family update

this is the "here's what's happening" regular update -- target audience: people who care alot; lonely parasocial lurkers, beware. tedious cataloguing of the mundane follows:

i'm enjoying my semester much more at malone this semester. i'm teaching my two favorite classes (only), & having time to *almost* get all the work done that i'm supposed to...

i've got a couple of stories i'm scripting right now -- they're at the stage of newness that i can be purely excited about them still...

lynn is teaching a normal load & also partnering with the local urban school district in a number of ways. the work she's doing is very rewarding and difficult -- trying to equip overworked, under-resourced teachers to develop literacy strategies for under-under-resourced student-populations.

one of the school districts has made some *huge* cuts in the past few weeks -- maybe more if a second levy is defeated this month. that whole bleak reality has been saddening and disheartening...there were a few days that lynn de-celebrated as the: "death of idealism"...

we LOVE: our babysitting coop. Our friends Jeff & Linda & Brian & Jenni have an arrangement which results in a date night two out of every three weekends and a housefull of two-through-four year olds every third weekend. It feels like a really solid way to share life and invest in each other's vocations and families. It's also really fun to have so many dates with the woman I love.

jaelyn's sick. not that that accounts for most of who she is and is-becoming, but it certainly occupies a front-ish burner right now. It's a recurring theme throughout the winter particularly....

Last night was a humdinger though. Between Lynn and I together I'm sure we got eight hours of sleep. Well. Almost. Vomit, not breathing through stuffy nose, fever, achy neck, sore throat...

BUT IN GENERAL ~ Jaelyn's delightful. She loves to play imaginatively with little people, dolls & animals; she can do so for hours with her brother uninterrupted and unsupervised. Okay for one half of an hour. But given the (st/)age we're emerging from -- a half an hour feels like a lifetime... She loves to care for sick, sad, or little people. It seems to be a part of her that's pretty unique and just - her. I admire that quality in her....

she really likes preschool & visits to the local YMCA --

as does ADDISON ~ who apparently deferred the terrible twos (because he was sweet, gentle, generous, kind, funny) until this week. He's ornery this week. In eastern-ohio-culture -- the personality trait of "orneriness" in children is celebrated -- particularly in male children (but occasionally a girl, too). It's a part of the cultural milieu that i'm still puzzling about.

He loves cooking. Seriously. Real or play cooking. Trains. Balls. Stories about (as he calls them) ROARS. (the most recent incarnation of said "roars" is a plea to include at least a guest appearance of Simba in any story you tell him...yes, i'm galled at the triumph of the disneyfication of the universe even in the lore of family and history...

we've been trying to sell our house for five months.

we want to move into a more diverse school district, a more urban environment & closer to work (eliminate a car) -- but we can't seem to sell our house.

we've been showing it more than once a week for the past three weeks, which is great right? Wrong. After 5 months, you're just resigned to the fact that whoever is looking at it is *not* going to put an offer on it. So you punctuate your day with a mad dash home in the hour you have between classes and meetings and you once over the bathroom and swiffer the kitchen and stuff all the brightly colored plastic toys into the large, someone less cluttered looking, but also brightly colored rubbermaid containers. it gets tiring.

But its one of our definitive rhythms right now. a recurring motif.

i'm using the term "post-evangelical" to refer to my faith journey right now...and feel disheartened by most of mainline American Christendom -- particularly all of the ways it gets commodified, represented & politicized -- BUT curiously, in light of all that -- I really love the church we're going to now...

as always, i miss my friends, miss time with my friends, and enjoy most the few opportunities there seem to be in life for true communion...

peace~

i will lay me down....

i will lay me down...
in a bunker underground....
i won't let this happen to my children...
meet the real world comin' out of your shell...
with white elephants -- sittin' ducks
i will --
-- rise up.


I have the quiet morning buzz of a cup of coffee and a bleak sky and i'm playing radiohead and feeling like the world is coming together, falling apart and i'm falling into the crevice no matter which direction its going.

Size Matters

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They Ask: What Have You Accomplished?
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You sitting there. Me sitting here. Both of us paused in a freeze frame of respite (and reflection?).

I can tell that they have been asking you the wrong questions. You have heard them because your ear is so well trained to the tones and the cadences they offer you.

These aren’t the things they say: (but they should:)

Have you been diligent and true with what you had?

Have you pushed a little farther than you thought you could?

Did you struggle to keep your eyes open even past the moment where awake started bending at the edges into your dreams?

Did you defer the bathroom break just past the point of uncomfortable? So you could get a little further? (not that it mattered in retrospect)

How many lines did you strikethrough your to-do list? (they ask.)

How many times has that list crucified you? (I counter.)

Do you ever lay under it at night like several feet of packed down soil?

Cold undisturbed soil?

When you look at what everyone else is getting done, and you tell yourself that its more than you’ll ever manage to do….

When you feel like you’re trying to walk forward in chest-deep water, but the water’s thickening with every step…

When you feel like it would take an entire universe of energy, an impossible nother Big Bang for you to stand up out of that chair, to push the sleep up and back and out of your eyes, to turn one more page, to make one more call, to get into your car one more time…

Because if they ever understood the true maths of it, they would understand that you didn’t start out with all of the opportunity, all of the resources, all of the possibility (like an undefiled and inviting whiteboard) that they had.

If they were sensitive or observant, they could see, like I can that every little bit counts for something. It’s the moving forward, not the finishing that’s worth comment.

"Finishing" is arbitrary, fictional and completely abstract.

Action? That’s something worthwhile.

Size matters.

But only to them. And they're blind to all but their own vision.