Sleeping with One Eye Open
It’s good to sleep with the lights off.
At my house, it helps dispel that nagging sense of being watched.
A few years ago I saw my ophthalmologist for a solution to some headaches that seemed to originate behind my right eye. I rejected the notion that they were tension related or migraines, more out of defiance than anything else.
He reminded me of how people my age start to have trouble focusing, and set me up in some old-people glasses. I was as defiant about the bifocals as I was the migraine. When I pressed him because I was not having any vision changes except when my head hurt, and that mostly related to an eyelid that couldn’t support itself, he dug a little deeper.
I left his office with a bottle of goo to squirt into that eye to help bring moisture to a dry band running across my cornea.
As it turns out, one of my motherhood trademarks is not just figurative.
I do, in fact, sleep with one eye open.
:: (more…)
With Empty Hands (a walk through the tabernacle)
When I was a kid, I never understood why we had to study all that crazy detail about the temple and the tabernacle and the ark of the covenant in Sunday School.
Oh, who am I kidding?
As an adult, I never understood why we had to study all that crazy detail about the temple and the tabernacle and the ark of the covenant in Sunday School.
And you know how I am, I actually get into stuff some people think is just boring Old Testament detail. But the temple and the tabernacle? Come on. Let’s move on to the next lesson.
A friend of mine has been studying this though, voluntarily and on purpose. And she’s convinced me that it’s not boring, mind-numbing stuff that has nothing to do with where I live today.
It has everything to do with where I live today, if I have any interest in all in a certain Great High Priest who entered the Most Holy Place by His own blood.
:: (more…)
Halloween’s Over — Take Off the Mask
My dad posts again to round out the series of the past week. His thoughts here relate to the Legends post from earlier in the week, so we’ll call it Part 1.5. If you missed Dad’s earlier guest spot, you can pick it up here.
Meanwhile, Delilah is just dying to cut Samson’s hair, so I’ll be back in Judges 16 this week if you care to join me.
::
by Paul Willingham
Rambo and Homer. Hmmmm! Superman and Casper Milquetoast. Babe Ruth and Casey (at the Bat). Sgt. York and Sgt. Bilko. The James Gang and the Apple Dumpling Gang. Rambo I know, having watched “First Blood” several times. Rambo II and Rambo III fell sort of flat, as most sequels do. I know who Homer Simpson is but have never watched even 5 minutes of “The Simpsons”. But I digress. My TV/movie viewing preferences are not germane here. What you were really saying as one wag put it long ago, we want to be legends but we only end up being “legends in our own mind”.
When I was in college, an annual event was the “Speech Banquet”. After the meal, the program consisted of speeches by several students. The speakers (mostly male students as they were pursuing careers as preachers) on the program were selected by the Speech Professor. I agreed to serve as toastmaster for the event and thus escaped preparing and delivering a speech. Following years of tradition established by those who had gone before me, plus my own idea of what an emcee does, I introduced the various speakers with a short and what I hoped was a good joke (a good joke being defined as one that folks actually laugh at).
I introduced one of the students (We’ll call him Bob) as follows: Bob had a date with his long-time girl friend. When he arrived at the door and rang her bell, she appeared at the door and greeted him with the question that every male dreads. “Bob, do you notice any thing different about me?”
What to Do with Our Hearts Online
When I was in college, a good friend and roommate stopped talking to me for a couple of weeks. When I realized it (only because she pointed it out to me), I asked why. Turns out she’d shared with me that she was struggling with some unresolved anger and my response was unsatisfying.
The offending conversation went something like this:
Her: I’m struggling with some unresolved anger.
Me: Really? Hmm. Get rid of it.
Seems I then moved on to something much more compelling, probably strategies of nuclear deterrence if I remember myself right.
I was puzzled.
How could such an incisive, definitive and obviously helpful response have made her stop talking to me?
She described a problem; I proposed a solution. And a darned good one, I thought.
Book open, book closed.
Where’s the problem?
:: (more…)
My Dad Reflects on Crunching the Numbers
I had an unexpected and pleasant surprise in my inbox this morning: a guest post from my dad, reflecting on some of the discussion we’ve had here the last few days. I know, I promised Part 3 on confession and self-disclosure today. It’s still coming. Consider this Part 2.5. You can pick up Part 1 and Part 2 to get up to speed.
