This afternoon and evening I had the privilege of being one of the honored guests and speakers at Saroya Munnings’ “sweet 16″ debutante ball.  Wow.  Saroya is the daughter of Ken and Sandra Munnings, former next-door-neighbors of mine who are now just down the street from me (I was the one who moved down the block, not them).  Months ago, Ken and I were talking about our kids growing up and wanting them to understand what that meant to us, and for them.  He had already planned to have a sort of Protestant Quinceañera for Saroya, for her 16th rather than her 15th birthday, hence the odd name for the event.  His invitation to speak grew out of that discussion we had, leaning over his fence one afternoon.

Here is the talk I gave, with a little bit of ad lib in the moment. (ask Sandra about the Power Beans!)

What a wonderful celebration!  It is such a privilege to be here tonight with you.  All the kids on our block have been talking about the party– everyone was either going to come or wished they were coming.  This is the place to be tonight.
Let’s take a moment to consider exactly what we are celebrating:
~1  Saroya herself!  You are a remarkable young woman, loved by your parents and friends, full of talent and potential. I see in you the diligence and courage that a person needs in order to fulfill their potential.  That is the other thing we celebrate tonight–
~2  Growing up. Becoming an adult. Fulfilling your potential.
Growing up does not mean becoming sexually active.
It means becoming wise.
It does not mean ignoring your parents or “not letting anyone tell you what to do.”
It means taking on responsibility, choosing what authority you will follow and being loyal to that. (I recommend Jesus– and your parents of course)
It does not mean getting more and more stuff for yourself.
It means giving, creating, providing for yourself and for others.
Some of you arrived tonight in elegant cars.  Not to mention Saroya’s limo-bus!  I happen to drive a 1997 Ford truck, a stick-shift.  I learned to drive stick when I was younger than you, Saroya; back then, half the cars on the road were manual transmission.  To drive a stick-shift, you learn to find the friction point and let the clutch out gently, easing the car into gear, so it accelerates smoothly and doesn’t choke or stall.

That’s what your parents are doing now: not insisting that you take on all the responsibility of adulthood, popping the clutch on you, but easing you into it, giving you more and more responsibility as you are ready for it.

Tonight, with your promises of purity, loyalty and diligence, you’re officially in first gear of adulthood.  Anyone who drives stick knows you don’t stay in first gear for long!  Graduating from high school is like shifting to second gear; getting a college degree is third gear; career, marriage, and children is where you will shift into fourth and fifth gear.  You will need the momentum you’ll build up in the lower gears so that you’ll have an easier time in the higher gears.  Don’t skip a gear, or rush too fast through them!  You don’t want to choke or stall.

To celebrate you getting your adulthood into gear, I have two gifts I want to give you: Wisdom, and Happiness.

My symbol for Wisdom is books.  Wisdom is found in people of course, as well as in books. But some books, like this one, are especially rich in wisdom.  (it’s not a Bible, I figured you had one of those already.)  A book is just a person’s story, their thoughts and words, carefully chosen and prayed over.
A wise person learns from her mistakes.
A wiser person learns from the mistakes of others.
The wisest person learns from more than mistakes! She studies life and God and learns from success as well as failure.  The wisest people I know all LOVE books. May this one be an enriching experience for you.

For me, Happiness is like… chocolate.  Not just any old chocolate.  These are hand-crafted with love to be a gift to others, not machine-made to make a buck.  Like you, Saroya, each one of these is unique and different inside (and like true happiness, I’ll leave the contents a mystery, and let you taste them for yourself).  There have never been chocolates exactly like these, and there will never be another Saroya exactly like you.  You are hand-made by God, a masterpiece, “to do good works which God prepared in advance for you to do” (Ephesians 2:8-10).

Saroya, you have good parents, good education, good friends.  God has prepared you well to do good works.  You have, in Him, a future and a hope.  As far as it is in my power to do so, I bless you with these gifts. [hand book & chocolates to Saroya, if haven’t done so already]  Wisdom and Happiness to you… and happy birthday!

We still have not settled on a name for the house. Usually in my family it would already be named: I lived at 8602 until middle school, when we moved to 23036… or maybe just use the street name: most of my urban ministry was spent at 53rd Street, and 29th Street was the first house my wife and kids and I had ever lived in.

But there is great power in naming a home. It makes it more than merely an address to occupy, however pleasant or meaningful that address might be. When one’s livelihood depends on it, we instinctively name the house: what bed & breakfast establishment, for instance, ever went without a name?

