Reunion Weekend

I'm en route to Denver as I'm tapping this out on my phone. Jen and I are returning from Boston where we've been for her 10 year college reunion. It's been a jam-packed weekend and seems longer than the 3 days it's been.

We flew out dreadfully early on Friday in order to get to Boston in time to have drinks and appetizers with Jen's sister and her fiance. Instead we ended up spending four and a half hours in Milwaukee waiting for our rather delayed Midwest Airlines flight. Finally we got on the plane and Jen ended up being seated with someone she knew from Harvard who was also heading to the reunion. We ended up sharing a cab with her in order to get to the dinner that night in time.

From there on, the weekend was largely about eating, drinking and talking with lots of people in very loud environments. I got to meet a lot Jen's friends and she got to reconnect. People were nice and not at all pretentious or elitist as I had feared. Everyone was pretty easy to talk to and I had a good time, though my social energy was drained to just shy of the bottom of the tank.

Saturday afternoon we did break away from the chattering throngs and tour the campus. It didn't look quite as old as I had expected, nor as ornate, with the exception of the Civil War chapel. Jen told me there were more places like that, but unfortunately they were off limits to the public. It was also surprising how integrated the campus was with the town around it. It had neither the fields of landscaping that Linfield or Willamette have, nor the opulence of DU. It is a different breed of campus. I liked it.

Our personal tour got a little soggy and we almost crashed a wedding in progress in the Memorial Chapel. Then we headed over to a Christian Fellowship meeting and followed that up with a much-needed nap. That night was the main shindig of the weekend and we jabbered away into the night.

Today we met with Jen's sister Christi and her fiance Joe to make up for our missed connection on Friday. We followed that up with a farewell brunch before sharing a cab to the airport with some of Jen's friends.

We faced the prospect of a long day of travel. Because of an earlier airline snafu, we were going to have to return to Denver by way of Atlanta and get in at 11:30 following a 3 hour layover. However, as we checked in, we saw that our flight was overbooked and that they were looking for volunteers to rescvhedule. Since our itinerary was looking pretty dreary, we tried to help out Delta and ourselves at the same time. It worked out swimmingly.

First off, we exchanged our 3 hour layover in Atlanta for a 1 hour stop in Detroit. This meant getting in at 7 rather than 11. We also happily found out that our flight to Detroit was short on seats, so Delta bumped us up to first class for free. Thanks, Delta! We were the first people off the plane in Detroit and we had just enough time to grab an unhurried dinner. Now we're in the air, Denver bound. God definitely showed off on this return trip. We have been so exhausted from the weekend, the boon of a relaxing flight and free booze was awesome. The prospect of returning home in daylight is also splendid. Thanks, God!

Faith Like a Teenager

Lately, I have been struggling with the issue of God's sovereignty and the unpleasant things that have happened by God's decree; things like the slaughter and suffering at the end of Revelations or God's provoking David to do a sinful census of his fighting men in the last chapter of 2 Samuel. I recognize God's sovereign right to do what he wills in Creation, but it makes me trust him less. It pushes me into a Lord/servant relationship with God rather than the Father/son relationship. I can be comfortable working for a butthead, but I am not so comfortable being the son of a butthead. However, God's humbling of himself to come down and die to pay the price for offenses done to him by us does not square with being a butthead. So I have this tension between this astounding love and what seems like embarrassingly buttheaded behavior.

This is when I realize that I have faith, not like a child, but rather like a teenager. When we are children, we can trust in our parents. We rely on their love. We trust in their rules. We believe in their power as adults. When we grow into teenagers, we gain knowledge of the world and begin to understand more of what life is about. In fact, we start to believe we have got it figured out. With our knowledge we form our worldview and determine what is "cool". Our parents are often not cool. They can be so out of fashion and embarrassing. With our knowledge of how the world is and what is right, we judge our parents. We question their motives.  We take their strictures and punishments as evidence that they don't love us. They seem to just want to torment us with chores or family obligations. We look at what they do as so uncool or lame. Those parents can be so unreasonable. They just don't understand.

Then, as we mature, we start to realize the reasons for our parents' actions. We start to see things from their perspective. We may recognize that regardless of how passionate our views were, that they were incomplete, flawed and lacking in a full view of the world. We may realize that as teenagers, we truly were sophomores: "wise fools". We were not fully naive about the world, but we were ignorant of how little we truly knew.

And this is where I find myself spiritually right now. God's actions in the Bible can be so very uncool. I take my understanding of what justice and love are and I judge God. I think I know what is right and some of the Bible's more troubling passages do not meet my criteria. I ignore or take for granted the great sacrifice and love lavished on me and fixate on how embarrassing God's actions can be--just as a teenager misses the love, provision and sacrifice his parents provide to raise and bless him. What a fool am I! I count myself wise and am impressed with myself for confronting the death and disaster brought by God. But I have missed so much of what is true and who God is. I can't grasp God's nature, yet in my heart I seem to think myself able to judge him.

God is not our parents. Our parents are humans: fallible, sinful, and not always just or loving. God created love. He embodies it; he exemplifies it. I must trust in that. If I can't have faith like an adult, God please let me have faith like a child.

