HAPPY OBLIVION

Fri, 4 Jul 2008 10:39:51 -0600

My mother is visiting. She’s staying with us for a few weeks and when she comes, so does her dog, Murray. There was a time when I would have labeled such a foo-foo breed as not quite worthy of the name “dog,” but this little guy is so cute I can hardly stand it.

He’s also the happiest creature on the face of the planet. I am not sure, but part of his happy disposition may be that he is not bright enough to realize there is anything to be unhappy about. It would appear that ignorance is, indeed, bliss.

“Wisdom calls aloud in the street...” and Murray, distracted by a rabbit, almost gets hit by a car.

Murray is quite content in his oblivion, going through his days happily unaware of most everything, and that mostly works well for him. This holiday weekend we are staying at a house in the mountains, a friend’s second home, tucked into the pines on a hillside near Green Mountain Reservoir. Last evening at dusk I walked outside with Murray so he could do his duty, and as he wandered around in the tall grass near the driveway trying to decide where to relieve himself, I spotted three fox about 30 yards away. Murray, at first, did not see them. But they clearly had seen Murray. They stopped whatever they were doing and, licking their chops, were silently sizing up the situation, no doubt wondering whether they could race in and grab him by his little neck before I could intervene. In the realm of the wild, where the deer, fox, mountain lion and bear roam freely, living in blissful ignorance of reality is not conducive to enjoying a long life. In the context of the food chain, Murray is what you would call an hors d’oeuvre. He eventually spotted the fox, and thinking he had found some new friends, darted out of the grass to get a better view. (Murray’s legs are about six inches long, so he can go from standing still to full speed in less than one second.) By the grace of God, instead of running up to the hungry carnivores to say hello, he stopped long enough for me to grab him and the fox turned and disappeared into the trees.

I’m a dog lover. Grew up with them. Enjoy their company. Probably even spoil them. But I have to say that some people carry their love of their pets to nonsensical extremes. Case in point:

Billionaire’s Money Going To The Dogs

GRILLING RIBS

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:16:17 -0600

"Dining is and always was a great artistic opportunity."
- Frank Lloyd Wright

My friend, Richard the Sage, has invited us over to dinner at his place. He’ll be grilling his famous ribs. Well, not his ribs. I imagine he’ll be keeping those. But he does have a way with ribs on the grill. I can attest to this personally as last summer Lucy and I had an opportunity to spend an evening at his dinner table feasting on ribs and some tasty but unnecessary side dishes (I say unnecessary because, once you have tasted Richard’s ribs, there is little reason to turn your taste buds to anything else on the table – except for, perhaps, the wine).

My mother is here visiting and so the Sage was kind enough to include her in the invitation. I have bragged to her about his ribs, explaining that she has a true gastronomic festival to look forward to, particularly since she is something of a gastronome herself. I had an email from Richard this afternoon asking me whether my mother has any particular food aversions he should be aware of. (My wife tells me that it is proper to ask such a question anytime you invite someone to dinner as food allergies are all too common these days.) I assured him that she, like everyone in my family, will eat most anything. We Behans are all enthusiastic eaters. We eat freely and we eat often. So far as I can remember, in my entire lifetime I cannot recall anyone in the family ever taking a bite of something, grabbing their throat and keeling over onto the floor.

I even eat sushi. I realize for some people the thought of raw fish is disgusting but I have always contended that most of the revulsion surrounding certain exotic foods is purely psychological and that most anyone could overcome the mental block with the help of a dollop or two of wasabi and a couple dozen hours on the couch of a good therapist. A glass of good sake can also be helpful (presuming there is such a thing as good sake). Perhaps the only food difficult for me to enjoy is the stuff they had the nerve to serve up in some of the London pubs we visited. I had so looked forward to experiencing pub food in England, but after three days of it we’d had enough. This is a nation that serves baked beans with scrambled eggs.

Food is an important part of a balanced diet.
- Fran Lebowitz

A few years ago a chef friend of mine prepared a fantastic multi-course meal for Lucy’s birthday. I had surprised her by inviting four or five couples over and having chef Walt show up with enough ingredients to satisfy a small city. During the salad course, Walt brought in plates of greens arranged around a certain fish. He wouldn’t tell us what it was until we had all tried it and expressed agreement that it was delicious. Then he went around the table asking everyone to guess what sort of fish we were eating. The fifth or sixth guess nailed it: eel. Smoked eel, actually. At that point a couple of our friends put down their forks and refused to take another bite. They loved it until they found out what it was.