(Good, you thought of one: but aren’t they using the address as a proper noun, and giving it the same significance one would attach to a name? Like The Inn at 657, for instance? Even Number 10 Downing Street or 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are freighted with significance that any name would be proud to carry… and it feels more natural to call the latter “The White House” anyway)

So: my father’s house in Tahoe, which we now run as a modest retreat/reunion/wedding locale, is a classic Norwegian chalet (dad is Norwegian) so he named it Fjeldheim - “Mountain Home.” Since I’m there a lot (at least, more than I’m anywhere else besides Los Angeles), it seems natural to call this house Stadheim - “City Home.” Nice symmetry there.

The problem is, that gives this house a Norwegian name, and there is very little Norwegian about it. My dad, builder of Fjeldheim, is full blooded Norseman… Kathryn and I, builders of this home, are American mutts with a clearly detectable Scandinavian phenotype in one of us. But our family is an amalgam of contrasting phenotypes besides Scandinavian: British, Mayan, African, probably others more subtle.

What name encompasses that diversity?

We might try another angle, and name the house after its purpose. We like to experiment with interesting languages, and a Jewish friend suggested Bet Elohim or Bet al Amin - “House of God”, or “House for the Peoples.” We aren’t ethnically Jewish at all, but you might argue that the blood of a Nazarene runs through our family, or that we are adopted into the family of the Jewish messiah Yeshua. Adoption is a strong current of our identity and purpose, but do we want to make it the chief metaphor through which we identify this house?

Suggestions and questions welcome!

One of the most frustrating things about the Olympics is that I love the pageantry and commentary and competition, but I can never see enough of the sports I love, and always end up watching too much of other sports so that I begin to dislike them Not the sport itself, I guess, but the being forced to watch it because what I want won’t be shown.

Not to mention all the commercials! Has television always had so many commercials? Yeesh. As a kid I didn’t notice so much. Some of them are funny (the first and second time anyway), but egads, what an insipid waste of Olympic time and my brain cells. Good reminder to me of why we do not own a television.

But once or twice a year (Superbowl, Olympics, presidential inaugurations) I will borrow a TV or hang out with a friend who has one. The rarity of my television time means I really do resent the commercials. And when it’s the Olympics, I really do want to see certain events, and care less and less about events that are pushed on me.

One event in Beijing right now that I would dearly love to see is not sponsored by the Olympic Committee, but it ought to be required viewing for every Olympic athlete (and fan for that matter): Scribble, by Urban Poets.

I am privileged to know several of the Urban Poets personally, and have seen many of their shows over the years. I have NEVER been disappointed. Every time they surprise me with their passion, excellence and insight. You’d think I would get used to it, but unlike the clever Olympic or Superbowl commercials, they are a moving target, always changing, morphing, improving, adapting to their audience or the occasion.

Their presence in Beijing is a gift to China. I dearly wish I could watch it unwrap. But Scribble is one event I’m sure the networks will neglect. Guess I’ll go see if synchronized diving is over yet.

This is less of a stretch than it first appears.  First, some context: Seventeen years ago when I married Kathryn, we bought a new bed (she did not own one, I slept on a futon). It is like a low dresser, six drawers on each side and two long central drawers from the middle that slide out from the foot of the bed. In the early years it was beautiful, but in the course of urban ministry and several rough moves and having three children (who all love the bed and play with, on and around it), it had fallen into disrepair and threatened to slide further into decrepitude.  So, since we had to take the thing apart again into pieces in order to move it, and since we’re moving into a new house with nice wood floors, I decided I would refinish the bed– sort of a housewarming gift to my wife and myself.

Structurally it was mostly sound.  Only the trim boards that hold the mattress in place were falling apart, and those will be easy to repair or fun (but tricky) to replace.  It just needed to be stained to match our bedroom floor… and that meant sanding it down to bare wood.

I decided to do the work in our nearly-empty old apartment before our rental term was up for the month: a convenient uncluttered place to work, and our bed gets refinished before arriving in our new home.

As I knelt down by one of the cabinet sections and set to work with my pad sander, I soon realized several things about our old bed, and how similar my pad sander was to the Holy Spirit.

1.  Some stains, scars and scum cannot be washed off of wood furniture. But all of them yield to a pad sander clad with 80-grit paper.

2. As you run a pad sander over an old, well-used piece of furniture, it reveals every little dent and scratch in stark, powdered relief… then it abrades them away to smooth newness, if you are patient and keep going over the problem areas again and again.