When I think of what’s made me what I am today, it’s one part my dad, one part my mom, one part being beat up by my brother, one part having a girly older sister, one part reading a lot of books, one part being pursued for years by the love of my life, one part . . . well, a whole lot of parts God worked together to come up with a little something called me. But I was highly blessed to have a mom and dad who taught me the good stuff from day one and lived it out where I could see it.
So I’m happy to break my dad out of the comment box for you today. Ignore his flattery (he’s my dad, what do you expect?) and just move straight to the meat of it.
::
by Paul Willingham
Fascinating discussion. You have the uncanny ability to take mundane things like pocket lint and Show and Tell and make us think. It is interesting that you posted on this subject this week. Yesterday, I started putting into words something that came to me in the car and it sort of ties into what you are discussing here. My opening lines were going to be the words of an old hymn that popped into my head while driving to Grandpa’s last week.
:: (more…)
Show and Tell
No surprise to me, Part 2 didn’t go where I thought it would. I promised a look at self-disclosure and confession. I ended up at self-promotion. You can read Part 1 here. Part 3 to come.
::
When my boys started kindergarten I was in for a rude awakening.
Oh, I was fine with them going off to school and all. But with kindergarten came the dawn of homework.
And at that age, let’s be fair. Homework is for parents. Not for kids.
It seemed that every day they had school, they had Show and Tell. And Show and Tell always meant work for us, scurrying around at bed time when we were nearly ready to collapse, looking for the perfect item for their next big moment on stage.
If perchance we forgot to prepare, the boys weren’t above reaching into their pants pockets for a chunk of lint and then jumping up on the platform to extol its function and beauty.
They loved Show and Tell.
But you can bet that sitting at their short-legged table, on a tiny chair, there was a smallish kindergarten classmate wondering why, when that dreaded moment arrived each day, she couldn’t make herself even smaller. Why the ground couldn’t open and swallow her little self whole.
She wondered why, after tossing pennies in the fountain, did she never awake to find she finally had that invisibility superpower she always wished for.
At least that’s how I remember Show and Tell.
:: (more…)
Legends
If you were a young child living in a cardboard shack in the interior of a South American country, it’s likely you’d heard of a North American movie legend or two.
But never venturing beyond the confines of your dusty shanty town, you probably wouldn’t know Rambo from a redheaded Swede.
So in the early 1990s when Lane and I traveled to just such an Argentine barrio to show the Jesus film, it came as no surprise that many of the children mistook the first big Yankee they’d ever seen for their hero, Rambo.
The kids spoke no English. Lane spoke limited Spanish.
Their interactions, when he wasn’t showing off his proficiency at asking about a bathroom, usually amounted to kids squealing Rambo! and throwing their arms around his neck every time they saw him, and Lane returning their hugs and flashing his trademark grin, two international signs for friendly.
All in all, everybody was happy. The kids had a real live action hero. Lane had an instant fan club.
And Sylvester Stallone was none the wiser.
:: (more…)
If I Talked to God Like that When I Was Your Age…
Have you been around long enough to know that Judges is just not safe for me?
Tiptoe as I might, I will one day trip over my own feet and spend some time stretched out with my face in the dirt trying to sort out why on earth God worked like He did.
Or works like He does.
Or is Who He is.
If this is new to you, welcome.
Every now and again, it’s what we do here.
It’s time.
:: (more…)
10 Cool Things You Can Do with 300 Fox Tails
You’re right, the post title is intentionally misleading.
I only have one idea for what to do with a whole bunch of fox tails. It’s been done, and I’m not sure how cool it was.
But I’ve read that list-posts are popular with readers and I’m all about making you happy. So I figured, why not?
What could it hurt if I didn’t deliver the goods?
It’s not like anybody would get mad and take three hundred foxes, tie their tails together, start them on fire and set them loose in my back yard.
Nah, nobody would ever do something like that.
Except, I suppose, maybe Samson . . .
He might just be crazy enough to do something like that.
:: (more…)
His Body, Broken
Contrasting Samson’s strength-for-myself with Jesus’ willingness to muscle under us for our gain reminded me of a post from the archives. Meanwhile, we’re off to see our last Minnesota Twins game in the Metrodome. Enjoy the weekend. Go Twins!
::
The Lord’s Supper is not funny.
That last meal that Jesus shared with His disciples, celebrating the Passover supper together? Even less funny.
Yet, from time to time when I hear said that Jesus’ body was broken, I confess I force back a snicker. I don’t want to laugh. I try not to do it very loud. And I try to get over it really fast.
It’s embarrassing and offensive to be found laughing about such a somber thing.
