Listening

Thoughts from multiple discussions over the last week:

Most of the time, when people come to tell you that they’re frustrated or upset with you (be it your spouse, a friend, a church member, etc), what they’re looking for first of all isn’t a solution to the problem; what they first want is to be heard. Down deep they know that you love them and want the best for them, but if you go immediately into problem-solving mode without having first stopped to really listen, instead of helping the situation you end up reinforcing their unhappiness.

It’s hard to just keep your mouth closed, listen, and not immediately be defensive, but quiet listening and acceptance (not necessarily accepting the fault, but accepting that the hurts are real) will accomplish much.

I still have plenty to learn in this regard.

Thinking through the presidential politics

I’ve had an easy time deciding who to support for president for pretty much every election cycle since I turned 18. This year, though, the choices are not so easy. I’m a life-long conservative with a distrust for Democrats but a growing distaste for the Republicans. Which makes this next sentence a very difficult one for me to say: unless something drastic changes between now and November 4, I’m voting for Obama.

Now, let me work out some of the reasoning behind this, for my own mind if nothing else. Let’s group it around three broad areas: economy/domestic policy, war/foreign policy, for lack of a better term, “morality” issues, and, finally, general personality issues.

Economic/Domestic Policies

  • I have a huge distaste for the tax-cut promise pandering. Both sides think that they’ll get me to vote for them by promising me more money (i.e. “tax cuts”). I’d rather they told me why they need to spend my money, and then we’ll figure out if I can pay a little less.
  • I’m not much of an economist, but it’s clear that things are pretty hosed up right now. That’s probably the fault of both the Bush administration and the Clinton administration before that. I don’t think anybody has a magic bullet to fix it right now.
  • Short conclusion: this area doesn’t really make me favor either candidate over the other.

War/Foreign policy

  • As far as the war goes: I think both candidates will have to more or less do the same thing - slowly withdraw troops as Iraq becomes more stable. Both sides know that leaving immediately would cause big trouble in Iraq, so they won’t do it. So they try to recriminate each other to score political points. Ick.
  • Maybe I’m foolish here, but I think an Obama win would force the rest of the world, Europe especially, to take a long, hard look at themselves. It’s been too easy for the past decade to just blame George W. Bush’s America for all the world’s ills. When the European’s darling is in the White House and there are still problems in the world, they’ll have to start looking further for how to fix problems. (Or, they’ll just still blame GWB for everything… )

“Morality” Issues

  • The biggie here is abortion. I have a real difficulty wanting to support anyone who is in favor of legalized abortion. But we have to look practically at it, too. Aside from appointing Supreme Court justices, there’s not a lot the president can do about abortion law. I may need to just hold my nose here.
  • And about those Supreme Court justices. The traditional right-wing position is that a liberal president will get to make several appointments, thus turning the Court to the left. But let’s look at who’s likely to retire from the USSC: Stevens, Rehnquist, maybe Breyer? Liberals all. Which means even if Obama replaces them with liberals, the Court’s ideological balance won’t change much. The conservatives Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito are comparatively young and healthy, unlikely to leave their seats any time soon. So, I see this as a non-issue.
  • Another thing I want to lump into the “morality” bit: health care. This is one place where I’m increasingly convinced the hard Right has gotten it wrong for a while. We have a moral obligation to provide health care for those who can’t afford it. Now, I’m skeptical about the effectiveness of government-run health care, and I don’t think the USA will end up with a fully-socialized system akin to the Canadian or British ones for a while yet, but we should find a way to make sure people are cared for. i think Obama will have a better focus in that regard.