3. The pad sander starts out with rough-grade sandpaper, seeming to scratch and harm the wood in its own right… but then progresses to finer and finer grades until you are doing more polishing than sanding. This too requires patience. The result is a silky surface that shocks several of my neighbors who feel it out of curiosity.

4. Prolonged use of the pad sander eventually makes your hand warm and tingly.

5. The pad sander’s sound can be mistaken for a “rushing wind” by other residents of your building.

Okay, #5 is a bit of a stretch, and I did have a shop vac going at the same time to collect the dust, so that might have provided some of that sound effect.

Over March 29-31, Kathryn’s dad & aunt helped us empty out the storage space that held our books and wall art (photos, paintings, posters), Christmas decor and all the kids’ stuff that didn’t fit into our small apartment.  It felt great to close out that storage space and not have to pay rent for it the first of April.

Now, with the help of Reggie and Sheldon of Starving Students Moving Co., we have emptied out the storage space that held all the furniture we salvaged from 29th Street (plus chairs from my parents).  Those guys were great– friendly, efficient, and very strong:

“Um, do you want me to remove the drawers from that file cabinet for you?”
“Nah, I’m good.” Sheldon hoists it into a hug and starts marching.
“Those drawers are stuffed full.”
“Yeah, I can tell!” Sheldon trots up the stairs as if the cabinet is empty.

(…You go try to pick up a full file cabinet. Or a decent-sized empty one, for that matter…)

Because of them, today’s impressive moving-in progress was actually fun.  We even invited them to dinner but they had to get the truck back to the lot, etc.  Maybe we’ll see them at the housewarming in May.

I sure hope so, because in all the excitement and busyness, I completely forgot to take photos! By the time I remembered, it was just me and Kathryn and the ubiquitous Dorothy Steventon. She took this photo of us, all sweaty and grubby, with a happy huddle of furniture behind us:
[insert photo soon!]

Next major steps: getting our gas meter installed and gas service turned on, and the Big Moving Day coming up, April 19th.

Not to mention completing a slew of draft posts that cover the past several months of the life of this nascent urban home…

So my ten-year-old son is telling me about a local family he really enjoys visiting: how old their kids are, the games they play, the cool toys they have, the stairs appropriate for sliding down.  He likes their dad too, and thinks their dad is a lot like me.  Well, not 100% like me.

“He’s a lot younger than you, though, and much less shabby.”

Shabby?

“Yeah, he shaves better and wears nice clothes all the time.”

Oh.

The funny thing is, I know this other dad personally.  He is only 3 years younger than me and teaches at my son’s school, so dresses professionally for the classroom, while I’ve been wearing grubbies to do construction work in the mornings when my son leaves for school.

But I don’t bother explaining all this to my son. Instead I have to ask– where did you learn the word “shabby”?

“Everyone knows that word, Dad.”

Maybe I  should go shave…

 Four thoughts:

1. Thank God I live in Southern California, and don’t ever have to worry about sleet or icy pavement. (on the other hand: no excuses to grab the car keys rather than the bike lock keys on account of weather)

2. “Dew” rag? Ummm… never mind. Thank God I am comfortably acquainted with Black culture and surrounded by folks of all races.

3. “LBS” = cyclist slang for Local Bike Shop.

4.  “the X” = cyclist slang for an Xtracycle, aka “S.U.B.” (Sport Utility Bike). I have one too, and ought to post some of my own Xtracycle adventures here. But for this holiday season, I can’t beat yesterday’s story by David Morrison, clearly a friend whom I simply haven’t met yet.

First trip in cold weather on the X

Originally posted in RootsRadicals by “David Morrison” davidmorrison@mindspring * com, Sunday Dec 2, 2007 1:07 pm (PST)

Ok, so it’s 7:00 in the morning and I have hoped to sleep in. Outside winter’s first icy fingers have drifted across our region, dropping the temperature to freezing for the first time this year. They are calling for rain at least, and possibly sleet and snow later. Outside it is not raining or sleeting yet, but from the corner of my window I can see through from my pillow the sky has this leaden, heavy look which does not look promising - and we have nothing in the house for breakfast of dinner later. I roll over. The bed feels warm and snuggly and I know that down in the garage my car awaits, with a heater, while in the bike room a few yards away from its parking space the X and my resolution to live my life as car-free as possible also awaits. I roll over again.

As cold as it as outside, I know I will not take my car and I calculate it would be better to go now when the weather is clear than later when it might start to sleet.  So, with the air of one ripping off a bandage in one sharp pull, I cast away my covers and leap out of bed. Chanting under my breath to myself the mantra that there is no such thing as bad weather, there is no such thing as bad weather, I start searching my closet for the appropriate clothing for a bike ride in the freezing air down to Shirlington Village and, gratefully, find and pull on a set of long underwear.

