When they were passin’ out noses, I thought they said ‘roses,’ and I yelled, “Give me a big one!”

When they were passin’ out looks, I though they said ‘books,’ and I yelled, “Give me a funny one!”

When they were passin’ out brains, I thought they said ‘pains,’ and I yelled, “Don’t give me any!”


None of these are true about me. I am, of course, stunningly handsome and impossibly brilliant. :-) Nevertheless, when I read these quotes earlier today in the awesome book Belle Prater’s Boy, I just cracked up and couldn’t stop laughing. My laughter was totally out of proportion with the hilarity level of the jokes. (In other words, these quotes are obviously not that funny, but I was laughing like they were that funny.) It’s a sure sign that I’m going insane, but that’s ok. Anyway, I thought I’d post ‘em. After all, you’re reading my blog which may mean you’re about as nuts as me, and maybe you'll enjoy them.

Florida or Arizona????

It’s time for me to retire. Really, everything I have done this summer has been just about what I would be doing if I were a retired old man. And I’ve loved it (for the most part)!!!

Just look. These are things I’ve been doing this summer. They definitely make me feel like I should be in my eighties.

1. Gardening – I’ve been keeping a lot of squash, a few tomato plants, and a few pepper plants going. Plus, I’ve helped Mom a little on her flowers. I’m not that good at gardening yet, but if I retire now, I should have a good sixty years to get good.
2. Reading – I’ve basically been an old man for a long time now, and so reading’s always been a good, relaxing passion, and I’ll be doing a lot more reading when I’m officially retired. This summer I have discovered the added beauty of larger print books since my glasses are so old (and I’m so broke).
3. Sleeping – We don’t have a recliner, so I haven’t gotten to take the proper afternoon naps of a retired old man. Nevertheless, I have slept a whole heck of a lot.
4. Quilting – I actually only quilted two blocks, and I wasn’t very good at it. Still though, this is a good sign that I should be retired.
5. Having Long Conversations with My Cat – Me and Abby are good buds. I’m definitely losing my sanity.
6. Watching The Golden Girls – At least I’m not yet pathetic enough to think their hot.
7. Eating an Enormous Amount of Grilled-Cheese Sandwiches – It’s kind of funny that people too old and tired to cook much often eat the same foods as do we college people too lazy to cook much. We’re not so different after all…
8. Church Game Nights – When I’m in Menard, the church is the social center of my life. Since the youngest people next to my parents there are in their late sixties, this is certainly the sort of place I would hang out if I were retired.
9. Going to Funerals – I’ve been an old pro at this for a long time and have had several to go to this summer.
10. Going to the Doctor – I’ve spent a lot of time this summer take Grandma there. This is good practice for when I’m officially retired myself.

In sum, I’m pathetic. All I need are some sweatpants.

Advice for English Majors (Particularly Myself)

"On the day of judgment we will not be asked what we have read, but what we have done; not how well we have discoursed, but how religiously we have lived."

from The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis.

It's amazing how you can read or hear or sing a set of words for years without them being at all real to you. You know how it is, you’ve been reading that verse in the Bible your whole life, and it makes perfect, empirical sense to you, and you just slide past it. And then one day, you read it and something clicks. Something is in those words that wasn’t there before, and whereas you didn’t feel the meaning the first thousand times you read them, they definitely have meaning this time. Those words finally hit you in the gut rather than in the head.

I’ve seen that sort of little epiphany described in multiple ways. That punch to the face has finally landed… A seed sown long ago has finally germinated… A word spoken long ago has suddenly become incarnate… I guess those moments of revelation are particularly important to we Christians since we live by a bunch of old words that seem a little old and dusty at times but that must be made new again. (Hence, my favorite verse is Matt. 13:52.) And, of course, Christ is also always after us to be fully present in our lives so that we don’t miss out on what is being spoken to us through them (“Those who have ears to hear…”).

