I’m at the Association of American Law Schools annual meeting in New Orleans. Tomorrow I’ll be presenting a work-in-progress on “Law, Neurobiology, and the Human Soul” at the Law Professors Christian Fellowship Conference on Christian Legal Thought, which runs concurrently with the AALS. There should be some interesting panels and a chance to connect with some friends. I’m looking forward to it.
We were at Gordon College this weekend for my 20th(!!) reunion. What a great time. Who are all these middle-aged folks with kids?
Tomorrow I’m heading to the Missional Church Conference at Biblical Seminary. I’m really looking forward to this.
This is a picture from the Gordon College Talent Show, circa 1987. I’m performing my biggest hit ever, “The Major Minor Concentration Undeclared Blues.” Ah, the bright lights, the applause, the groupies — at least that’s how I remember it.
My site is finally back up again. There was some sort of problem with my database. Hopefully during the few days I was offline I didn’t lose my vast readership :-b
Hopefully sometime around Christmas I’ll have version 2.0 of this site up and running. I want to keep the blog going, but I’m also planning to incorporate it into a bit of a more fully-featured site, a Through a Glass Darkly journal / community of sorts, with stories, commentary, photography, art, podcasts, videos and such from me and from others. I’ve registered a unique domain for this. Stay tuned — and if you have any of the foregoing you’d like to submit for the new site, please send them along. I hope this will be a sort of “open source” project, so any submission would be non-exclusive — exposure and no downside!
Tomorrow I turn 40. This can’t be possible. Where did my 20’s go? My 30’s?
Forty seems like an age when it all should come together. Finances should be secure; career should be booming; leadership should be exercised widely and sagely. At forty, a man should be a paragon, a master tactitian, a rock, a sterling example. Younger foes should quail before a forty-year-old warrior’s hard-won skill; older foes should flee before his authoritative courage and still-unbowed strength.
The real forty year old steers his horse confidently over the mountain pass, lights up another smoke, and picks a bright-eyed path into the deep, lush meadows in the next valley. The real forty year old doesn’t stumble past thirty nine like a drunken teenager. He isn’t licking thirty-nine years of unhealed wounds. His pockets are lined with silk, not lint. He owns a tuxedo that still fits. None of his dress shirts have shrunk; he still enjoys wearing fine ties; he is crisp and snappy, not seedy. He has realized his youthful goals and now plans greater, bolder adventures. He does not pine or long or wish or what-if or doubt. He knows.
So I am not really turning forty. Really, I’m still fifteen. Fifteen, afraid-yet-ambitious, cocky-yet-uncertain, focused-yet-scattered, whole-yet-shattered. But fifteen and loved and secure in love. Loved by wife, by children. Laughing out loud with the “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh,” jumping and dancing with three little lives, our inheritance. And yes, loved in Christ, by the immanent-yet-hidden God, revealed logos, awesome Father, mysterious pneumos. Surrounded by ineffable love.
Not really fifteen then, and not really forty. Something else, undefined by calendrical time.
My father must’ve been cleaning out his attic again. He dropped off this very funny letter to the editor I wrote to my town newspaper when I was about 15. One of my summer jobs was as a little league umpire. This letter responds to a letter from a “concerned parent” complaining about how bad little league umpiring was costing teams games. “Ludicrous,” “childishness,” “injustice” — man, I knew how to hammer home the rhetoric even then, not to mention the snarky “concerned umpire” signature line! My dad also, coincidentally, found one of my old standardized achievement test reports from around that same time: 90th percentile in languages, 70th or so in math. Pretty much the same as every standardized test I’ve ever taken, and probably pretty much what I’ll do on the GRE next month. Sheesh! I guess I’m just genetically a loudmouth and not the methodical engineer type.
Tomorrow I’m having lunch with Brian McLaren. Yes, really. Jeff — not the Dawn Treader Jeff, Jeff the Pastor of Communion of the Arts, an “emerging” sorta church in NYC and recently elected member of the Emergent U.S. Coordinating Group — invited me. I met the “Emergent Jeff,” who’s a really cool and innovative guy, last fall when I started my pathetic attempt at a podcast that ended up being too much work and therefore died after two episodes. It should be fun, and I’ll be sure to report back so that my other friend Jeff (the Dawn Treader), who is a huge McLaren fan and who is one of the three people besides my family to read this blog, gets the scoop. 🙂
Finally, we’re all home! Everything went well and it looks like the new meds should help alot. Continue to keep us and my son in your prayers.
The doctor decided to keep my son in the hospital for another night and day. I’m sleeping over tonight. Well, sleeping isn’t quite the right word — you have to leave all the lights on so the video will work. Why they don’t use an infared lense is beyond me. Anyway, my son is sleeping peacefully away, but I’m sure I won’t get much sleep. But all of this is a good thing — his EEG spikes are down to almost nothing now, and the doc thinks that by tomorrow, they’ll be at zero! So, the doc is keeping my son hooked up to the EEG for another day to see how that plays out. This is truly great, as we believe controlling the EEG spikes is the first step in making progress on my son’s speech and language development. In any event, thanks again to everyone for continued prayer, as this marathon hospital event has so far been far, far better than we had feared.
And now, I shall curl up on my chair, throw a sweatshirt over my eyes, and try to get some sleep!