The underwear was a present several years before but relatively rarely used. It’s made of some sort of man made super fabric that, according to the label description, is supposed to move sweat away from my skin along a network of micro-wicking conduits that makes me imagine a landscape of infinitely small irrigation canals crossing and recrossing my chest before moving up to my shoulders, a man-made wondercloth that in a miraculous way will move sweat rapidly (I imagine microscopic water canons) away as vapor into that little sliver of atmosphere between the underwear and my next layer of clothing. The thing is that with this sort of introduction on the label, and the intimation from the gift-giver that the underwear was really expensive, I have been disinclined to wear it lest I damage it it or make it lose its micro-wicking qualities. But as I slap my shoulders in my room to warm them while looking for something to wear I think this morning warrants the risk. Sweat is mere memory from a day, I think, back in early September.

The next layer, bike pants, and then a pair of jeans that i last wore when I was 30 pounds heavier and which still need a belt to tug them close around my hips, even over the two underlayers. A wool and polyester sweater that I used last to chop wood in when helping a friend restock his woodpile goes on over the long underwear top. It still smells as little bit of wood smoke and bark and I shake it hard before I put it on thinking the larva of something might have hatched out in the intervening months and I would rather evict them now than feel them crawling across my neck right in the middle of some crucial intersection.

Plain cotton socks (the wool ones are too thick), generic sort of athletic shoes and a sort of dew rag which is black and has images of screaming eagle and slogans in yellow which read FEEL THE WIND, Ride to Live, Ride Hard and Follow No One printed on it will go on my head. My buddy Rich thinks and has pointed out the dew rag is insanely tacky and pointed out that is was really meant more for motorcycle gangs than weenies on bicycles, but I can’t possibly fit my helmet over a knit cap and I want something else on my head other than a helmet with holes cut in it.

Bike gloves without fingers, a light outer shell jacket from REI to server as a windbreaker and an old but favorite scarf completes the costume. Helmeted, I risk a look in the mirror and take a degree of pleasure that I actually look less like a sort of space alien in this get up than I usually do in my bike jersey, shoes for the clipless peddles and padded bike shorts.

Since it’s already dawn and not yet raining I won’t need the headlight so leave it on the shelf. It’s rechargeable and slides onto a clip on my handlebars. I went ahead and got a pretty good one and while it lights up well and slides easily into position on my bike, it also slides easily off my bike too and while I trust my neighbors there is no sense tempting someone too much.

Making my way to the bike room, the building is silent. A few other churchgoers join me in the elevator on the way to the garage, but the air feels preoccupied by the early hour and the possibility of snow. People who live in other parts of the country mock my region for our inability to deal with winter weather that others find completely average - and they are likely right to do so. But I feel helpless to describe the feeling of dread that can accompany the phrase “wintery mix” in a forecast here. We need a meteorological FDR to remind us that the fear of ice and snow is far worse and more paralyzing than the ice and snow itself.

In the bike room the X is easily the sharpest and most regal of all the bikes. Even the 20-something pups from the tenth floor, with their ultra-skinny tire racers have nothing with which to compare. Sure, on their bikes in terms of speed they will blow me away. But where are they on their errands, buying groceries, dropping off things, hauling stuff? In their cars.

The length of the X is what I really forget sometimes and notice it most when I have to negotiate a door with the bike, like the door to the bike room, I have hunted around for a rock from outside I can use to prop the door open while I unlock the wheel out the bike. My brand of lock is named after s bulldog and carries not only a really hefty appearance but a guarantee as well that will more than pay for my X should someone defeat it and steal the bike. But what is most cool in a day to day way is that the lock key has the same sort of little light in it to illuminate opening it that many auto locks to shine on their car doors. This oddly only deepens impression that while on the one hand my X is cool and new, on the other hand itis merely another transportation choice and a mundane one at that. Bike locks with lights in them deny that this morning I am doing anything as revolutionary as giving the finger to the petrochemical energy, fighting to move more excess weight off my frame or refusing to contribute yet still more to our carbon mess. It gives me hope that, one day, this will not be that unusual but instead, wherever possible, in fact pretty routine.