I’m not leading anywhere big here at the moment. All I’ve been meaning to get to in this post is just that last night I was reading the words to a hymn that I’ve sung my whole life, and they struck me like they never had before. And it got me to thinking… Anyway, I just thought I’d post that song here while I’m thinking about it. You know, sticking an old picture in a new frame can sometimes help so see that old picture a little better.


When I Survey The Wondrous Cross
by Isaac Watts

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ, my God;
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.

See, from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down;
Did e'er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

Yesterday, my mother needed to get the tags renewed on our pickup. The office where you do this is right across the street from the office where Mom works—Williams Insurance Agency. So, Mom walked across the street to talk to the lady who gives you the new tags. This lady, we’ll say, is named June.

So anyway, Mom tells June what she needs and fills out the paperwork, and June tells Mom that all that is needed is the insurance agency’s confirmation that there is valid insurance on the truck. The thing is, Mom is the secretary at the insurance agency where that confirmation would come from, and Mom was the only person working there that day. Thus, the confirmation that there is insurance on our pickup could only come from Mom. Mom told June this (and June already knew that anyway). Mom said that, basically, she was Williams Insurance Agency, and that she knew there was a valid policy on the truck. But June, whose not quite the sharpest knife in the drawer, said, in all seriousness (though not rudely), “Well, when you go back to Williams Insurance Agency, just call me to confirm that there’s insurance on the truck, and then you can pick up the tags later.” My mother, being one of the nicer people on the planet (unfortunately, I took after Dad when it came to niceness), didn’t tell June that she wasn't thinking very well at the moment. Instead, my Mom walked across the street, called June to tell her that, yes, there was insurance on our pickup, and then walked back across the street and picked up the tags.

Are people only like this in Menard, or is this everywhere?

Stop Crying

By the way, I laugh a lot too. After that last post, I thought I should give a brief list of books that make me laugh. Here they are.

1. The Princess Bride by William Goldman – As wonderful as the movie is, the book is better and much funnier.

2. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore – A book that makes the life of Christ into a comedy would normally be pretty sacrilegious. But somehow, Christopher Moore stayed respectful, with even a few reverent moments. This is basically the story of those lost years of Jesus’s life as told by Jesus’s goofy best friend Biff. There are a lot of inside jokes that Christians will really enjoy, and there are some actual profound moments that Moore is a good enough author to create. Moore was working with some pretty good material, and he didn’t go wrong.

3. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller – This is every bit the classic it’s supposed to be. It’s funny and poignant.

4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams – I guess this is pretty standard. My favorite of the series is the fourth one, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish. The movie wasn’t bad, but it didn’t do the trilogy justice.

5. Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book by Walker Percy – Walker Percy’s novel The Second Coming contains the single funniest moment I’ve ever read in a book, but that’s not primarily a comedic book. I guess this one isn’t either, but it’s still consistently funny. It’s basically a mock self-help book (that’s also a real self-help book) from one of the most original thinkers we’ve ever had. Percy was a fairly conservative Catholic who just lampoons everybody from this age. He just makes you feel silly sometimes by pointing out little absurdities in our lives that we take for granted, and he always points to a better way to live.

6. The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh – This is easily the darkest book on the list. Evelyn Waugh saw a lot of soulless people in our secular age, and he set out to shock us out of our complacency. This satire on the Hollywood funeral industry is pretty effective. His best book is easily Brideshead Revisited, but to me, this is his funniest.

Other notables:

1. The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton (Chesterton’s the Besterton!!!)
2. A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
3. Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
4. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
5. Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
6. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
7. The Once and Future King by T.H. White
8. Godric by Frederick Buechner

