Alas. . .

Place Names in Michigan

I was born in Michigan, and I have lived virtually my entire life here.  At one time or another, I've traveled to just about every corner of my native state.  I'm sure that your states have some pretty fun place names, too (I'm thinking of one small town in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in particular) (also Pee Pee Creek, and its eponymous township, in Pike County, Ohio), but here's a sampler from where I live. . .

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In Michigan, we have both a Hell and a Paradise.  In Hell, there is, as you might suspect, a bar (called the Dam Site Inn, as it sits next to, you know, a dam), and a post-office/country store/gift shop (called The Handbasket), where you can buy a "We've Been Through Hell Together" bumper sticker, or a miniature baseball bat, bearing the inscription, "Genuine, Official Bat Out of Hell".  (Incidentally, the road into Hell from the east is named Darwin Road; just sayin'. . .)  On the other hand, Jen and I spent a night in Paradise on our honeymoon (really! It's the closest town to Tahquamenon Falls) (that's ta-KWA-ma-non). . .

We have both a Romulus and a Remus, which are pretty much the polar opposite of twin cities, even aside from the fact that they're 150 miles apart.  Romulus is the home of Detroit / Wayne County Metropolitan Airport; Remus is the post office (and that's just about all there is there) closest to the farm where my dad grew up. . .

And not far from Remus is Mount Pleasant, which sits on some of the flattest land in the state of Michigan.  Some years ago, there was a waggish bumper sticker proclaiming, "I Climbed Mount Pleasant". . .

Then there's Needmore; I've been there, and they do. . .

And Maybee; or, you know, Maybee not. . .

And speaking of bees, way Up North, there's a tiny village called Topinabee; go ahead, guess how to say it, I'll wait. . .  It's top-in-a-BEE. . .

Then there's Paw Paw, which is not far from Kalamazoo, about which more below.  As it turns out, it's actually named for the pawpaw fruit which was abundant in the area, once upon a time.  Nowadays, it's more-or-less the center of Michigan's southern wine region, besides having a cute name.  (And hey, we've got Paw Paw, Ohio's got Pee Pee; anybody care to raise their hand for Poo Poo?)

Michgan's 'Thumb' is home to a couple of my favorites: Bad Axe (which is, you know, a pretty BA name for a town) and Ubly.  I understand what a bad axe is, as opposed to a good one; I'm just not sure I'd name a town after one.  And then, I imagine the cheerleading squad from Ubly High chanting, "U - B - L - Y, We ain't got no alibi, we're Ubly!"  And I wonder if the winner of the local beauty pageant might really be called 'Miss Ubly'. . .

Also in Michigan's Thumb is the village of Yale, pronounced just like the Ivy League university, which hosts the annual Bologna Festival, and elects a Bologna Queen to preside over the festivities. . .

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Native-American-derived place names can be an ongoing fount of amusement, for folks whose minds twist that way -

Of course, as I promised, there's Kalamazoo - When I was in college, there was a guy from New Jersey who lived on my dorm floor, who went through most of the fall term insisting that Kalamazoo wasn't a real place, and someone had obviously made it up as a joke.  Finally, we introduced him to a guy who was, you know, actually FROM Kalamazoo. . .

And heck, even Michigan itself, which derives from the Ojibwa 'mitchee-gamee' which, in turn, is related to 'gitchee-gumee' (as in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha), meaning 'Big Water', which seems sufficiently self-evident. . .

Also the Manitou Islands, in northern Lake Michigan.

Then there's Muskegon (mus-KEE-gun) and Ontonagon (on-tuh-NOGgin), which, in spite of what they look like, really aren't geometric figures. . .

On the border between Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin lies the city of Menominee, which I can't say without imagining a cheesy chorus singing "doot-DOO-du-du-doo" in the background. . .

And of course, the aforementioned Tahquamenon Falls and Topinabee.  And even Saginaw, though I've never hitch-hiked there. . .

Also Wequetonsing (wek-weh-TAHN-sing), just because it sounds cool. . .