I’ve learned that not a lot of people appreciate snickering during Communion.
And they really hate snort laughing.
:: (more…)
Don’t Plow with Samson’s Heifer
This set-apart stuff can sure go to a guy’s head.
Make a guy a Nazirite and give him awesome hair, and Wham! The whole world revolves around him.
It started with a harmless riddle between a bridegroom and his wedding party.
It turned into death threats, a sobbing bride, and Samson kicking the snot out of 30 guys so he could take their clothes and pay his wager.
All because an arrogant fool couldn’t grasp his calling.
:: (more…)
Why I Wash My Hands After Reading the Word
If you blog, you might notice we oft find ourselves as the Wizard of Oz, hidden in the control booth of Blogger or Word Press throwing switches and levers to project whatever image suits our fancy. Even when we do let down our guard and expose our shortcomings, we do so in a controlled environment, putting our best foot forward. Our words are measured, thoughts processed, outbursts edited.
If folks start to see our true faults, we might be quick to turn up the volume and pour out more smoke. Like the frail wizard, we shout into the microphone, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”
Don’t worry, you can keep reading. I don’t plan to reveal any dark secrets today. But I will point out one of my more neurotic quirks that often wedge themselves under the fingernails of those who know me. You who have only a digital image are more often spared such annoyances of day to day life.
Curse you, Samson. You continue to expose me.
I apologize in advance.
::
My coworkers and I paraded to the cafeteria yesterday and stood in a herd like so many cattle. You’d think we never eat. But the cooks whipped up homemade caramel rolls just the way we like them — warm and free — to kick off the annual Combined Appeal (think: small town United Way) campaign.
When it was this glutton’s turn at the table, I took tongs in hand and felt electricity rack my arm. I tried in vain to hold in the guttural half-scream that left my throat. A nearby coworker jumped away as I jerked my hand back but was unable to rid myself of the utensil, now one with my hand.
Caramel Rolls + Hungry Workers = Sticky Tongs
I seized up.
Once done making my scene, I pulled the tongs from my palm, handed off my plate and slunk to the kitchen to rinse the offending glop down the drain.
I’m not a germophobe. I’m not even particularly neat or tidy. And I don’t live in a spotless home.
But sticky does something deep inside me.
It immobilizes.
So, when Samson stuck his powerful paw into honeycomb the bees created inside a lion’s carcass, I started to twitch.
:: (more…)
Could Anybody Use a Little Rest?
It’s always so backward to me.
I have an organized brain, one that is neatly compartmentalized.
The earth, you know, travels on its axis in one direction only. Seems my mind follows the same pattern. What works for the earth surely will work for me. Straight lines, one foot in front of the other.
Stay in the lines, between the fences, on the path.
I imagine He cast a sideways grin my yet-unformed way when He breathed words into Matthew’s quill and parchment. Jesus stood teaching the crowd in Galilee and said such backward things.
He said He would hide understanding from the wise and learned, and instead reveal His knowledge to children.
Tiny minds would grasp what we smartypants could not.
And it was all for His good pleasure. It’s right there in the text.
That was His way of saying My Father delights in crazy backed up logic just because He knows two thousand years from now it’ll make my Beloved’s head spin right off her neck.
And there’s that sideways grin again.
Seems the child vs. grown-up remarks were just the prelude. There was more backwardiness to come.
After uttering such ridiculous words, He would turn and ask us to slip our heads into a constrictive apparatus meant for beasts of burden and heavy labor.
He would ask us to wear the yoke as though we were oxen, all so we could find a little rest.
And I ask myself: A little rest? Is He mad?
His pearly whites are flashing that grin.
All for His good pleasure.
:: (more…)
Unredacted: A Page from the Journal
Thoroughly enjoyed my reading of 103 earlier this week and thought I’d give this to you straight out of the journal.
Unedited.
Unadulterated.
Unredacted. (Yeah, that’s not a word. But I like it.)
If this is the first time you’ve ventured this far, my humble apologies. I do write better on days when I’m not talking to myself.
Wait a sec . . . for all I know, that’s what I do here all the time. Hello . . . ?
This is a hair scattered. When it comes to the Psalms, I like it that way. And please forgive all the shouting CAPS. I got excited.
:: (more…)
We Could Have Been Praying
It’s murky, looking into my future. My family’s future.
Two months from now I’ll complete this near year-long process of working myself out of work. I prefer not to use the U-word just yet, thanks. I hope and intend to have no need for it.
Even so, the uncertainty is all that is clear.