I'm Such a Girl

A few days ago, when I was driving to San Angelo, a song that I don’t much like came on with the words, “I didn’t cry when Old Yeller died…” I quickly turned the song, but of course, I started thinking about the line. I did not cry when Old Yeller died in either the book or the movie. I’ve never been much of a crier, even when I was an infant (or so I’ve heard), and I started to think if any book or movie had ever made me cry. There are not any movies that I could think of (though Lonesome Dove and A Man for All Seasons almost did), but there were a surprisingly high number of books that have made me cry. When I started to list them in my head, I also realized that the handful books that made me cry were also the ones that I counted as my very favorites. That’s not much of a coincidence, but I had never thought of it that way before. Anyway, there are seven books that have made me cry in my lifetime. Two of them are children’s books that I read a long time ago (a picture book version of The Fox and the Hound and Cynthia Rylant’s Missing May that I read right after my grandmother died) that I would disqualify from my favorites list now, but the others all happened within the last few years. I also just thought it was strange that only one of the five, King Lear, can be said to end unhappily (and I really think that conclusion could be debated). I just cry for strange reasons, that’s all. Anyway, here they are, the books that for one reason or another have made me turn into a little girl.

1. The Moviegoer by Walker Percy – I didn’t like the book the first time I read it and certainly didn’t cry during it. Something about the book stuck with me though, and eventually, the experiences in my life caught up those in the book. Then, I started rereading The Moviegoer (I think I cried the third time I read it), and in some ways, I haven’t stopped rereading it. It’s my comfort book, and whenever I’m at all down, I tend to turn to this. In so many ways (often ways that I wouldn’t be proud to admit), I’m like the protagonist of this novel, Binx Bolling, and in the book, he makes the breakthroughs I often need to make in my life. In doing so, he shows me the way. I don’t recommend this book to that many people for several reasons. For one, even I didn’t like it the first time I read it; it’s sort of difficult for many people to connect with Binx. Moreover, I think I’m a little too closely connected myself to the novel to recommend it. If I recommend it to someone, it sort of feels like I’m letting a bit too much about myself be known.

2. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson – I would recommend this novel to anyone. It’s the most perfect book I’ve ever read (and it definitely deserved its Pulitzer). It has a pretty simple plot, but there are so many things to enjoy. It’s basically about a seventy-six-year-old preacher, who has found out he will soon be dying, writing a book to his seven-year-old son so that he can tell the boy the things he wants the boy to know about him. What follows is a sort of hodge-podge of things. John Ames often just meditates poetically on the things he has enjoyed in his life: nature, his wife, his son. And, of course as a preacher, he spends a lot of time writing philosophically about Christianity, and some of his observations and glorifications were my favorite moments of the novel (it’s really refreshing to read a contemporary literary novel that is so strongly for Christianity). And, of course, he tells stories, and of course, these are the best parts of book. It’s in these stories where the grace John Ames has praised in his meditations is made incarnate. He talks about his grandfather and his father. He writes about falling in love with his wife late in life and marrying her. He writes about his adventures with his young son. And, most importantly, he tells the stories of his life as a pastor, particularly in helping one man (I’ll leave it at that). It probably sounds like a boring book, but the stories and the observations all culminate into one of the most emotional and inspiring books I’ve ever read. In time, I could see Gilead even overtaking The Moviegoer on this sort of list.

3. For the Time Being by Annie Dillard – This is one of the strangest books I’ve ever read (which is saying a lot), and I definitely don’t understand it all. That said, it’s still tremendously affecting. It’s basically a bunch of vignettes on all sorts of seemingly random things (clouds, sand, birth defects, clay soldiers, her travels in Israel, and the theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin), but in all of them, she’s basically trying to figure out one thing. She’s set out to tackle just about the biggest questions there are. Is there a God? If there’s a God, why does he allow evil? The result of Dillard’s questioning is the best book I’ve ever read (and I’ve heard of a lot of people who agree with me) there is on the problem of evil, and a one-of-a-kind postmodern theodicy. Of course, a book that tries to take on these sorts of problems isn’t going to be normal. After all, evil isn’t logical, and God’s ways aren’t our ways anyway; you can’t approach the subject in any sort of rational way. So she doesn’t. All the rules about what a book should be, and what an apologetic should be, are thrown out the window. She takes apart every rational explanation about the problem of evil, she cries out at God, she writes a little about clouds, and she somehow brings you back to God. I can’t explain how she does it, but she does it. She leaves you with a bunch of mysteries—the mysteries of humanness and God and of the love that occurs “despite all the facts”—and with an overwhelming desire to cast yourself into those mysteries and fight for the redemption of the world. After all, “The Mystery will be accomplished.” I know that all of that is pretty esoteric, but trust me, reading the always an overwhelming experience, and everyone I’ve ever recommended this book to has agreed.