Schizophrenia beats dining alone.
- Oscar Levant

REALIZATION

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:34:49 -0600

I had another weird dream last night. I woke up in the middle of the night gripped with fear. I realized with striking clarity that... Doom had slipped into the bedroom under cover of darkness and wrapped itself around me while I slept and ever so slowly began to squeeze me like a constricting serpent, a python or a boa. There was no escape. It had me. It spoke evenly, without inflection. It said this to me:

You are doomed.

And, though it was hidden beneath a dark cloak it did not bother to remove, I knew it was telling the truth. There was no escape.

I pulled on a robe and found my way downstairs, Doom following me like a shadow. I clicked on a lamp, plopped into a chair and stared across the room at Oswald Chambers lying on the coffee table. He was next to Tozer and Chesterton.

The center of every man’s existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel.

Hmm.

Then I really did wake up, still in bed, but seeing light sneaking in through the shutters. Doom was nowhere in sight, but I got up and checked around anyway, just to make sure. I was thinking, I should go climb a mountain...chuck it all for one day, climb on the dirt bike, ride it to where the road ends in a steep canyon, and start walking, one step at a time, to the top. Then I remembered Chesterton on the coffee table:

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

So instead of chucking it all, I made a cappuccino and wandered out into the cool morning air.

A little later, after I had finished a production session in the studio, I was talking with a friend about all the things going on and the things that are no longer going on when it occurred to me that I have not missed doing the radio show even once since that ended last October. In fact, there was/is the sense of a burden being lifted; a burden I was aware of over the past few years but not one I was willing to fully recognize. Most days I still enjoyed doing the show, mostly, but there was also the weight of something that was often an unpleasant reality I could not escape. There was a shallowness to it all that was wearing me down. Driving up from Colorado Springs to Denver last Friday evening I had one of those moments where it was almost as if I were observing myself from an objective distance and, in the observation was the knowledge that I like myself (or at least my life) more now than I have in a long time.

I shouldn’t be writing here on the blog today. I am on a deadline with the book that looms large this week as next week I will be getting very busy with a new project. I can’t really know what it will be like to take on some new work and still being trying to finish the proposal for the agent to shop so I am trying to wrap up the writing by the end of the month.

I have never been good at steering clear of distractions.

SLEEP

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 08:42:08 -0600

Woke up feeling like someone had pounded on my chest all night. I spent the night hacking and coughing so today I’m calling in sick. No one to call, though, since I am... What am I? Entrepreneurially engaged? Creatively caught up? Poorly prepared? Professionally perplexed? In any event, I am my own boss, more or less, so the only one to call in sick to is me and, frankly, I’m too ill to pick up the phone. Besides, I have caller ID. I’d see that it was me. Wouldn’t want to answer the phone only to have to listen to someone complain about how bad they feel.

Despite my hacking, Lucy slept like a log next to me. Nothing wakes that woman. She has the gift of sleep. Even my constant cough couldn’t cause her to stir once she hit the major REM cycle. But in deference to her comfort and the distant possibility that my noisiness might have somehow bothered her, I spent a good portion of the night in the den watching a very old Burt Lancaster movie while sipping on a cup of Theraflu.

**

Earlier this week, Lucy sent me via email the following story, along with a note saying that I should take comfort knowing she sleeps so soundly.

NBC - Women in a happy marriage, enjoy a good night's sleep.
Nearly 2,000 woman were involved in this study from the University of Pittsburgh. Researchers asked them to rate their marital happiness and sleeping history. They found women who considered themselves happily married were less likely to have sleep problems. Overall, this group of women reported less problems falling asleep, staying asleep and had a better quality of sleep than those who reported some marital struggles. This study was presented at SLEEP 2008, the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.

The Associated Professional Sleep Societies? You wouldn’t want to give a boring speech to that group.

CAPTIONS

Thu, 22 May 2008 22:29:06 -0600

This morning I spent an hour re-recording three commercial voiceovers that I had done last week because the agency called me to say the client wanted a change made, and could I do another session for free? I think I’ve become known as a pushover. I said...umm, okay, I guess so. Then I let someone come and use my studio for free, and did the editing work for free, and then, later today, spent two hours in a meeting where I volunteered my time to help on a project for which I probably will never get paid.

Hmm. Do I detect an unprofitable pattern here?

I recently received the following photograph via email along with a request to help come up with an appropriate caption. Any thoughts?