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The French fur traders who roamed the Great Lakes region before the days of settled civilization bequeathed us with some place names that are wonderfully counter-intuitive to English-speakers -

Start with one with which you're probably all familiar - Sault Ste. Marie (known more coloquially as 'The Soo', which is pretty much a dead giveaway for how to pronounce the first French word in the name), meaning, 'St. Mary's Falls, since there is a long stretch of rapids in the St. Mary's River there, which, in the fullness of time, necessitated the digging of the Soo Locks.

There's Mackinac Island and the Straits of Mackinac, spanned by a majestic bridge bearing the same name.  The village on the south shore of the straits punted, and called themselves Mackinaw City, with a 'w'; I suppose, because they got tired of tourists from out-of-state calling them Mackin-ACK (somewhere, Billy Joel is singing, 'ack-ack-ack-ack-ack'). . .

Twenty miles or so east of the Straits of Mackinac is Bois Blanc Island ('white woods').  Which all the locals know is pronounced 'Bob-Lo'.

And Cadillac, which is in the opposite corner of the Lower Peninsula from where luxury cars are made. . .

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We Michiganders (or Michiganians; I think it's still something of an open question) also seem to have a unique proclivity for 'mispronouncing' place names, particularly ones that have obviously been borrowed from other places and things whose pronunciation is well-established.  A few examples -

Lake Orion - Not The Hunter from your star chart; this one is pronounced ORRY-un.

Charlotte - The emPHAsis goes on the second sylLABle: sher-LOTT (some locals aren't very punctilious about the 'r', and it comes out more like 'sha-LOTT').  Once, when I was in college, there was a girl named Charlotte in one of my classes (pronounced in the usual way); one might think, given the large city in North Carolina, and the eponymous children's-story spider, that the pronunciation of her name might seem somewhat obvious, but the instructor kept calling her sher-LOTT, for the entire term. . .

Milan - Named after the city in Italy, right?  Maybe, but it's pronounced MY-lun. . .

Chesaning - Just look at it, and you think you know how to say it; but it's chess-NING

Pompeii - POMpey-eye; 'nuff said

And Durand - DOO-rand; I am not making any of this up.

Armada - Think of the Spanish fleet that sailed against England in the 1500s?  Try ar-MAY-da. . .

Mikado - In a similar vein, it's mi-KAY-doh

Argentine - the final syllable sounds like the points of a fork (I know, right?)

And, it's not the general, common, pronunciation, but I can't resist mentioning that my mother-in-law (who, I should also mention, I dearly love, and is the best MIL anyone could ever have) pronounces Lake Huron, and the city of Port Huron, at its southern terminus, not HYER-ahn (or maybe HYOO-rawn, if you affect a slightly snooty accent), like most of us do, but homophonically with 'urine' (dropping the leading 'H', and clipping the second syllable just a bit); sometimes the city comes out sounding like 'porch urine', like your dog had an accident.  I've not been above asking (teasingly) (very affectionately teasingly) if the water at the southern end of the lake had a yellowish hue, or what. . .

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And finally, we come to my favorite river, the Tittabawassee River (pronounced pretty much how it looks: titta-ba-WAH-see); just because it's fun to say 'Tittabawassee'. . .

"Tittabawassee". . . heh. . .

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And wow - yesterday got up to 60F around these parts (and Friday was in the 50s, so the snow was all gone).  I really wasn't feeling good.  At all.  I think I had some kind of very mild flu, or something; just kinda achy and lethargic.  But you don't get many 60-degree days in January around here, so I dragged the bike out of the basement and got out for 10 miles, just because.  Now, 10 miles is just barely enough to get out to the cornfields and wave before heading back into town.  But it's miles; real, live, outdoors-on-the-road miles (and it's odd, how 45 minutes on the road will wear me out WAY more than an hour on the stationary bike indoors).  And this is now the 23rd consecutive month in which I've had outdoor miles; the last time I flipped the page on the calendar without any outdoor miles was at the end of February 2011. . .