4. King Lear by William Shakespeare – This is easily Shakespeare’s best. Easily. I remember when this was taught to me at ACU, the professor wept openly during the class, as had I when I first read it. Just about every element of element of living out the Christian story is depicted here so beautifully, with all of the humor, pathos, and grace necessary. Scene after scene is memorable and saturated with meaning. In particular, I remember Lear’s divestiture out on the heath, the Earl’s leap of faith, the reunion of Cordelia and Lear (the scene that got my professor), and the ending (which I don’t think is nearly as tragic as most people read it to be—I see at least a hint of resurrection). Anyway, this is Shakespeare’s best to me, both in terms of story and the meaning in that story, and it’s easily one of my favorites.

5. Empire Falls by Richard Russo – This is another of those books, like Gilead, that I recommend to a lot of people. Russo is one of the best writers out there (he’s even better than some of the other great domestic novelists I’ve read—Wallace Stegner, Anne Tyler, Wendell Berry, John Updike). He takes his cast of pretty normal characters, a fortyish man who considers himself a failure, his teenage daughter, his ex-wife, and several other family members and friends trying to survive the turmoil of their normal lives in a small town, and he somehow manages to present them in all their humanness. He presents these unbelievably sympathetic characters with an extraordinary compassion that somehow never becomes sentimental. All of the sadness and disappointment inherent in human life is here, and so is a redemptive humor. This is both one of the funniest and saddest books I ever read, and often, both the hilarious and the poignant moments come on the same page. After I got through the first chapter, I couldn’t let this book down, and I read the five hundred pages in a little over a day. This book also contains the single most shocking moment I have ever read anywhere. The moment’s not shocking in any gross sort of way; it just has one moment that seems utterly devastating at the time. And I think it’s the strange workings of grace in the aftermath of this devastating moment that got me. Anyway, it’s a great book; I’d recommend it to anybody.


I thought that I’d list briefly the books that were near-misses. These books nearly made me break down, but not quite.

1. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
2. Upholding Mystery by David Impastato (the ultimate book of contemporary Christian verse)
3. The Royal Physician’s Visit by Per Olav Enquist
4. The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket (I’m serious.)
5. Telling Secrets by Frederick Buechner
6. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
7. The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis
8. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

Today, Dad and I went to San Angelo. Kalyn’s car had been in a small wreck (a ridiculously large Dodge truck backed into it in a parking lot), and we needed to drop it off to be repaired. Also, Dad needed to pick up an air conditioner for the nursing home (where he works) from Lowe’s. So we went, and for the most part it was uneventful. That is, except for the little disaster we nearly caused.

You see, the stupid air conditioner wouldn’t fit into my Neon’s trunk or backseat. That’s a problem when you are in San Angelo and you only have the one car with you and you need to bring the air conditioner back to Menard. But then we put on our thinkin’ caps, and we took out Dad’s pocketknife and cut the box off of the air conditioner. You see, it wasn’t really the air conditioner that wouldn’t fit into my backseat; it was really that stupid air conditioner box. Without the box, the air conditioner fit nicely, and we were very happy with ourselves.

But then, in our moment of pride, we stopped using our noggins, and we cursed Pierces just sat the cut-up box on the flat cart we had brought the air conditioner out there on. We were in a rush and were sort of far out in the parking lot, away from all of the cart wracks, and so, Dad said, “Let’s just leave the cart here and go on,” and so we got into the car to go home.