And then there’s this one, which I’m still thinking about.

MOTHER’S DAY ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

Mon, 12 May 2008 09:41:54 -0600

It was one of those rare mornings when weather moved in off the mountains while it was still dark, the rain arriving before dawn and thunder rumbling in to wake us before the alarm clock clicked on. That doesn’t happen often. Generally it is the warmth the sun generates in the afternoon hours, heating the air at the lower elevations that then races upward, cooling in the atmosphere over the 14-thousand foot peaks, creating massive, towering cumulous cloud banks that then carry their energy eastward out over the front range and the eastern plains. Springtime and summertime see fairly regular afternoon storm activity, but storms in the early morning almost never materialize.

So this morning was a treat.

Tomorrow morning a golf tourney fundraiser is being held at the course near my home to benefit the Young Life organization. How could I say no? I golf once or twice a year whether I want to or not and the format is a scramble so most of my bad shots won’t effect the score and my rare good shots will be the only ones that follow me into the clubhouse.

Life should be so full of forgiveness.

I just realized there is an amazing metaphor for grace in there.

**

Days later...

Somehow Monday has arrived once again and I have a fairly open calendar meeting-wise but lots to accomplish in the studio. I ground some fresh Kona coffee and had a nice talk with Brandon before getting swept into the current. This quick attempt to post something on the blog is a bit of an unjustifiable diversion from that current.

We took Lucy on a Mother’s Day picnic yesterday, driving up to an overlook I stumbled upon last year just a few thousand feet down the slope from Mt. Evans. I had been wanting to take Lucy and Brandon there. The spot we picked to celebrate her was out on the edge of the world, tucked into a crook in the mountain where a stone wall juts out as a protection against the 300 foot drop off and the wall of granite that backs the spot protected us from any high altitude wind that might have swept down from the peak. The sun was warm and the food was good and the time together was so sweet.

HOPE

Mon, 5 May 2008 13:44:04 -0600

I hold a candle in the corner
Swat at the darkness with the light
- Amanda Leggett

Monday morning. My planner and a steaming hot cappuccino in front of me, the forecast calling for mid-70s, and an early shift in attitude toward a focus on the possible. Horizons of the possible, as Andy Crouch would say.

I’ve been listening to a CD project by Amanda Leggett, an artist who sang at the symposium in Austin last month. I love her sound: soulful, bluesy. And her lyrics: powerful poetry that has a transparently honest, raw depth to it. As darkness presses our hearts at night – to miss the morning’s increasing light – from blackened worlds we perceive your light – we see you.

She sings of a secret we barely know that pulls us from the undertow.

I often feel this intense thirst to know more, to understand more; yet even the mere glimpse of understanding of the mystery is enough to sustain me for another day, another week, another year. I was talking with Lucy recently about this feeling of encouragement that is clearly not circumstantial. It is its disconnectedness from worldly circumstances that encourages me more than if I could connect it to actual circumstance, to material offering. It serves to affirm my hope in the promises and the constant character of the one who redeems.

I hold a candle in the corner
Swat at the darkness with the light
I hold it ‘till it gets me warmer
‘Til it corrects my fitful sight
- Amanda Leggett

MAKING A STATEMENT

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:52:21 -0600

“It’s a question of discipline,” the little prince told me later on. “When you’ve finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend your planet.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Ahh...so true.

And here we sit, having washed and dressed and already seen half a day slip away, just me and the Mac, trying to come to terms with the to-do list in time to do the to-dos before the clock strikes 5. Or 6, since part of my task list involves the left-coast time zone and that buys me sixty minutes or possibly ninety depending on when they punch out over there. Never-the-less the clock ticks and tocks incessantly as I ponder the remaining notations in my planner and pause long enough to check the weather on-line to see whether the readings match what seems to be true when I wander out onto the deck and think to myself...whoa, it’s way too nice out here to be in there.

But in here I am, my responsibility gene getting the better of me. Sometimes tending one’s planet requires one to stay indoors. So I do. That’ll make Lucy and the little prince happy. I even managed to get a load of laundry done, something I had not even put on the list.

Springtime in Colorado is not an easy time to spend days indoors, as the landscape is transformed into a beautiful, inviting playground, the warmer temperatures luring us out to play, not work. And while I may be partial to this part of the world, spring manages to transform even the drier, less seasonal areas of the world. Wayne, a blog reader and former listener to the radio show, snapped these pictures in his desert garden just a few days apart.

