Why did God put that tree in the garden?

where "that tree" is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil -- which as it turns out was intended to give Adam knowledge by his NOT eating the fruit!

Just posted http://waywords.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/why-did-god-put-that-tree-in-the-garden/ over on waywords, with my thoughts on that.

Visiting the kids

"Your kids will start giving you trouble at that age, unless they're like Collin's perfect children."

I heard that remark some months back, and it made me wonder what I'd been saying about the kids to my colleagues. Whatever it was, I guess it reflects my view of them.

The lovely Carol and I have been visiting the kids, now that they are both away at college, and seeing them in their new environs makes me even more aware that they are, well -- they are not "girls" any more; they really are young women. They have their own campuses, their own friends, their own rooms. We don't hear them coming home after class or after meetings or.... They really are "away"; they've left the nest. You might imagine that this has created a lot of complicated feelings in both parents, and you'd be right.

This morning, I picked up Merton and opened to his chapter on "Sincerity", which I don't recall reading before. Here I found this:

Your idea of me is fabricated with materials you have borrowed from other people and from yourself. What you think of me depends on what you think of yourself. Perhaps you create your idea of me out of material that you would like to eliminate from your own idea of yourself. Perhaps your idea of me is a reflection of what other people think of you. Or perhaps what you think of me is simply what you think I think of you.

No Man Is an Island, p. 194

I suppose I "knew" -- in a manner of speaking -- that how I think of the kids is affected by my view of myself. But which of Merton's distortions is operating when I look at the kids? Or is there yet another one? There are ways in which I wish I were different -- more understanding, less inept socially; I wish I were a better friend, less of a procrastinator -- am I projecting the person I wish I were -- dumping that onto my poor kids? I hope not! I know they are better students than I ever was (as their grades attest) -- so I'm not making that part up. They have nice friends -- for the most part, nicer friends than I had in high school. And they do sometimes procrastinate, though not as badly as I did in college.

Well, as I've said before, "Every father thinks his kids are geniuses, and I'm no exception." I know that the lovely Carol has something to do with them, as do I, but Harris's The Nurture Assumption makes me hesitate to take too much credit.

So I don't have this all figured out, but I wanted to tell you about it anyway. It sure is complicated being a dad -- not just stuff that a dad "does," but the personal growth that comes with it. It's definitely not for wimps.

What did I do today?

So here's a true confession. I know, somewhere inside me, that I am not my accomplishments. When I wake in the morning, I try to remember that place in Matthew 3 where Jesus is baptized. Before he healed the first sick person, before he preached his first sermon -- before he "does" anything at all, really, the voice of his father comes from heaven, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased."

But my natural tendency is to want to do something, to feel, you know, productive. In other words, besides the part that knows I'm not my accomplishments, there's another part that's not really sure. So I feel restless sometimes.

If I spend a day at the office and can't get anything done, I feel frustrated. If I spend a day at home and nothing I try to do succeeds, then I feel like I want to have success at something, even if it's something mundane like frying some chicken parts (yes I am serious). That might not be so bad, but the problem comes when I'm on vacation, as I am today. The lovely Carol is asleep, and I probably should be, too. But what did I do today?

As some of my colleagues would say, "I'm an idiot." I cared for and enjoyed my family (the part that's here, anyway; the ex-teenager is at Big Event); I sought the Lord (not every moment of the day, but some); I obeyed the traffic laws; I stayed within our budget. I even wrote something sorta spiritual this morning, though it was mostly an extract from Merton. In other words, I did "enough" (what an awful word!) for today.

But there's that silly part of me that longs for "something" accomplished. Bah!

Lord, change my foolish heart. Soften it, as you told Ezekiel (36:26) you would. Turn my heart away from seeking vanity. Create in me a pure heart.

And now it's time to practice the discipline of sleep.

Merton on Prayer

From No Man Is an Island starting at page 44:

There are many levels of attention in prayer.

First of all, there is the purely exterior attention. We "say prayers" with our lips, but our hearts are not following what we say although we think we should like to mean what we are saying...

At other times, we think of God in prayer but our thoughts of Him are not concerned with prayer. They are thoughts about Him that do not establish any contact with Him. So, while we pray, we are speculating about God and about the spiritual life, or composing sermons, or drawing up theological arguments. ... if we take prayer seriously we will not call them prayer. ...

Then there is the prayer that is well used: words or thoughts serve their purpose and lead our minds and hearts to God, and in our prayer we receive light to apply these thoughts to our own problems and difficulties, to those of our friends, or to those of the Church ....