Three Pictures

Here are three pictures I've been wanting to share:
This is one of two signs near our house that look like they are warning that goosestepping is happening just ahead. Thanks for the warning, sign!
This is a beer I saw while we were in Yellowstone.
This is a mountain of mushrooms that erupted from my backyard. This all grew within about 3 days. In about as many days, it was gone and just a black smear on the landscaping.

Giving A Fence

The month of May has already been mind-flayingly busy, but this week has been so in particular. This week we:

• learned how to use our sprinkler system after our sprinkler guy discovered we had broken pipes from when our trees got put in
• got a new mower and put it to use
• spent a lot of time tearing down some wind-ravaged sections of our fence, digging post holes, filling the holes with posts and concrete, and then reconstructing the fence
• going to see a new coworker's band at the Meadowlark, which is not the Bluebird
• doing our new Bible study
• doing laundry
• attending a graduation where Jen's mom spoke and a student speaker had to be carried out after nearly fainting during his speech
• having a graduation/retirement dinner with Jen's parents
• watching the Lost series finale with Isaac and Elsa
• cramming through lots of things at work
• and more

Yeah, and there's more to come this week.

From Switzerland With Love

This week my friends Angie and Matthias made their annual trip from Basel, Switzerland to Denver for some time with friends and family. Unfortunately, it was a crazy week for Jen and I, but we were able to get some good time together.

On Wednesday, Angie and Matthias did the groceries, Dan came up, and we had a cooking fest. We started with quesadillas made with home-cooked tortillas, spiced orange date salad, and roasted garlic served on toast with baked camembert and a pear-pecan compote Angie whipped up. That cheese in particular was divine. The main course was stroganoff meatballs over rice and Dan's decadent blue cheese bread pudding. We followed that with some Swiss chocolate Angie and Matthias brought over. It was so freaking good. We were stuffed beyond belief in a good way.

Saturday morning Jen, her parents and I moved Jen into her new offices, which is pretty exciting. She's had enough clients to need to have an office of her own rather than the one she has been sharing with her supervisor. Also on Saturday, got together with Angie, Matthias, and Dan on Saturday and did a sampling of Boulder and Denver. We went to the Dushanbe Tea House in Boulder and then wandered along Pearl Street. We saw some musicians, pictured below who were a bit in competition. The drummers and the guitarist seemed oblivious to each other despite sharing a bench.

Later we met up in Denver and had fancy and expensive drinks at Delite and Beatrice & Woodsley before grabbing some more decadent food at Sputnik. Unfortunately it was then to say goodbye, as they fly out today and I had to get up and do slides at church today.

Today is also the end of our current Bible study. They're taking a short break before the summer, but we're transitioning into different study on a different night. It'll be good to have our Sunday afternoons free again. For the end of this study, we're having a potluck and I made my vinegar pie for it, this time with some almond whipped cream. I can't wait to dig into it.

Back to W-- Hey, SHINY!!

Yep. Today I was back to work. I have a mountain of stuff to do. I'm jittery and mildly nauseous thinking about how much I have to do this month. Yet, here I am posting to my blog. And this is following researching a new lawn mower. Oh, and researching a possible menu for having Dan and my friends from Switzerland, Angie and Matthias, up for dinner. And some web surfing too.

GAH! Okay, back to work.

There And Back Again

So, this year's RealEyes trip was to Idaho. We stayed at a sweet lodge in Ashton, ID. We drove up there with the intentions of camping along the way in Lander, WY. However, it was fricking cold and windy, so we pushed through to Jackson, WY and stayed overnight there. The drive was pretty cool, but I was the driver, so there were no pictures of some of the amazing passes we went through. There are plenty of pictures in my gallery, however.

We arrived at the lodge and read and ate and ate and drank and ate. Monday was spent lazing about and doing whatever. Jen and I went for a walk with a few others and then spent the rest of the day reading.

On Tuesday we went to Yellowstone and saw geysers, elk, and bison. We of course went to Old Faithful, as well as the Celestine Pool and the Grand Prismatic Basin. One car of us braved construction and made it to Artist's Point with a view of the Lower Falls. And there were more bison and more bison.

Wednesday, we played some paintball and came back aching and painted blue. The hot tub felt mighty good after that.

The next morning we traveled back to Denver. The weather surprised us though, and we woke to about two inches of snow on the ground and passes in unpleasant conditions. To avoid icy hills and treacherous curves, we headed on down to Salt Lake City to skirt the nasty roads. We made good time though, and even with a couple meal breaks, we reached Denver in just more than 11 hours.

It was a good trip, but we were so out of it yesterday. Thankfully I had yesterday off and will have the weekend to recuperate ... and mow the lawn. Wheee.

Idaho: Been There, Done That

Jen and I returned from Idaho last night and were greeted this morning with a layer of snow on our deck. That didn't faze us, since we were driving through snow most of the way home yesterday. Heck, we probably brought it with us.

Idaho was cold, but enjoyable. We read, went to Yellowstone, played paintball, and ate much, much, much more than we should have. I'll have some pictures up here soon, but today it is time to play catch up and get chores done and tend to the plants that seemed to have been thrashed by a major wind storm while we were gone.

And yes. Yes, there were potatoes.