It has been said that springtime is the land awakening, nature’s way of saying, “let’s party!”

Spring makes its own statement, so loud and clear that the gardener seems to be only one of the instruments, not the composer. – Charlesworth

REACHING OUT

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:08:01 -0600

I got out of bed this morning feeling more tired than when I went to sleep last night. I think it was the Benadryl I took this morning at 5. It was a gamble. Take something for the allergies to get a little more sleep risking that when I try to get up at 6 the antihistamine won’t make it too difficult. And get up I did, though I was groggy to the point that all I could think about was dragging my sleepy self into the kitchen to fire up the espresso machine. Brandon was already seated at the kitchen table filling out some sort of form for the international organization he is working with these days. I had wandered in in my groggy state and shuffled over to the espresso machine thinking about java when he, wide awake and cheerful, started asking me questions about the choices he faced in filling out the form, actually expecting me to answer coherently. I couldn’t do it. I asked him to give me a few more minutes to wake up.

We had stayed up later than normal last night watching a movie – “Martian Child” – and as I sat sipping the doppio this morning I was thinking about what David (John Cusack) told Dennis, the little boy he had adopted. Dennis, in a desperate effort to deal with a deep hurt, claimed to be from Mars. David was trying to make the point that our existence, our life on this planet, is weird enough without thinking you’re from Mars. And isn’t that true?

David and Dennis were in the car, driving through the city one night, and David was talking to the little boy about something that is difficult to explain. Here we are, sitting on this round rock, held down by this force called gravity, all the while spinning around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour and whizzing through the Milky Way at 600,000 miles per hour in a universe that very well may be chasing its own tail at the speed of light. And in the midst of all this frantic activity, fully aware that all of us will die some day, we reach out to one another. And this is the amazing thing, the truly inexplicable thing: sometimes we reach out in love to one another...expecting nothing in return. Isn’t that strange? Isn’t that weird? Isn’t that weird enough?

There I was, slowly waking up from my fog, while outside the gravitational pull of the Sun was causing this little ball we call home to hurtle through space at 67,000 miles per hour. Yet there wasn’t even the slightest breeze stirring the trees in the garden.

De Chardin once said that someday after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

The greatest of these is love. – 1 Cor. 13

NAME DROPPING

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:32:24 -0600

It's not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy.
The bee is praised, the mosquito is swatted. - Marie O'Connor

I continue the seed-sowing discipline. It is taking a lot of my time and, frankly, seems to tire me out more than my old life of rising early, doing a radio show, writing for the next day’s broadcast, attending to the many outside projects and being engaged with my family and friends. These days I have most all of the same to-dos, save for the broadcast, plus the constant focus on figuring out a new (or will it be?) direction that seems to make sense, strikes a chord deep in my soul, makes an impact for the Kingdom, and meets the necessary fiscal needs that, like it or not, are ever-present. Am I expecting too much?

Perhaps.

I’ll say this...it wears a man out.

Here’s something that seems a constant problem lately: keeping up with the correspondence. It’s a dance, of sorts, that finds me just one or two beats behind the music. The correspondance. My email inbox is more cluttered than the storage room in the basement and just as difficult to wade through when looking for something important. When it comes to email, I delete with something only slightly shy of abandon these days and still it accumulates faster than I am able to manage it. I have a friend, an airline pilot, who, when he is not flying, sits in his home office and forwards a lot of the mail he finds entertaining. Most of the forwards come without any sort of note at all from him, just the forwarded text or photos or video or whatever. I hit delete almost as fast as the mail comes up in the preview screen. If the sender doesn’t take the time to include a personal note – at least a line or two – then I jump on the delete key faster than a cat jumps on a mouse. I may be missing out on some good stuff but that’s the way it goes.

Speaking of email. This morning I had a note from a person in South Africa; a journalist whom I do not know who was asking me to pass along the names of any relief workers I might know of in the Middle East. He (or she – the name could fit either) says he wants to identify people to interview for a story he is planning to write. For reasons I won’t get into in detail here, I feel slightly uncomfortable passing names to him. The people I know do missionary work and are, in some cases, often in dangerous places and situations where they must necessarily be discreet. I googled the person who sent me the note and found he works for a certain broadcast network and appears to be legitimate but still I think caution is called for at this point.

How did this person in South Africa, who does not know me, come to send me a note in Denver inquiring about relief workers in the Middle East? It appears he found me through a professional networking site where I recently posted information about myself. I found his profile through a search on the same site. Small world.

