Good News at Lakewood

One of the joys of traveling is getting to visit other churches. Sunday, we attended the Lakewood Church of Christ. Lakewood is the Denver suburb where my daughter and son-in-law live. They are members of the Littleton Church, which is a wonderful congregation. But, with daughter and granddaughter in the hospital following the latter's birth, we decided to go someplace close.

We were uplifted and encouraged by our experience at Lakewood. Currently, they are doing a 40X40 prayer project. They have purchased the names and addresses of individuals who live in their area. Church members have committed themselves to pray for 40 people they do not know for 40 days straight. Each week, there is a different theme for the prayers that are being said. This week, it is "healing;" Reg Cox, the minister of the Word, delivered a wonderful message on praying for healing. Lakewood members will be praying for the physical, emotional, and spiritual healing of strangers who live in their community. At the end of the 40 days, each member will write a letter of encouragement to the 40 people for whom he or she has been praying. I believe God will provide some amazing (and humbling) answers to these prayers.

The teens at Lakewood set up a wonderful prayer room for members to use during the 40 days. It has various stations with appropriate decor to help people experience the various moods of prayer. They have posted hours through the week for people to come in and use the prayer room. It's great to see teens leading a congregation in spiritual disciplines.

Worshiping with the Lakewood church was a tremendous encouragement to me. My mind is full of ministry ideas and insights from just one short visit. May God bless the Lakewood church!

A-Maizie-ng!

At last. I am officially a grandpa! Maizie Jane George was born at 7:14 a.m., Friday, October 20, 2006. She weighed in at 8 lbs., 11 oz., and was 20 inches long. We are ecstatic. Her Mom and Dad are doing great. And Maizie is gorgeous.

Time for Good News!

There probably won't be any more posts on this blog for a while. We're leaving today to drive to Denver. Twenty-two hours of driving spread out over two days leaves little time to tend to a blog. And when we get to Denver, we'll be tired and then we'll be very busy. So this is my last post until...

...my granddaughter is born! They're planning to induce labor on Tuesday if she doesn't come before then. Believe me, I'll find a way to get to an internet connection and spread the word.

We've had an overload of good news lately: our son Alan got married, we're buying a new house, and the Tigers are going to the World Series. But right now, the spotlight is on Caren and the arrival of her daughter. I can hardly wait!

An Open Letter to My Daughter-in-Law

The day you married my son was one of the most memorable days of my life. I am now a father-in-law (again). I want you to know the guiding principles I will strive to follow:

After Jesus Christ, you are #1 in my son's life. We raised our son. We invested thousands of hours raising him and thousands of dollars educating him. He's been our son for 33 years. He's been your husband for a month. None of this matters. You have first claim on him. He owes his first allegience to you and we respect and honor that fact.

You are part of our family. We value you because you are a wonderful person, not just because you married our son. We would make any sacrifice for you that we would make for our own children. We will rejoice in your accomplishments just as much as we would for the successes of our own kids.

Our son is now a part of your family. The two of you are welcome in our home any time, and any holidays you choose to spend with us will be times of special joy. But we know that you will be spending time with your family too. We will respect your decisions about holidays and visits with both families.

We don't want to raise any more children. Therefore, it is not up to us to decide if or when you should have children. We will live full and blessed lives either way. We will not put any pressure on you (even in the form of subtle hints) about having kids. Of course if you do choose to have children, you know we will love them dearly. But if you choose not to, please know that you will not be loved or valued any less.

You and our son are both adults. If you want our advice, please ask. If you don't, we'll shut up, except in the unlikely event that someone's life or safety is in danger. We haven't lived our lives exactly as our parents envisioned them; you won't always conform to our expectations either. But we believe that you will often exceed our expectations in ways that surprise and delight us.

Finally, if you ever need money... ask your parents (just kidding). We love you!

Thankful for Halloween

Theological misgivings aside, you have to be thankful for Halloween. If not for Halloween, the stores woud put up all their gaudy Christmas decorations the day after Labor Day.

Last year, at the annual Scaraoke costume party I attend, I wore a T-shirt emblazoned with a large letter "E". My wife's shirt bore a picture of a paper clip. I was E-male and she was an attachment (and if you know her, you can imagine how excited she was about playing that role).