Epiphany

Today is Epiphany, marking the end of the Season of Christmas (I'm never sure as to whether Christmas is the First Day of Christmas, or Epiphany is the Twelfth; not that it matters all that much. . .)  In some Christian traditions, mainly in the East, Epiphany, not Christmas, is the day for exchanging of gifts (after the example of the Magi, I suppose), and, at least in terms of public celebration, Epiphany is a bigger deal than Christmas is.

'Epiphany' means, literally, 'revelation' or 'manifestation'.  Jesus might have been born on Christmas, but Epiphany is when He 'went public', so to speak.  The readings for Epiphany rotate among the visit of the Magi (Matthew 2:1-12), the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:21-40), and Jesus' Baptism by John the Baptist (John 1:29-34).  All of which represent, in varying ways, Jesus being 'made manifest' to the world He came to save.

I have especially come to appreciate the story of the Magi, and what it represents.  There is a delightful irony in the fact that God, who forbade the Jews to practice astrology, gave the Magi a 'sign in the heavens', to announce the coming of His Son in the flesh to Gentiles.  Of course, God knew that the learned Gentiles would notice, and be impressed by such a sign, and He wasn't above letting them know, in a way they could comprehend, that something big was going down in Bethlehem, and they wouldn't want to miss it. . .  Put another way, the stars don't move us, God moves the stars. . .  And even today, I suppose, God leaves signs of Himself to be noticed, and understood by those 'who have eyes to see, and ears to hear', even among secular modern folks.

And, oh, to be Simeon, or John the Baptist, waiting to see the Promised One, the Desired of the Nations, and then finally to see and recognize Him.  I can understand Simeon saying, "Now, Lord, you can dismiss Your servant in peace". . . That was it; he was waiting to see the Messiah, and there He was.   Now, so to speak, old Simeon could die happy.  I have often wondered, if Jesus came today, would I recognize Him?  Would I have the eyes and ears to see and hear when He came among us?  Or would I be like those in Jesus' day who were so focused in on their own notions of 'what the Messiah will be like', or 'what God must be like', that they didn't recognize Him when He stood in their midst?

Oh, Lord, have mercy; let me have 'eyes to see, and ears to hear'. . .

Slip Slidin' Away

I grew up way Up North in Michigan, and snow was a major feature of my entire childhood.  In a typical year, the first snow came around the beginning of November, and it was usually right around Thanksgiving that the snow stayed on the ground, and didn't melt away in the next day's sunlight.  By Christmas, we typically had a foot or more on the ground, and all through January and February, the snow cover averaged around one-and-a-half to two feet.  The sidewalks were little miniature canyons, and the piles of snow left after the streets were plowed often rendered the street invisible from the sidewalk, and vice-versa.  One year (I think it was January of '71), we had a pair of freak lake-effect blizzards in the same week that dumped 42 inches on us, which, because of drifting, etc, necessitated digging tunnels to the entrances of the high school.

So, yeah. . . snow.  Which meant that snow-fun, such as sledding, was a main staple of wintertime recreation (we also enjoyed skating; our town was a hotbed of speedskating in my childhood, in the aftermath of Terry McDermott's Olympic medals; nowadays, they're more into hockey).

When our family first moved Up North, in the fall of '63, I went to a 'rural' school, since we lived on the lakeshore, 7-8 miles out of town.  The school grounds were expansive.  There was a small, blacktopped 'playground' close to the school building, with the requisite four-square and hop-scotch courts painted onto the blacktop, the standard swingsets and monkey-bars.  And there was a large, open field, surrounded by woods.  The woods were actually on school property; somewhere 50 yards or so into the woods, there was a wire fence marking the limit of the school grounds.  At the boundary between the large open field and the woods, there was a five-or-six-foot rise.  So we would cross the field, climb a little ridge, and be in the woods.  It's hard to convey how incredibly cool recess was at that school. . .

When the snow fell, the six-foot ridge was laboriously converted into a long row of ice-slides.  At the first recess after a big snow, dozens of kids would run out across the field to the ridge, form little teams of 5-10 kids, and begin stomping up and down the ridge, packing the snow down, and ultimately polishing it into an icy glare.  By the end of the day, there would be 10 or 15 icy chutes distributed along the ridge, and for the rest of the winter, we'd spend recess sliding down the ice-slides in every configuration we could think of - face-up, face-down, standing (surfing, if you will), two of us one-on-top-of-the-other, etc, etc, etc.  It was pure wonderfulness.