SOWING

Tue, 8 Apr 2008 10:52:08 -0600

I’m back from Austin, sitting in the reading room of the library enjoying the quiet, trying to get a few things done. There is so much to do.

I’m not reading. Although I might do so later on this morning. With me I have my Bible, my planner, and a sampler of the soon-to-be-published “Culture Making” by Andy Crouch. He was one of the excellent speakers at the symposium I attended last week in Austin. He writes of “recovering our creative calling.” Part One: The Horizons of the Possible.

The week at the symposium was a very rich time.

And then, this morning...

I woke up today in a bit of a funk but came out of my devotion time determined to stay focused on what I can do today, what I can accomplish, resolved that doing these things would be enough for this day and might possibly open the shades and let a little light in. It could also set the stage for something new tomorrow.

It has been said that you should not judge a day by the harvest you reap, but rather by the seeds you sow. Today I am sowing. Though I confess I spend too much time straining to see further down the path I am on, even as it bends out of sight.

HOW WOULD PEOPLE KNOW?

Mon, 7 Apr 2008 11:11:54 -0600

I was walking around a favorite park with my wife the other day. It was one of those gloriously perfect days, brilliant sunshine pouring in on everything. We talked as we made our way around the north side of the lake but we were mostly silent along the southern edge. There is a playground on that side of the park. Beyond that is a huge, grass pitch where soccer games are often in progress or when soccer is not happening dozens of volleyball nets may be scattered across the lawn. The entire field is bordered on all sides by massive trees; oak, pine, cottonwood and other varieties I cannot name. We crossed the field, absolutely empty of any activity at that moment save for some ducks and geese soaking up the sun.

I found myself inquiring of God, seeking a word or something to consider. I have been trying to find a little quiet time in my busy days where I can just listen and possibly even hear. So as we walked together in silence taking in the day, that was what was going on in my head. I was listening, hoping for something. Direction perhaps? Anything.

We completed our walk where we started it and sat down on a bench overlooking the water, the mountains towering in the west were reflected on the surface. I am sure I had plopped down on that bench before, but this time I saw something I had never seen before. There, planted in the ground right in front of where I sat, was this plaque, asking this question.

MULTITASKING

Sun, 6 Apr 2008 11:03:59 -0600

If you can’t ride two horses at once you shouldn’t be in the circus. - American Proverb

I’m at the library. I come here more to write than to find books, though it is a good place for multitasking when necessary. When, though, is it necessary? I have three Sunday’s worth of newspapers piled high on my little study table along with a couple of weekly news magazines to catch up on. I have been here 45 minutes and I’ve already checked my e-mail 3 times, answering 6 so far; I am thinking about writing out some thoughts to share when I speak at Greenwood on Sunday morning; I’m listening to Switchfoot through my iPod earbuds; I’m doing research for a book and, oh yes, I’m also writing for the blog.

And here’s an irony: On the front page of the March 25th Times is an article reporting on recent research into, of all things, multitasking. The findings, according to neuroscientists, psychologists and management professors, suggest that we would be wise to cut back on the multitasking behavior, especially when working, studying and (need I mention?) driving. Here’s their advice...

Check email messages, at most, once an hour. Soothing background music may be okay (Switchfoot?) while studying. It may even help you concentrate. But other distractions, such as instant messaging, television shows, email (and blog writing) may hurt performance.

The key, according to the researchers, appears to lie in managing the technology in your life instead of “yielding to its incessant tug.”

Yes, multitasking seems to slow me down more than help me get a lot done at one sitting. Especially the e-mail checking. I just checked it again between this paragraph and the one above it. And then I read a little more of the Times article. It quotes Rene Marois, a neuroscientist who directs the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt. (I’ll bet their Christmas office party is a hoot.) Rene says the human brain, with its hundred billion neurons and hundreds of trillions of synaptic connections (8,000,000,000 of which I put on hold to check my email again), is a cognitive powerhouse in many ways, “but a core limitation is an inability to concentrate on two things at once.” He and a few of his colleagues have used magnetic resonance imaging to “pinpoint the bottleneck in the brain” and discovered, among other things, that a bottleneck stuck in your brain can cause one heck of a migraine. You don’t even want to know how to get such a thing stuck in there in the first place.