The rest remains, well, murky.
Funny.
I suppose your future is murky too. Nobody knows for sure what’ll happen tomorrow. Perhaps we just don’t always realize it.
Sometimes life’s moments conspire to make us more acutely aware. More focused on the murky waters below the raft than the clear blue sky above it.
Seems the waters will always be murky if we look deeply enough into them.
A little contemplative, it seems I am today.
:: (more…)
I Want It Now!
The hair on the back of my neck just stood up.
The same way that it stood up when I was a kid during the Super Bowl. While the Dallas Cowboys kicked somebody’s rear in one room, we non-NFL fans holed up in another and watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Between the Oompa Loompas looking just a little too much like the scary Jolly Troll in the smorgasbord commercials and the maladjusted characters not getting what they deserved quite soon enough, it’s an old movie I love to hate. Or hate to love. Or something.
It’s one of my all time favorites but still one that creeps me out a little.
On today’s reading of Judges 14 (you don’t want to know for which numbered time), Samson’s giving me that same sick chill.
When he demands that his parents fetch him up a cute Philistine bride, it is as though he’s just slipped into Veruca Salt’s prim red dress and Mary Janes and taken over the Golden Egg Room at the factory. As Veruca implores her doting father to procure a goose that will lay golden eggs (one hundred a day) and lay out a feast for her (of beans, no less), Samson joins in with a rousing chorus of I want it now!
All the while, I find myself wanting to nudge them both a hair closer to the Bad Egg Chute.
:: (more…)
Business Up Front, Party in the Back (or, Samson Was a Nazir-what?)
Five posts into the Samson series, and we still haven’t made it to the really big deal, the thing everybody likes to talk about: his hair.
I’m pretty sure we made his hair the big deal about the same time as the flannelgraph and modern Sunday School came on the scene. (Sorry to burst anybody’s bubble, but nope, John Stamos wasn’t really the father of the mullet; Samson was. And yes, I’ve been known to watch too much TV and movies. But I promise, not lately.)
My theory is the prospect of explaining Samson’s whole story for young kids came off a little daunting and so we took the shears to the story, not to his hair, clipping away to something that felt easier to teach.
To prove out my hunch, I did a little Googling and found that after we trim away the sideburns and hard questions, we’re left with Sunday School lesson plans that have learning objectives looking a little something like these:
- Students will recognize that girls are sneaky.
- Pupils will learn not to listen to sneaky girls.
- Learners will discover that sneaky girls will destroy them.
- Students will remember that girls named Delilah are sneaky and deceitful.
- Learners will be reminded not to cut their hair because it makes them more vulnerable to the wiles of sneaky girls named Delilah.
This is what I remember about Samson too. His hair was a really big deal, and he was a sucker for a sneaky girl.
Samson had it all, and lost it all when a sneaky girl tricked him and cut his hair.
But is this it? Have we taken away all we can from Samson’s story when this is all we see?
What about his utter lack of self control? What about his short fuse and relentless drive for vengeance? What about his superficial motion-going with his Nazirite vow?
His Nazir-what?
:: (more…)
Repost: Truth, Lies & Snidely Whiplash
I sit with several unfinished drafts in my folder, none of which I’m able to complete. Somehow, it appears I forgot how to write over the weekend. Begging your pardon while I repost and try to regain my bearings. Only two and a half of you probably caught this anyway when it posted during my first full week of blogging.
And if you happen to see me out wandering around, laptop dangling and drool on my chin, point me back home?
::
I grew up watching Rocky and Bullwinkle and loving it.
My favorite is a Dudley DoRight episode. In case you weren’t so enchanted with talking moose and flying squirrels (or too young to know better), let me fill you in.
Snidely Whiplash is the show’s villain, and with his handlebar moustache and black hat is perhaps even the caricature on which so many other villains are based.
The episode opens with Snidely lamenting what a pathetic, disgusting creature he’s become. You see, he has a nasty habit of tying helpless young ladies to railroad tracks. (“I have this thing,” he explains.)
His favorite victim is the delightful Nell Fenwick, a beautiful damsel with lovely blonde curls who is always rescued just in the nick of time by her brave and daring boyfriend, Dudley DoRight of the Royal Canadian Mounties.
:: (more…)
Getting the Monkey Off My Back
I awoke this morning in a stranglehold.
Don’t get me wrong. Lane was sleeping peacefully, at least until he got up at 5:00 to wake Isaac for football practice before school.
