness, or shallowness rather than connectedness. But casual friendships offer a daily affirmation of belonging to one group or another. When I meet someone I barely know by sight in the grocery store and exchange a quick "How is it going?", I am not brushing someone off as not meriting further attention, I am actually acknowledging the mutual admiration there. "I see you, I don't know so much about you, but you are known to me and I acknowledge that". That is the real message given. If I ask the question "How are you?" I am not generally looking for an answer other than the null "Fine. And you?" but on the occasions when a real answer necessitating listening and responding presents itself, I am delighted to be called upon for this deeper interaction.
Too many profound and intimate relationships, on the other hand, both cheapen the nature of these friendships and exhaust the participants. If two or three people are your most intimate confidantes, the effort necessary to sustain these are within any one's grasp. But imagine the horror of having a dozen or more friends of this nature! Would you ever be able to sleep, to rest, or would you spend all your time responding to them, suffocating and being suffocated in all the depths of someone else's innermost desires? And in order to honor the sacred nature of a soul mate or best friend, that relationship should be unique. Can you recall the hurt you felt when your "best friend" in grammar school announced that now you were no longer the only best friend, that now you were one of several best friends? Or how much it hurt your child when it happened to him or her a generation later?
We swim in a sea of other people, and there are varying degrees of connection that we each need. But in common we all thrive in places where there are rich and varying relationships that we create and sustain. I am thankful both for my casual acquaintances, among whom are many with whom I have little in common other than community, my satisfyingly profound once-in-a-lifetime relationships like my best friend who is also my wife, and all the others in between.
If I see you in the grocery store or at the gas station and ask you how your day is or simply nod and smile, feel free to respond in kind, or to pour out all the details of what is on your mind. Either way, I will appreciate you. And I'll understand what you are saying. And I'll understand your deeper meaning.
As the close of the classic "It's a Wonderful Life" shows, "Remember, no man is a failure who has friends."
These two related issues have me thinking about relationships and connections. Having recently moved 700 miles to a city where I knew no one except my wife and daughter, I have had to begin anew my social connections. Meeting neighbors, joining a church, talking to people at the gym; all of these I have done to rebuild my social life.
And I realize anew that all connections and relationships I make are important to me. Humans are inherently intensely social, depending upon a varied and lively contact with others for sustenance. Every day we seek out other people on many different levels. Casual acquaintances, family relationships going back decades, profound and deep friendships, love affairs and marriages, all are variations of the constant of two people talking to each other in a common tongue.
Too many casual relationships can bring a feeling of disjointedness, or shallowness rather than connectedness. But casual friendships offer a daily affirmation of belonging to one group or another. When I meet someone I barely know by sight in the grocery store and exchange a quick "How is it going?", I am not brushing someone off as not meriting further attention, I am actually acknowledging the mutual admiration there. "I see you, I don't know so much about you, but you are known to me and I acknowledge that". That is the real message given. If I ask the question "How are you?" I am not generally looking for an answer other than the null "Fine. And you?" but on the occasions when a real answer necessitating listening and responding presents itself, I am delighted to be called upon for this deeper interaction.
Too many profound and intimate relationships, on the other hand, both cheapen the nature of these friendships and exhaust the participants. If two or three people are your most intimate confidantes, the effort necessary to sustain these are within any one's grasp. But imagine the horror of having a dozen or more friends of this nature! Would you ever be able to sleep, to rest, or would you spend all your time responding to them, suffocating and being suffocated in all the depths of someone else's innermost desires? And in order to honor the sacred nature of a soul mate or best friend, that relationship should be unique. Can you recall the hurt you felt when your "best friend" in grammar school announced that now you were no longer the only best friend, that now you were one of several best friends? Or how much it hurt your child when it happened to him or her a generation later?
We swim in a sea of other people, and there are varying degrees of connection that we each need. But in common we all thrive in places where there are rich and varying relationships that we create and sustain. I am thankful both for my casual acquaintances, among whom are many with whom I have little in common other than community, my satisfyingly profound once-in-a-lifetime relationships like my best friend who is also my wife, and all the others in between.
If I see you in the grocery store or at the gas station and ask you how your day is or simply nod and smile, feel free to respond in kind, or to pour out all the details of what is on your mind. Either way, I will appreciate you. And I'll understand what you are saying. And I'll understand your deeper meaning.
As the close of the classic "It's a Wonderful Life" shows, "Remember, no man is a failure who has friends."
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