I know, I know; this was a very discourteous thing to do; we should have taken the cart to one of the cart wracks. But we didn’t, and we paid the price. Because in West Texas there’s wind, and when you place a large box on top of a flat cart in a flat parking lot, you’re crazy and you have created a rocket of sorts. Anyway, to punish us for our sin of not putting the cart up, God sent a West Texas whirlwind gusting by, which caught that box as if it were a sail, and the cart shot off at an unbelievable speed, heading straight for a brand-new Lincoln.

Several thoughts ran through my head when I saw that cart moving. First, I thought something like the following: “Hm, that thing’s moving.” Then, I thought, “Hm, it’s going fast and is going to hurt someone. We better get out of here now.” Then, I thought, “Hm, I’m the terrible person who didn’t put my shopping cart up and who made it into the projectile that is now careening through the parking lot. I guess I better go save everyone.” And that’s what I tried to do.

I wasn’t in time to save the Lincoln, and it would have been terrible had there not been a metal grill in the middle of the parking lot (for drainage) that it hit. The grill slowed it down slightly and turned it just enough to the right to miss the Lincoln (though the side of the box scraped it). Of course, the grill turned the cart right toward the side of another car, but at the last moment, the wind caught the cart and it weaved to the left, in a space between two cars just big enough for the cart to fit. Then, the cart was in the clear, and it made a run for it. It was just a matter of me catching up to it and stopping it. So, I went running after the cart for a good ways across the parking lot, and I’m fast, but it was faster, and I wouldn’t have caught it, but the wind died down. The cart turned a bit to the right and parked itself right in front of one of the cart wracks. I put it up, where it went all along, got in the car quickly so that I wouldn’t see how many people had seen me running like mad across the parking lot chasing a sailcart.

And then, we went home a little wiser. So, let this be a warning to you (Reminders #5 & 6). Take your carts to the cart wrack, even if the cart wrack is far away. And don’t place boxes on top of your shopping carts that may cause them to blow away. The world will be safer for it, and this will save you a lot of embarassment.

I haven’t actually mentioned any of the things I’ve been doing recently. So I guess I will.

My family finally finished all of the work that we had to do in June (primarily hosting two family reunions), and so, we decided to get out of town last weekend. We looked around for pretty cheap day trips we could do, and there were some pretty neat things to do on July 4th weekend.

On Saturday, we went down to Fredericksburg (always a favorite). It had been about three years since I had been down there, and it had changed a lot. All those shops have changed ownership and become a bit more high-dollar (*Aside* Spell check is telling me to put “high-dollarer” instead of “more high-dollar,” and when I make that switch, it tells me that “high-dollarer” isn’t a word. I hate spell check). Since I normally don’t buy anything anyway, that was fine, and I enjoyed seeing all of the overpriced stuff and laughing at it. I found an old couch that needed to be reupholstered and that wasn’t even an antique for $995.00! I’m not even kidding. If I were to sell it in a garage sale, it would have cost lest than ten bucks. It was just a piece of trash they were trying to trick people with (this store had a lot of stuff like that). They also had a lot of absurd Christian stuff for sale everywhere that brought out a few good (though tortured) laughs. You know the like, the inspirational wall-hanging asking “Would you rather be in the smoking or non-smoking section for eternity?” and the “Soak Up the Son” flip-flops. When I see those things, I think I laugh to keep from getting sick or mad, but it’s still a laugh I guess.

The best thing about Fredericksburg on Saturday though was the horse races. We had never gone to them, and we had no money to place actual bets. My expectations weren’t very high, but it ended up being a lot of fun. We betted with each other, and the races were really exciting. They’ve always called horseracing the most exciting minute in sports, and they’re right. In a few weeks, we’re going back (and we’ll place a few actual bets then—small ones).

There was, though, one really scary moment at the races. During the middle of one of the longer races, everyone noticed that there was a riderless horse. That horse was spooked and would stop on the racetrack, and then take off again. Everyone cheered it on, and it ended up winning the race (though it was disqualified). The crowd’s thoughts didn’t turn to the fallen rider until after the race, but since the accident had happened on the other side of the track and there was a tree in the way (I don’t know what one tree was doing in the middle of a race track), we could hardly see anything. Anyway, that was when my family got up to leave, and we were worried for the guy, but we didn’t really know enough about the accident to be really worried. It was only several days later that we found out that the jockey had hit the rail and actually had been scalped by it and had not woken from a coma yet. Looking back, that puts a large damper on the horserace experience. I hadn’t really thought about how dangerous horseracing is.