There is a better way of prayer, a greater gift from God, in which we pass through our prayer to Him, and love him. We taste the goodness of His infinite mercy. We know that we are indeed His sons, although we know our unworthiness to be called the sons of God....

...there is another stage in prayer, when consolation gives place to fear. It is a place of darkness and anguish and of conversion: for here a great change takes place in our spirit. All our love for God appears to us to have been full of imperfection, as indeed it has. We begin to doubt that we have ever loved Him .... Instead of complacently calling ourselves sinners (and secretly believing ourselves just) we begin to find that the sins of our past life were really sins, and really our sins--and we have not regretted them! ... This is the time when we really learn to pray in earnest....

The man who can face such dryness... finally enters into pure prayer. Here the soul goes to God in prayer without any longer adverting either to itself or to its prayer. It speaks to Him without knowing what it is saying because God Himself has distracted the mind from its words and thoughts. It reaches Him without thoughts because, before it can think of Him, He is already present in the depths of the spirit, moving it to love Him in a way it cannot explain or understand.

from pages 44-50

I cannot say I have ever experienced that last, though I think it's what Paul talks about in Romans 8:26-27

No flu shot for you!

So my employer isn't having flu shot clinics this year. Instead they gave us instructions on printing out coupons redeemable for a free shot at... various places. Since I live up here, I tried going to the Long'sCVS in San Carlos. Flu shots were supposed to be offered 3pm-7pm.

I called about 4:30 and asked them if they were going to have enough of the vaccine....

The answer was noncommital.

So I got on the train in Mountain View at 5:46 and off in San Carlos around six.

You guessed it--they ran out of the vaccine at about 5:45, according to the pharmacy clerk.

Well, the vaccine might not do any good anyway. (I guess that's what they call "sour grapes.")

Oh, and because of the shortage of the vaccine (though I don't see the connection), my free flu shot coupon expires... today.

The best dinner-serving time ever

Well, almost. CityTeam's Recovery Center is less than 20 minutes' drive down 101 from our house, and we got there a few minutes after Salina and Katie Jo did. When we signed in, the receptionist confirmed that the chef was out on a break. We chatted with our friends and met "Sol," a recent graduate of the recovery program. Pretty soon a fellow came in, wearing an apron. I asked if he was the "chef du cuisine" (pardon my bad French). Otis introduced himself and we shook hands. He denied being the chef, though he admitted to being the lead cook (my French is worse than I thought). When he heard that our group wasn't all here yet, he wasn't in a big rush. "We can wait for 'em," he said, and headed back into the kitchen.

After a while a bunch of other folks showed up--from another church! It turns out that both our churches were told "I'll hold the 3pm-7pm slot for your group." As we would soon find out, though, there was plenty to do. Around that time, Stephen arrived, as did Tim and Susie.

I headed in toward the kitchen and told Otis about the population explosion we just had. "I'll tell the pantry man the good news," he said. Meanwhile, I headed back to the lobby and brought the two groups into the dining area.

Despite his earlier demurral, Otis really was the chief of the kitchen. "I need two young men to help rearrange the pantry." Two from the "River of Life" group went with the pantry man to restore order. "A team of two over here, and I'll show you how to work the dishwasher." He explained how to deal with the trays, silverware, etc. Stephen and I worked on some baking trays (when you bake a lot of chicken, grease happens!), bowls, strainers, etc. The lovely Carol worked on tables, countertops, etc., along with others from the River group. Around 4:30 there was a lull in the activity.

Otis told us that the big help was needed during and after dinner. I took a break in the dining area with "Jim", one of the residents who was actually assigned to pots and pans for the afternoon. He had a tattoo of praying hands on his left arm, and he told me a little of his story: his mother was a preacher, and he was baptized as a 10- or 11-year old. He asked me if we were from a church group, and we talked about our spiritual lives. The lovely Carol joined us after a while. It turns out that Jim used to drive a forklift and is now interested in getting a class-A license to drive trucks. "How can we pray for you?" Carol asked. He told us a couple of things and added, "We could pray right now!" We held hands and prayed for each other.