Miscellanea

  • The VP candidates: the debate last night cemented it for me. Palin isn’t totally incompetent, but she isn’t ready for the number 2 position, either. Let’s put it this way: if something happened to Obama, I wouldn’t be afraid for my country to have Biden in the White House. If something happened to McCain, I’m not sure I could say the same thing. I like Sarah Palin, I like the idea that someone like her could make it to this point, but the hopes that she was the great savior of the Republican party have been dashed over the past few weeks. If she wants a political future, I propose this: get that corrupt Senator Stevens out of office and let Palin replace him. Give her some time to get used to the national limelight and bone up on the issues. Then let her come back in 4 or 8 years.
  • John McCain. I respect his years of service to the country, but I’m not really sure that we’d get anything different from him than we’ve had from the previous administration. All the talk of “reforming” is great for the stump speech, but much harder to do when you’re in office, especially if you’re dealing with a Congress controlled by the opposition party.
  • Barack Obama. For whatever it’s worth, I like the idea that America could elect a non-WASP to be president. I like his notion of change, though again I’m skeptical of just how much of it will translate from the stump to the office. I don’t think for a second that he’s the messianic non-politician that some want to make him out to be (can anything non-corrupt come out of Illinois politics?), but I think he’s different than the Harry Reid-Nanci Pelosi school of Democrats we’ve been afflicted with for lo these many years.

In conclusion: most of it’s a wash. Obama takes it just based on health care, VP, and general “change”. So, that’s my ramble. I’m sure this will greatly please some friends and family and greatly shock others. Feel free to agree, disagree, argue, whatever. I’m just hoping that next time around there’s a candidate I’m actually enthusiastic about voting for.

And tell them we are men

Douglas Wilson posted this quote, and it’s too good to not pass along.

I wish you well. May your table be graced with lovely women and good men. May you drink well enough to drown the envy of youth in the satisfactions of maturity. May your men wear their weight with pride, secure in the knowledge that they have at last become considerable. May they rejoice that they will never again be taken for callow, black-haired boys. And your women? Ah! Women are like cheese strudels. When first baked, they are crisp and fresh on the outside, but the filling is unsettled and indigestible; in age, the crust may not be so lovely, but the filling comes at last into its own. May you relish them indeed. May we all sit long enough for reserve to give way to ribaldry and for gallantry to grow upon us. May there be singing at the table before the night is done, and old, broad jokes to fling at the stars and tell them we are men . . . The road to Heaven does not run from the world but through it.

(Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb, p. 180).

"I trust that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety."

I sent an email this morning which sent me thinking about a familiar quote, which in turn sent me thinking about one of my favorite sets of stories: the various adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a multitude of mysteries featuring the odd detective between 1887 and 1927, and Holmes has been studied, quoted, parodied, and dramatized ever since.

I was first introduced to the Homes stories by Lydia back in, oh, 1989 or so. (I was probably 12 years old.) After borrowing her volume (I’m thinking it was A Study in Scarlet and The Hound of the Baskervilles) and devouring it no time, I proceeded to borrow whatever I could from the library, and eventually bought “The Annotated Sherlock Holmes”, a ridiculously large book containing not only all the stories, but also illustrations, explanations of some of the period references, and, most amusingly, studies as to the “actual” dates of the mysteries, piecing these together from descriptions of cultural events, weather, and moon phases in the stories. This book was equal in size to my father’s Strong’s concordance, but I lugged it around anyway, reading in the car, reading while my brother Ryan took his piano lesson, reading pretty much anywhere I could get away with it. I was that sort of kid.

I recall distinctly driving my mom a bit batty with that annotated Holmes. One of the readings in my literature book somewhere in early high school (recall I was home-schooled) was a Holmes story, so, rather than read it from my lit book, I read it from the Annotated Holmes. Afterwards, Mom got out the discussion questions, and question number one was “when did this adventure occur?”. It’s supposed to be a straightforward question; after all, the story told the supposed month and year right in the first paragraph. But no, I wasn’t going to pay attention to that. I quickly gave her the supposed “actual” date that the editor of the Annotated had surmised. She gave me a quite baffled look, and then, well, I had some explaining to do.

Holmes is one of those characters who, once you know, you start seeing references and allusions to all over the place. One such reference several years ago gave me the opportunity to email long-time New York Times columnist (and favorite of mine) William Safire to correct him. (In retrospect, I must have been one of dozens, if not hundreds, to do so.) He had quoted Holmes’ line about “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time”, correctly attributed it to the story “Silver Blaze”, but then slipped up by saying that “Silver Blaze” was the name of the dog in the story. Oops. (Silver Blaze was a racehorse.) I got an automated reply email from the NYT, but was more excited to receive a two-line email response later that day which, by all appearances, was from the columnist himself.

