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Bookmark

Thursday 11 January 2024

Looking for something to read, he picks up a book he recommended but his wife abandoned (“Just not my thing”). It’s a short book, a lovely piece of historical fiction, and he decides to read it again. In opening it, he finds the slip of paper his wife had been using as a bookmark: a drawing in a childish hand. A heart and some flowers. His daughter’s name scribbled in the lower corner.

He studies the drawing for a moment, unable to place when or where his daughter drew it. At school? At daycare? At the grandparents’? At home?

Pictures of the past are one thing, but this sends him back into the past so completely that he sits and stares at the drawing for some time, tracing the lines with his finger, a small smile curling into the corners of his mouth.

Now seventeen, his daughter is edging up against adulthood, sliding one foot after another closer and closer, ever so surreptitiously. In truth, she’s been doing this since she was a little girl: sliding one foot a little closer to the threshold of whatever comes next, with it all ending in the inevitable: moving out, starting her own life, being separate from her parents in the most complete way possible.

Nap

Wednesday 10 January 2024

Just like years ago…

Hel

Tuesday 9 January 2024

January 2, 2005, 3:46 pm || 1/470 second f 6.8

Worst Day

Tuesday 9 January 2024

Taking your daughter to the ER at 11 in the evening is one of those things you never want to do but you seemingly spend most of your time as a parent implicitly fearing. We took her when she was about two or three and hit her head with a loud thud that was terrifying. It turned out to be an unnecessary trip, and after the visit, what the doctor said seemed like something we could have figured out on our own: the large bump — unnaturally large, it seemed — was actually the best sign we could hope for. But we were new parents and inexperienced.

When you make the decision to take her after she’s already been to two different doctor’s visits within the last few days about the same thing — that might seem like the same reaction to an outside observer. But that pitiful crying, that obvious pain that doubles her over for hours — you can only take so much before worry overwhelms you.

Yet knowing the whole story is critical. And we didn’t. And that new information, when we get it, is itself another worry. Another pack of worries. Did we do our best as parents over the last few months? Years? What we discover from parents of her friend calls all that into question.

Preparing

Monday 8 January 2024

We’re supposed to get a hell of a storm through here tomorrow, with wind gusts up to 60 miles per hour and three to five inches of rain. Two separate concerns.

We have a forest in our backyard: wind gusts of 60 miles an hour could take down one of those beasts, and some of them are so big they would do significant damage to the house — like having to move out level of damage.

And we know how easily we can flood with less rain than predicted.

And so we went ahead and got ready for what’s sure to be come tomorrow.

Tomorrow is going to be rough.

January Sunday

Sunday 7 January 2024

Saturday’s Adventures

Saturday 6 January 2024

On the way to the basketball game, the Boy makes a comment about how many churches are around, and then turns the discussion to religion, remarking that Jesus has been dead 2000 years and has still not returned.

“Two thousand years is a long time,” he suggests.

I simply agree.

He continues: “How do we even know that all that stuff happened?”

“What do you think?” again trying to remain non-committal.

“Well, they say they were there,” he suggests.

“How do we know that?”

“Because that’s what they wrote.” He stops to think about it for a moment and then asks, “But how do we know those documents are authentic?”

The short answer is, we don’t. The Gospels, despite the purported authorship the Bible affixes to them, are anonymous. Those names — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — appear only in documents from the third or fourth century if memory serves. But I say none of this. Instead, I simply respond, “That’s a very good question. What do you think?”

“Well, all the Christian scientists trying to prove that are biased. They want to prove it.”

For a moment, I think, “Wait, how did we get onto the topic of Christian Science, but I realize quickly what he means: he’s referring to apologists and Christian New Testament scholars who consistently make the arguments that support Christianity, explaining away the problems like the one of the gospels’ anonymous authorship. But his point is very salient: apologists are indeed biased. They are not seeking truth as much as seeking ways to buttress Christian belief, and many skeptics suggest that apologists are almost exclusively preaching to the choir, so to speak, giving believers answers to questions they might have rather than providing skeptics with evidence to overcome their skepticism.

These are all very good questions that will lead to some answers that might lead the Boy away from church teaching, but I am trying my best not to provide any answers.

We get to the game and immediately see what we’re up against: a bunch of guys eighth graders who are enormous and merciless. They tower over most of our boys.

Their brutality comes from the coach down: They begin applying full-court pressure in the second half when they already have a significant, and they would only begin doing that (I think) because their coach has instructed them to do so. Every time the opposition scores, the coach whoops and hollers like it’s the greatest comeback in history. The final score is 13-22, and I hear the say to his team, “That was okay, but you missed a lot of easy baskets.” Translation: “You beat them badly, but you should have beaten the —- out of them.” At least that’s how I interpreted it as an objective observer…

1.5

Friday 5 January 2024

Rebranding

Thursday 4 January 2024

There’s a local mega-church that rebranded a few years ago to “Relentless Church.” I thought that was an odd name. I always assumed it was suggesting that the Christian god is relentless in trying to reach the so-called unchurched, but there was something needlessly aggressive about that name. To be relentless seems antithetical to one of Christianity’s claimed attributes (claimed only, I would argue): that it’s built on mercy. To relent is, to some degree, to show mercy. Still, I thought they could have chosen a sillier name.

The pastor, a large man named John Gray, caused some controversy a few years ago when he bought his wife a $200,000 Lamborghini SUV. It made the Today Show:

His defense was that he used money from the couple’s reality show and his book sales to purchase the vehicle. It still seems pretty tone deaf to be a supposed servant of God and spend that kind of money on a vehicle.

But apparently tone deafness is one of Gray’s predominant qualities, for he’s decided to rebrand his church once again. This time: Love Story Church.

Considering the stream of sexual abuse scandals in countless denominations over the last few years, I couldn’t possibly imagine a worse name for the church

End of the Break

Wednesday 3 January 2024

The break is over: the kids go back tomorrow, with E starting his second semester in middle school and L beginning her last semester as a junior. Two facts that are hard to comprehend: the Boy is 11; the Girl just turned 17. One more hard-to-believe fact: the school year is half over now.

I went back to school today for a teacher’s workday. Walking down the halls this morning I had the realization that we only have a matter of months before the end-of-year testing kicks in, and few of my on-level kids are ready for it. Granted, they’ve made progress this first semester, but there’s still so much more to do. One of the frustrations I have with all this testing is that it’s heartlessly uniform in its expectations: growth doesn’t matter; improvement doesn’t register — everyone has to reach the same place at the same time. The kids who go from struggling to write a paragraph with more than three sentences to writing fully-formed Schaffer paragraphs that make a claim, provide evidence, and explain that evidence will still get a “Not Met” score at the end of the year even though they’ve grown more than the English Honors kids who will score “Exceeds Expectations.” The kids who had so many emotional issues that sitting in a class and focusing for more than a few moments who grow to the point that they can remain focused for ten minutes at a time and work collaboratively with their peers without getting off-topic for a full five minutes — they’ll still “fail” despite all the evidence I could provide to the contrary.