Outside now and away. My shopping bag is in the freeloaders as is the bike lock. The pedaling is easy and the air cold, quiet and, improbably, feels pure. In the whole trip this morning I will be the only cyclist. Everyone else will be in their cars, or running or walking their dogs. It’s the dog walkers who give me the most attention. “Daddy, look, look,” said one tyke out with his father and having maybe forgotten not to point and I give him a wave as I pass. It’s cold and I am grateful for the clothes I have, but not so cold that I regret leaving the car behind.

At the grocery store I am one of the only customers and make quick work of my smoked fish, light cream cheese, bag of grapefruit and other items, several canned. The clerk looks at my bike helmet and the pretty full bag bag and asked “you aren’t carrying this on your back are you.” “Nope,” I grinned pointed over his shoulder to where the X waited. Wow! That is one cool bike! Thanks, I said as I sauntered out to load up and head to my next stop, the local bakery for a couple of biscotti for the coffee this morning and a baguette for tonight.

Here, even in the winter, a little culture of early coffee drinkers pull themselves from their Washington Post and watch me lock up the bike and come inside. There is already a line at the counter and as I wait I notice a couple even get up from their seats to go out into the cold to get a closer look. “I haven’t seen anything like this since I came back from Holland,” said one who told me he and his wife had spent a year almost entirely on bikes in Amsterdam a few years ago and he asked where he could get one which gave me an excuse to pull out the LBS card and to tell him about the site before heading home.

I know that my moving away from my car and onto a bike is not going to solve any one of our many environmental or political problems and that whatever energy I might save or calories I spent this morning are nothing but a tiny drop in an ocean. But I have lost more than 40 pounds so far by making little steps such as this so I have direct experience that little things can and do matter. Plus, for whatever reason riding a bike makes me happy and that might be, in the end, the biggest reason I got up this morning, bundled out into the cold and used my bike instead of my car. A coolish trip biking beat a comfy trip in my car hands down.

DCM

I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious.
Vince Lombardi

I wholeheartedly agree.  I have felt this way, occasionally, while still in full time ministry.  But the sweetness of the “finest hour” comes partly from the clarity of the victory: that’s one clear way that sports is better than regular life.  There is a simplicity and focus and clarity in sports that is easy to lose in other arenas of life… like homebuilding for instance.  It looks like we will soon –at last– finish this house that we’ve been working towards for almost eight years now. It has certainly been a battle, we have worked our hearts out indeed, and we will “lay exhausted in the field” when it’s done.

But it feels like a pyrrhic victory.

This is not the house we had imagined in the beginning: it is grander, embarrassing in its commanding presence.

It has come at a higher cost than we could have guessed, emotionally, familially and careerwise as well as financially.

And as we try to imagine housewarming parties, I can’t help thinking of the little red hen when her bread is finally done.  Besides a handful of people at our church & World Impact, our family, and a handful of the contractors who poured themselves into this, who really has helped us toward this goal?  It hurts to realize our lack of small-group community, partly because of the demands of this project, means that the culmination of the project is a lonelier and emptier triumph than it deserves to be.

Or maybe I’m just feeling down today.

Once this house is finished, it will be a beachhead in this neighborhood, and the more significant battles can begin in earnest.

And besides, the house isn’t finished yet.

So to quote another famous motivator of men,

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!” 

Winds blow leaves off trees

leaves fall on the ground

Snow, snow and more snow

cold winds blow snow all around

trees have no leaves now

Rivers flow downhill

the days are now cool

[…Basho? No: Armando!]
(Continue reading…)

I received an email yesterday from a friend who learned of a casting call for HGTV.  That particular show didn’t want us, but they told us of a new series beginning on HGTV that might be interested in our project.  Here’s the description.  What do you think?

(and do we really want this sort of attention? OR do we want it maybe next year when we have some sort of a track record of the use of the house– and, um, the house is FINISHED and INHABITED perhaps?)

Here’s the text of the casting call:

Does your neighborhood have a house that just doesn’t fit in? Cars stop, heads turn and comments fly!

We’re looking for houses that really stand out from their surroundings—for any reason. We want the houses that make people stop and ask “Who lives there and why did they do that?!”

In this new series for HGTV, What’s With That House? will take you inside the most unique houses in the neighborhood. The ones you’ve always wondered about. And best of all, you’ll meet the one-of-a-kind characters who live there and explore the details of their extraordinary homes.

If you know of potential homes to explore in this fun new show, please visit www.castmyhouse.com, call 888-751-8088 or send your name, address, phone number and e-mail address to:

LMNO Productions
What’s With That House?
PO Box 4361
Hollywood, CA 90028

Please include what makes the house you are contacting us about different from the others in the neighborhood and send a photo if possible.