But I need an idea for this year. What creative costume ideas do you have? What was your favorite or most creative costume?

The Cory Lidle Tragedy

Whenever there's a high-profile airplane crash, dozens of concerned friends and family members call to tell me that small planes are proven death traps. The aviation community grieves the loss of Cory Lidle, as does his family and baseball fans everywhere. But here's one pilot's view.

First, let's back off the hysteria. No mode of transportation is completely safe. My guess is that at least a dozen cars a month run into buildings somewhere in America; people panic and hit the gas instead of the brake, they're going too fast for the conditions, they're distracted, etc. The same kinds of things can happen to pilots too.

Lidle was a relatively inexperienced pilot. New automobile drivers are involved in a disproportionate number of accidents; so are new pilots. He was flying a fine but rather sophisticated plane, the Cirrus SR22. There's a saying among pilots: "A fool and his money are soon flying more airplane than he can handle." It's too soon to know if that applies to Lidle, but it was a factor in the John F. Kennedy Jr. crash a few years back.

Lidle was engaged in low-altitude maneuvering flight, which is the most dangerous phase of flight. It demands special attention to detail. It sounds like he was doing some sightseeing, which by definition is distracting. When you're flying low and slow and get distracted, things can go south pretty quickly. From the early reports, Lidle was banking when the accident happened. At high bank angles, the airspeed at which the wings lose lift increases. If you're not paying attention, you can easily fall below critical airspeed. When that happens in a steep bank, a spin is likely. The SR22 has great spin-recovery characteristics, but it often takes 1,000 feet of altitude (and no tall buildings in the way) to pull out of one. Is that what happened to Lidle? It's way too early to tell, but that's where my best guess is for now.

Before his death, Lidle assured his family and friends that flying was perfectly safe. Obviously, he was as wrong. But so would be anyone who says that driving a car is perfectly safe. Like drivers however, there is much that pilots can do maximize their safety factor, like knowing their personal limitations and staying within them, allowing for a generous margin of error in all phases of flight, avoiding high-workload or distracting situations, etc.

Cory Lidle's death: a tragic accident. Given the right conditions, it could happen to any pilot. Just like a tragic car accident could happen to any driver. Will it make me a more careful pilot? Absolutely. Will it keep me from flying? Absolutely not.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

The celebrated and overpaid New York Yankees are no more. The Detroit Tigers will face Oakland for the American League championship. Remember these names: Bonderman, Verlander, Granderson, Zumaya... shall I go on? And when the Tigers come to your town, whether it be Oakland, San Diego, St. Louis, Los Angeles or (especially) New York, you will respect these guys.

More Wedding Vowels

Meanderings still gets a few hits from people who Google "wedding vowel renewal." But the traffic's dropped off a lot since the initial surge. Since this is just about this blog's only claim to recognition in the broader world, we can't let this decline continue. Surely everyone knows that Google orders results according to the frequency with which they are clicked. So, here's what I need from you, my loyal readers (both of you). Click this link, which will put the proper search terms into Google, then when the results appear, scroll down to Meanderings and click on it. As of this writing, it's the first result on the second page. If enough of you do this, we'll get Meanderings back onto the first page of results, and my site counter will go crazy with meaningless hits.

Amish-olatry?

OK, I'm probably going to get blasted for this, but here goes anyway. Our hearts are broken by the recent tragedy in Amish country. And yes, we admire the Amish for their gentle demonstration of forgiveness. But the way some of my Gen-X blogmates tell it, the Amish pretty much have a direct line to God. These last few days, I've read that because the Amish live in isolated communities untainted by the modern world, they have a much deeper insight into the ways of God than the rest of the Christian fellowship. Oh really? Sure, there are some aspects of Amish life that resonate with the postmodern mind: things like withdrawal from the superficiality of modern society, distrust of technology, disenchantment with politics, commitment to pacifism, strong sense of community and the courage to stand alone on one's traditions, however unpopular they might be.