One of Marois’ colleagues, Martin Westwell, says their magnetic peek into the brain bottleneck problem found that older people think more slowly than younger people, but they have a faster “fluid intelligence,” so they are better able to block out interruptions and choose what to focus on. I’m almost certain fast fluid intelligence has nothing to do with the sort of fluid that comes in twelve ounce cans.

A study at Microsoft found that workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks after responding to incoming email or instant messages. And they almost never get around to answering the tech help line. Trust me. I’ve called it. (Another reason to switch to Mac.)

As a little personal experiment, I’m going to check my email once more and time how long it takes me to return to finish this blog post. Here goes...

... ... ...

SUNSCREEN

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:20:28 -0600

Heading to Austin for a few days where, according to the online forecast I just checked, the high temperatures will be in the mid-80s for the week. So... This scene is clearly from somewhere else.

YAK YAK YAK

Thu, 6 Mar 2008 13:17:24 -0700

There is a wonderful, mystical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind -- are always attained by giving them to someone else. - author unknown

I have a friend who is always sending me quotes. One a day. Everyday. I think it happens without much involvement from him, he has just set up a program that sends out a daily quote whether he actually logs onto his computer or whether he’s far removed from technology traveling the Himalayas on yakback.

Quick aside... My computer spellcheck doesn’t like that word, “yakback.” “Horseback” doesn’t raise its ire but yakback causes it to scold me with a little squiggly red underline. What? The people who create these programs have never heard of a yak?

For all I know that is where my quote-sending friend is at this very moment, hiking the Himalayas with some poor yak loaded up with everything except the kitchen sink because when I call him I never get an answer but every day come snow or shine I get a quote. I’ll bet that generations from now, long after he is gone, the program he set up will still be emailing quotes day after day after day.
Sometimes the quotes are good, agreeable to my way of thinking, while other times they seem to have been snatched out of the ether or out of the writings of someone who just picked up a pen for the first time after falling off a yak and banging his head on a rock.

I like the quote above though. It had me thinking about what Paul wrote in his letter to the church at Philippi:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself...

**

I got a note from an old friend a couple weeks ago, a friend from my days on the radio, asking what’s going on with me these days. So I wrote back a newsy little email detailing a lot of the things that have been keeping me busier than I would have imagined, thinking I may have given more information than was required but then, this very morning, I received a response to my response saying that what his inquiry was really aimed at was finding out whether or not I have a job. You know... Employment. What is it about us in this culture that what we seem to be most preoccupied with (outside of yakback riding) is not who we are but what we do? The response we give to someone saying, “so, tell me about yourself,” is generally a job title or description. Well, I’m the HR Director at the International School of Yak Riding. Or... I’m a yak groomer You gotta problem with that?

My life isn’t so easily described via job title or description these days. Frankly, half the time, I don’t know what the heck I’m doing or what you’d call me, vocationally speaking. I feel the Lord is pointing me in some new directions and that has been quite interesting and not just a little bit challenging. I keep telling people that any day now He’s going to make things more clear but I think it is in the fog that He is working out what needs to be worked on. Oswald Chambers, writing about what he called the “graciousness of uncertainty,” said, “faith never knows where it is being led but it loves and knows the one who is leading.” Mark Batterson put it this way: Faith does not reduce uncertainty; it embraces uncertainty.

I wonder if Mark has ever ridden a yak?

THE POLAR BEAR AND THE BARTENDER

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:24:14 -0700

It is sixty degrees here today so the snow is quickly melting. There is a small footbridge that crosses a little stream down the hill behind our home. During my walk a little while ago I paused as I crossed the bridge and listened to what has become quite a rushing creek as the warm sun has sped the melting to the point the water level has risen nearly to the bridge itself, pouring over a small but noisy waterfall on the downstream side as it tumbles over the rocks and into the reeds where it bends around a corner out of sight. I know it isn’t yet Springtime, but it feels like it. The forecast calls for nearly seventy degrees later this week.

With that sort of warmth I thought I ought to post some photos I took; scenes of winter before it doesn’t look like this anymore. I shot these in one of our favorite Denver parks.

The one above is a southern view alongside what, in the summertime, is a small stream. The photo below is a northern view. That’s Lucy walking on ahead of me.

One more thing to pass along before the sun melts the snow away entirely.
It’s a polar bear story so it needs to be told in winter. Perhaps you’ve heard it.

This polar bear walks into a bar and says to the bartender,
“I’ll have a gin........................and tonic.”
The bartender asks, “What’s with the big pause?”
The bear says, “I dunno, I’ve always had them.”