I go back to Holmes every once and again to enjoy an old friend. The Annotated still occupies a rather large chunk of bookshelf in my basement, not too much the worse for wear after having been dragged around for nigh on twenty years of my life. Many years and many readings have not “withered” or “staled” the stories quite yet. I look forward to the day when I can pass on the adventures (and the giant volume) to one of my little readers at home.

[The title of this post is a quote from The Adventure of the Empty House, wherein Holmes slightly modifies the line from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.]

Take me out to the ballgame...

It’s October 1st, which, among other things, means it’s time for the baseball playoffs. This has long been a favorite time of year for me. I love watching baseball, or if a TV isn’t available, listening to it on the radio. And today we get a trifecta, with the meat game of the baseball sandwich being the Chicago Cubs starting a home series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

No sense in me adding to all the blather about the Cubs; just watching Sportscenter this morning they had features on “The Curse” (including the goat, the black cat, etc), the 100-year drought (there have been 4 states added to the USA since the Cubs last won the World Series!), etc, etc. As Lou Piniella said yesterday, the time for talk is done. Now it’s time to play ball. I’m too biased to make any good predictions here, but, as I told Richard on the phone this morning, I’d love to see a Cubs/WhiteSox cross-town World Series… as long as the Cubs win it. :-)

Go Cubbies!

[Wrigley Field photo by wallyg via Flickr.]

Trying to describe Watership Down

I finished reading Richard Adams’ Watership Down last night and, when adding it to my reading list, found it rather difficult to describe. Figuring that few of you ever look at my reading list, (which is fine,) and knowing that my attempt amused me, I thought I’d post the description here, too.

This is a hard novel to describe, not because it’s nondescript, but because short descriptions would leave out so much. It’s a story about rabbits. Let’s try this on for size: if Tolkien were to have written a story the length of one of the LotR books, and set it in modern day, and narrowed the scope from “save the world” to “find a new place to live” and written it about rabbits instead of hobbits, you might get something like Watership Down. I enjoyed it.

The Coffee Experiment, Day 12

Wow, it’s been a week since I’ve posted an update on The Coffee Experiment. I think it’s really time to stop calling it an experiment, and just call it a new normal part of my everyday life. I’ve consistently been setting the timer to have the coffee brewed for me in the morning, and it’s done a good job at keeping me going through the day. At the moment I’m still working through the bag of Starbucks dark roast that’s been in the freezer. I imagine it’ll take me another few weeks to get through it. After that, I’ll head down to Brewed Awakenings and decide what to try next.

Speaking of Brewed Awakenings, I hung out there for a while on Friday morning and tried a couple different drinks. First, Nate suggested a Don Correllejo, which is a double-shot espresso with Mexican chocolate added. Yummy. After that I had some of their daily light roast, which was also good, even drinking it black. I need a job where I can just spend mornings hanging out down at the coffeehouse. That would rock.

One funny thing I found out when visiting my folks this past weekend: it seems that my mother, a life-long coffee-disdainer, within a day or so of the start of my Coffee Experiment yet having not yet read about it on my blog, took up the coffee habit herself. Sounds like it’s so far, so good for her as well. I think everybody in our family now drinks the stuff.

So, wow. I’m now a coffee drinker. I feel so grown up.

Random question for the morning

Is it egotistical to drink coffee from a mug that says “I (heart) my Music Minister” when, up until last week or so, I was the music minister?

Beginning the church search

After making the decision to leave Imago Christi at the end of the month, we find ourselves in an unfamiliar position: starting the church search. My church history is fairly short and doesn’t include much searching: while growing up we attended a C&MA church, a small Berean church, and then a small Bible church. When I went to college I floated around for my first semester until Becky invited me to her medium-sized Bible church, which we then attended for the next 3.5 years. When we moved to Iowa, we were recommended to a church up here, and after about three weeks of visiting other churches decided to stick there where we had been recommended, at Noelridge. We were at Noelridge for 8.5 years before leaving to plant Imago, and we were at Imago for the better part of a year. So my total church searching experience is a few months of aimless wandering in college and a few weeks after moving to Iowa. That ain’t much.