But let's get real. If just a few days ago someone had suggested that all Christians adopt the male-dominant gender roles of the Amish, you know the ridicule that would have come from those same postmoderns. "Well, that's just what you'd expect," they would have cried, "from a group that hides in insular communities, is mired in the horse-and-buggy era, and is composed entirely of people with eighth-grade educations." I don't think too many of them ever would have advocated leadership-roles-for-males-only based on the idea that the Amish hear God more clearly than the rest of us.

Here's the truth: like many Christian groups, the Amish have much to teach us. But like all Christian groups (including our own), they have their blind spots. Here's one: my friend Bill Reist is descended from Hans Reist, who had a famous falling out with Jacob Amman in 1693. The Mennonites trace their history to Reist's faction, the Amish to Amman. The Reist-Amman rift was so bitter that it nearly came to physical blows a few times (and this between two "peace" groups). It remains historically one of the most acromonious and uncharitable divisions ever between Christian camps. Amman was upset with Reist because he wasn't vigorous enough in excommunicating folk over petty doctrinal differences. As a result, even today I think most of us would find Amman's spiritual heirs to be just a tad too rigid, inflexible, and legalistic.

So, let's pray for the Amish in their time of sorrow. And let's be edified by their spirit of peace and forbearance. But let's not prop up our favorite doctrines and biases by idolizing a group that has no more claim to a monopoly on God than anyone else.

And the Point Would Be?

Yesterday, a man in Japan recited the value of the mathematical constant pi to 100,000 decimal places--from memory. Took him sixteen hours, including bathroom breaks. Read all about it here. All righty, then.

Not Funny

When I heard the news yesterday about the horrific killings at an Amish school in Pennsylvania, a stupid little voice--I call it my "inner stand-up comedian"--intruded into my thoughts. "Hey, did you hear the one about the Amish drive-by shooting?" it asked, unaware of how embarassingly inappropriate that thought was. Of course, I'm not going to tell you the joke. It's not funny any more. But it was funny at one time. Absurdity is the foundation for humor. And up until yesterday, the mere juxtaposition of the word "Amish" with the phrase "drive-by shooting" was absurd. No group has worked harder than the Amish to insulate themselves from the stresses of the modern world that cause unstable people to snap and go berserk with guns. No group has developed a more tightly-knit, supportive, and protective social network. Evidently no amount of isolation, insulation, or protection can guarantee absolute safety, even for the Amish. Unfortunately for them, they've been forced to join "the modern world," in the ugliest way possible. Let us who are believers join them in their world of simple trust in God as we pray for their healing.

Moving Mother

I haven't been tending to the blog much lately; other priorities have intruded. One of the big ones for me was moving my mother into an assisted-living facility for Alzheimer's patients. My friend Jeff and I drove to Nashville, Arkansas, last Sunday. From there, Jeff followed me to Houston in a U-Haul truck loaded with Mom's bedroom furniture. We unloaded Tuesday morning, then took off for home, arriving late Wednesday night. We drove over three thousand miles in eighty hours (and somewhere in those 80 hours, we ate slept, moved furniture, and visited with my sister and my Mom)!

Mom can't live on her own any more. The assisted-living place is where she needs to be. But moving her there means that she has been uprooted from a community where she has lived for 40 years--half her life. She's away from her church, her neighbors, her friends, and a wonderfully familiar little town. Now, she lives in a nice room in a pleasant facility among total strangers in a huge and confusing metropolitan area. That can't be helpful for an Alzheimer's patient who's struggling to maintain some semblence of a grip on reality. My head tells me that for her safety's sake, we made the right choice. But my heart hurts for what we've done to her. No matter how we try to explain the reasons--she has to be near one of her children, and that meant either Houston or Detroit--she just wants to "go home."

When your kids are little, sometimes you have to subject them to pain for their own good. I was never at peace with the look of betrayal on Alan and Caren's faces when they were getting shots at the doctor's office. There was no way to explain to them why I was allowing them to be hurt. And now we've inflicted a great hurt on Mom, and there's no way to explain it to her so that she can understand. My prayer is that somewhere amid all the blocked and miswired synapses, there's still the understanding that we love her, even when we make painful choices.