Pretty soon Otis came out of the kitchen, asking Jim to be in charge while he took a break. "Rock and roll in 5 minutes," he said, and headed toward the lobby. There was an announcement for the residents to come in for dinner. (There are not a lot of them.) They ate quickly, and some took positions near the doors. "Victor" was in charge of the water and the cups. He had a "Mel's" T-shirt on -- it said "original" too. We talked about the chain, the movie, and Philly cheese steaks. "A high-fat kind of deal," I remarked, and Victor stuck two thumbs up. "Yeah!" he said. I think he's got a fast metabolism.

Somewhere in there the folks from the River group loaded up 50+ dinner trays. They reminded me of grade school. I arranged the trays for rapid pickup -- stacked two deep on each of two shelves, and one deep on the serving counter. The lovely Carol worked with the dessert person behind the counter, to accelerate the whole process. Soon we were ready.

The door opened and the guests filed in. Victor led everyone in a short prayer, and the guests walked the by trays, each taking one. Otis watched them to make sure that once a person touched a tray, they took it. Can't have people touching a bunch of different trays; it would slow the line down to a crawl. "You touched it, you bought it!" he said.

I stood near Victor, keeping watch over some donated rolls/pastries (one package per guest) and, when Otis left, also over the line. "You touched that one; it's yours!" I called out to one guest. He didn't resist.

They were mostly men. Some had wheeled walkers -- I saw one put his tray onto the walker (he had a white hand-towel for it). He looked like he'd been a manager in a tech outfit -- I don't know how many tech workers have been laid off in Santa Clara county in the past year.

The room filled up pretty quickly. Victor told me that they don't usually get that many people. He explained to me about watching over the water spigot and the cups. Guests aren't allowed to help themselves to water; he's the only one authorized to touch the urn, because who knows what viruses these folks have on their hands. Someone came up to report major spillage; another guest had lost control of his tray.

Victor couldn't leave the water, so I trotted over there to see what was going on. It was the former tech manager. First, I asked him, did he get enough to eat? Yes, he was done. Not all that much had spilled onto the floor, and I tossed about half of it back onto the tray in a couple of seconds. "If you have a dustpan or something I can help clean..." he began.

“Idiot! Don't take away the guy's dignity,” I thought to myself. I told him I'd look for one, and took off with the tray. Otis said there ought to be a dustpan somewhere in the dining area, so I looked. No joy, but I did see mops in buckets. Grabbing a 3' length of paper towel (no perforations!), I raced back to the guy's table. We both picked up what was left on the floor, then I squeezed out a nearby mop so he could finish while I ran the garbage over to a trash can. He stood up and wielded the mop; when I got back, the floor looked fine. I thanked him and ran the mop back to its bucket.

Pretty soon, people started lining up for seconds, waiting first for everyone who hadn't yet had anything. The last guest come in, and the "seconds" people told him, "Go up to the front!" He hesitated, so I walked him up to where he could get his dinner.

Dinner was soon over, and the guests were gone. I gave Jim a hand with the dishes, mostly running stuff from the sinks to the storage shelves. I asked him about his daughters -- two are local, and he has three grandchildren nearby. Others worked various cleanup tasks. I'm sure Tim took at least a few hundred photos.

It was pretty cool working with the residents. They're asking the Lord to help them get their lives back together. They aren't pretentious -- they know they need help. And the staff: they're great. They're pros. They're serving the Lord and bringing glory to him.

What a great thing, to be a part of that!

Some people knew it would take a million...

Reading James Fallows in the upcoming Atlantic, I came upon his piece "Blind into Baghdad" from nearly six years ago. About half way down you'll read someone quoting General Eric Shinseki:

Guys like Shinseki, who had been in Bosnia [where he supervised the NATO force], been in Kosovo, started running the numbers and said, 'Let's assume the world is linear.' For five million Bosnians we had two hundred thousand people to watch over them. Now we have twenty-five million Iraqis to worry about, spread out over a state the size of California. How many people is this going to take?

Thomas White
Secretary of the Army during Gulf War II
quoted in "Blind into Baghdad"
(J. Fallows, Atlantic, January/February 2004)

Wow, 200,000 US soldiers for 5 million Bosnians, and there are 25 million Iraqis. That's a million US Army regulars required, assuming the world is linear -- which it's not. I'm sorry, but Donald Rumsfeld is clearly a traitor, sending our boys (and girls) into Iraq in insufficient numbers, with insufficient armor. How many deaths is that criminal responsible for?

Heck, by the 2004 election even I knew that "W" had to go. Looking at recent history I just feel ill.

On the other hand, as I told a friend last week, "As a Christian I am not worried. No world lasts forever, much less a nation-state. But as an American I'm quite concerned" about our future.