Church searching has changed a lot since 9 years ago when we were looking around here in Cedar Rapids. Back then your main resources were the yellow pages and the religion section of the newspaper. Today, though, it’s all about the websites. You can find out a lot about a church’s beliefs and ministries with just a few clicks of the mouse. You can even listen to recent sermons. I think I’ll have to be careful not to do too much pre-judging by the websites.

Several things I am anticipating will make this church search tough:

  • Theological pickiness. I don’t expect that I’m gonna agree with everything at any church I attend, (heck, I didn’t at Noelridge or Imago, either), but I’d like it to be close. And I’ll need to have the freedom at a church to hold some views that don’t quite line up and not be ostracized for those. For example: one of the churches we’ve been considering has a rather long excursis in their doctrinal statement concerning the exact sequence of a premillenial end times. I’m OK with them believing that, but I won’t be able to handle it if they’re dogmatic about it.
  • Leadership Expectations. Now, I have no desire to be in leadership again for a while. But I’m going to want to have the pastor and elders of a church I attend be men who enjoy reading and discussing theological topics. I almost feel sorry for the pastor and/or elders who will have the typical so-you’re-interested-in-our-church meeting with me. I have a feeling I’ll have far more questions for them than they will have for me. Bonus points for anybody that’s read any N. T. Wright. :-)
  • Limited Choices. Now, while some of my friends will step in and suggest a bigger denominational change, I just can’t see us moving to a more mainline denomination, even a conservative branch of one. We’re not gonna end up Catholic, Lutheran, or Methodist, and we don’t even have conservative Anglican or Presbyterian options in Cedar Rapids. Which pretty well leaves us Baptist, Bible, maybe E Free, and, well, not much else. Even in as big a town as Cedar Rapids. :-(
  • The Struggle for Contentment. I am acknowledging here up front that we may not find someplace that I’m completely happy with. And that will have to be OK. I would dearly love to have Steve McCoy’s church or Joe Thorn’s church or Rae Whitlock’s church nearby. I would totally go for an Acts29 church, and would take a very long hard look at one of the new breed of PCA churches. (We have one PCA church here about 30 minutes away, and it appears to be the old, stodgy flavor of the PCA.) But given that those aren’t available, we will have to be content with what we have available here. We’re praying that God will be clear in His leading.

We get a pass this weekend - we’re leaving in a couple of hours to head to Wisconsin to visit my folks. But next weekend we’ll have to bite the bullet, pick one of our options, and give it a try. I’m planning on blogging our adventures, so check back. If you’ve got any thoughts or suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments.

The Coffee Experiment, Day 5

After yesterday’s run-in with completely nasty office coffee, I decided I would try brewing some better coffee up at home. While Jason and Daniel both suggested a french press, I decided that I should first make sure this coffee thing is gonna stick before I make the investment. So I pulled our drop coffeemaker out of the basement (where it is stored awaiting visitors) and set it up to brew this morning.

We had coffee stored from the last time we’ve had visitors, too, which isn’t terrifically fresh, but at least has been stored in the freezer. It’s a Starbucks dark roast. I set it all up last night and set the timer for 0500 this morning, which is ten minutes before my alarm goes off. I was wondering if I’d smell the coffee all the way back in the bedroom. I didn’t, though I think that is mostly because we have all the windows open and the ceiling fans on. I did, though, hear the thing start brewing just before my alarm went off to officially wake me up.

I poured a cup, splashed in a little milk, sat down with my breakfast cereal and the newspaper. It was really pretty good. Once this bag of coffee is used up I might want to try something a little lighter, but still… not bad at all, and far better than yesterday’s office fare.

I had been thinking that I had an insulated cup that I could take along to the office with me, but I guess we must’ve gotten rid of it some time ago. So, only one cup for me this morning. I’ll find a mug today and be able to bring that second cup along to work tomorrow. I’m starting to think this experiment might just be a success.