son of a preacher man

we're back from michigan where we celebrated my father's 20 years at the same church.

on sunday morning i sat in the front row of the mega church far below the towering stage and the theatrical lighting. It's the first time I've sat in the front row of a big church in a long time. its been even longer since i've been there in the official role of the preacher's kid.

i felt like the stares of all the people were like the weight of a million millstones pressing against my back. Their weight would either propel me forward into a running leap into the altar and the altar call...or right through the floor and maybe down to Hades.

it turned out that neither happened. my uncle terry told a masterful story that transformed my great grandfather Albert Riihiniemi into Jonah on the run from the prophetic call. It really was an amazing mythologizing story which integrated the life stories of my grandmother, her father and her two sons into this arch of fate and destiny. I think though, that if you take the metaphor very far, though, that it turns out that my dad & uncle's church congregations end up being Nineveh...

So I'm back into the routine of responding to papers this morning and all the great conversations with my siblings are fading like photographic images moving backward through the developing process.

My brother David has employed his fandom of *Trading Spaces* (et.al.) and designed these _sick_ spaces where he works with teenagers. And when I say _sick_, I'm trying to use relatively new slang to say -- really cool.

My sister was going to go hear G.W., despite her disagreement with him. She was dressed like Sydney Bristow's alias of the German Computer Programmer. She's so goth.

My brother Daniel was trying to convince me that pacifism as a way of life is defeated by some scifi vision of the world he invented where a madman shoots gas down a pipeline and i can reroute the gas from a promise keepers stadium to a small fast food restaurant. If I don't reroute, he suggests, I'm killing all those people.

It was a good time.

Back to grading...