And no, the blanket wasn’t tangled around my neck.
But it’s lunchtime now, and the strong hands wrapped around my pencil neck haven’t yet let loose.
It’s time to get the monkey off my back, as there simply isn’t room for both of us in my desk chair. And besides, it’s difficult to breathe.
:: (more…)
I Can’t Handle the Truth
Manoah, on the whole, asked good questions.
His failure to recognize God on the scene wasn’t for a lack of trying.
He knew the guy who spoke to his wife was a man of God, and he went to God and asked to send him back. He wanted to make sure he had it right. “Let the man of God you sent to us come again to teach us.”
We’ve already considered how that’s a prayer God loves to answer.
But Manoah’s inquiry continued while the answers became a wee bit more elusive.
When he asked the man of God his name, the angel shut him down. And I can’t help feeling a little like Col. Jessep just handed Lt. Kaffee his backside when he shouted, “You can’t handle the truth!”
:: (more…)
Bookends
I left the house with three items on my list: soap, bandanas to patch my too-many-years-old threadbare Levis (my favorites, but they’ve gone beyond the point of immodesty in places), and bookends.
Yes, bookends.
L-shaped pieces of metal that sit on either end of a row of books to keep them from Dominoing onto the floor.
I needed some.
The ambitious expectations I had for my recent vacation days dwindled down to just cleaning off my desk. The tower of books stacked behind my computer leaned as though longing for Pisa and convinced me it was time to set them on a horizontal plane.
The books stay with my desk, more convenient than the wall of books in the basement. Some are staples for which I reach often. Others, in various stages of completion, rotate until I reach the last page and they move to the basement wall or out on loan.
There are always others waiting their turn.
But books are like good friends. Sometimes they need a little help standing up.
So I embarked on a quest for bookends so I could be their good friend.
Who knew they would be so hard to find?
:: (more…)
Meet the Parents
They mean well.
But gosh. Samson’s parents strike me as about as unzipped as Ferris Bueller’s mom and dad.
Later on they bear an awkard resemblance to Veruca Salt’s father in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. But that’s to tackle another day.
When Samson’s screenplay was scripted, somehow or other his parents slipped into that two-dimensional caricature of parents who are endearing but just a little empty-headed.
Cute but clueless.
But they mean well.
::
The Wasteland: Alternate Ending Edition
This could easily be the earliest “re-post” post ever. At least in these parts. But here’s the thing. I got stumped the other day finishing up The Wasteland. The desert place caught up with me, leaving me a little dry around the edges. I’m not one who often asks for help; too proud for that.
But I did something here I’ve never done before. I asked you to finish the post for me.
And some of you did just that. With cool, refreshing words that filled me up.
But I know not all of you have the chance to come back and splash around in the comments. I didn’t want you to miss out on this chance to soak up the liquid sunshine these readers poured out.
So put on your galoshes and open your umbrellas:
The Wasteland: Alternate Ending Edition.
(And you can still weigh in if you didn’t get a chance the first time around.)
:: :: ::
Parched. Desolate. Impoverished.
Empty. Fallow.
Depleted.
This is barren. This is the wasteland.
This is the woman, standing lifeless in withering field, sunscorched. Hands crack open as she labors to find life among brittle stalks, knowing she will never labor to bring life from her own womb, dry and fruitless as this desolate soil.
This woman is nameless, faceless. Known to us even today only as Samson’s mother.
:: (more…)
Standing in the Water
Stepping aside just briefly from Samson.
If you haven’t had the opportunity to read
the first two, I’d love for you to catch up
with Rhythm and The Wasteland
if you can spare the time.
::
I’ve stood three times in the baptismal waters.
Once, I stood in the baptismal tank at the front of my childhood church to make my own confession of faith at the tender age of eleven. Fully submerged, I sputtered back through the water’s surface to hear the congregation sing as one voice.
Jesus my Lord will love me forever, from Him no pow’r of evil can sever . . .
Again in my twenties I stood waist deep in a Twin Cities lake, humbled to hold a dear friend as she descended under the water. She, with hundreds of others, emerged from the cool water proclaiming the joy of her salvation. She stood back on her feet to the cheers and applause of hundreds more on the shore.
And once more, barely a day ago, I stood in the algae green waters of a lake that splits Minnesota from South Dakota. This time, the waters lapped only at my ankles, soaking the hems of Levis I’d failed to roll quite high enough.
Would it trouble anyone if I said that it gets a little sweeter each time I step in?
:: (more…)
The Conversation