On Sunday, we had a pretty nice day also. It didn’t start that well. We went to church in San Angelo, and it bothered me because the church we visited was a lot more concerned with worshipping George Bush and America than with worshipping God. I should know better than to go to church on July 4th weekend… Anyway, we then went to an art exhibit over at the new arts museum in San Angelo, and it was excellent. San Angelo had gotten lucky and gotten a really fine exhibit called “Visions of America” when some major museum (I believe in Boston) had to cancel. Anyway, it was free on Sunday, we went, and it was great. We saw some works by N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth (my favorite), Georgia O’Keefe, Winslow Homer, James Whistler, Thomas Cole, Grandma Moses, Christo (sketches), Grant Wood, and of course, a lot of other people whose names I can’t remember at the moment. It wasn’t the quite best exhibit I’ve ever seen (considering I’ve seen Chicago’s famous museum), but was very impressive.

Overall, it was a very nice weekend. Just thought you might want to know.

Well, I've promised a friend that I'll post some links that I know of about the emergent church movement. I can't claim to know much. Last summer, I did a little research on it, but I've forgotten where I found most of my information, and the best website on the subject has now ceased to exist.

Anyway, most of what I know is from Brian McLaren's book A New Kind of Christian. It's not a bad book, but it's not going to win him a Nobel either. He wrote it in the dialogue format, sort of like Plato, but when one of the characters is named "Neo," you know it's not going to be on quite that same level. McLaren's trying to popularize this thought, and so he writes in a pretty simplistic style that's pretty annoying at times. The ideas are pretty intriguing though. I don't agree with everything, but it got me to thinking. Anyway, it is sort of the standard text for the emergent movement, along with McLaren's other books, and I'd definitely recommend it. McLaren also runs an excellent website. The question and answer section has a lot of interesting stuff. McLaren's an interesting fellow whose ministry I've followed a little bit. When Time magazine ranked its top 25 evangelicals, McLaren was one of the two or three I could stand (at least he doesn't advocate stoning people again, as one couples on that list (some of Bush's biggest financial backers of course) do).

The emergent church movement, being a bunch of pomos, also has a lot of roots (that's definitely the wrong word, but for lack of imagination, I'm leaving it) online. There are blogs and websites everywhere on the subject. THE OOZE is one of the better ones. Some others are Ginkworld, Emergent Village, The Portal, and EmergingChurch.Info. These sites can link you to others. I would list several blogs here, but you have to slog through a lot of stuff to find what you're looking for. I can provide those if you want.

The emerging church movement is also loosely linked to the networks of house churches out there. My internet will hardly do anything at the moment, so I’ll try to find a link to some of these later. Anyway, hopefully this will be helpful in you’re interested. Enjoy.

I took the following survey and thought it was pretty interesting. I'm not quite sure that the survey was right in naming me "Emergent/Postmodern," but I'm not very surprised either. I must confess that I'm still fairly ignorant about that whole movement. I've read a book or two of Brian McLaren's, but that's about it... I am a bit surprised that "Evangelical Reformed" came up so low on the list, but the survey maker and I probably had pretty different definition. Anyway, thought you might be interested to see this and perhaps take it for yourself.

(By the way, sorry for the font color. It would have been a bit too much work to change it (and I'm not sure I could have figured it out anyway)).

You scored as Emergent/Postmodern. You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this. Emergent/Postmodern 86% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 75% Neo orthodox 71% Roman Catholic 50% Charismatic/Pentecostal 46% Classical Liberal 43% Modern Liberal 39% Reformed Evangelical 29% Fundamentalist 14% What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

Reminder #4

Don’t run while vacuuming (particularly if the vacuum has a cord or is self-propelled).