Even on the blacktopped playground, kids would stomp back and forth, creating a 30-foot-long frozen slip-n-slide.  So when recess came, we'd line up, get a running start, and slide on our bellies across the ice.  Or, some of the baseball players would practice sliding into second base.  We weren't supposed to slide standing up, but we always did, when we thought the playground-teacher wasn't looking.  And every once in a while, somebody would slip and whack their head on the ice-covered blacktop, and win a trip to the school nurse, and a few punitive lost recesses.  But, to my knowledge, no-one ever died, or suffered permanent brain damage (but hey, this was the early 60s; we still rode in the backs of pickup trucks, and seatbelts were just appearing for the first time).

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The best, most excellent sledding action to be found in our area was at a place called Manning Hill, which was maybe 15-20 miles west of town.  I'm sure that Manning Hill has grown in my memory over the years, to where it is, by now, on a par with Pike's Peak.  But I've been by Manning Hill in the last 10 years, and it's still a pretty impressive bump; maybe a couple hundred vertical feet from base to top.  We'd pull off the main highway into a parking lot, grab our sleds and commence the long uphill trek to the top of the hill.  On a good sledding day (a sunny day in the 20s, so the snow wouldn't get soft and slushy), there would be a hundred or more kids on Manning Hill.  Roughly half of their parents would just bring a newspaper and sit in the car; the hardier half would accompany their kids up the hill, and occasionally grab a seat on a down-bound toboggan.  My folks were generally of the climb-the-hill-with-the-kids persuasion, although they didn't slide downhill much.

In linear terms, the sledding run down the front of the hill was somewhere between a quarter-mile and a half-mile.  If the snow was soft and fluffy, you might go most of the way down the run before you came to a stop.  If it was hard and slick, you might make it all the way down to the parking lot; there was a steep upturn at the bottom of the hill, so no-one would ever end up sliding into the parking lot ('cuz, you know, that just wouldn't be good. . .)  When your downhill run finally slid to a halt, you'd get up off your sled and begin the long trudge back to the top of the hill.  You might spend 3-4 hours at Manning Hill, and make 10 or 12 downhill runs.  Each run would last a minute or so; if you really managed to milk it, you might get two minutes of adrenaline rush.  Then it would take 10 or 15 minutes to climb back to the top of the hill (it only seemed like two days).

There were toboggans, which were cool, because you could get four or five people on the same ride, and you were (generally) sitting upright.  There were a few saucers (aluminum ones, not the plastic ones you see today).  Some kids just brought an old cardboard box with 'em, and I was always impressed at how much fun there was to be had from a simple cardboard box sliding downhill.

But by far, the preferred sleds were the vaunted old Radio Flyers - the steel runners with a wooden-slat surface on which to ride, and the wooden cross-bar to steer with.  The preferred configuration was to lie on your belly and steer with your hands, but some kids would sit upright and steer with their feet.  And of course, tandem pairs of kids would lie one-on-top-of-the-other.  The added weight meant you could go faster, but every bump and divot in the sliding surface meant that the kid on the bottom got the wind knocked out of him as the kid on top slammed down on him.

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One year, I think when I was in junior-high or high school, we had an absolutely perfect sledding day - it was bright and sunny, with temperatures in the upper 20s.  So, as long as we stayed active, we weren't going to get frozen, and the snow would be hard, but the bright sun would make for a slick crust on the top of the snow surface.  Oh, the sledding was fast that day.  The first time I went down the hill, I flew.  I felt like I was an airplane coming in for a landing as I zipped down the hill at half the speed of sound; I could feel the pressure waves building up in front of me, I was going so fast.  I had to look far down the hill ahead of myself to plan my steering moves, and hope that no kids at the bottom of the hill decided to wander across the main sledding lane.  I didn't come to rest until I rocked up onto the incline at the edge of the parking lot.  It was incredible!

Our whole family was there, and my brother and I were quickly engaged in various contests and races.  It was the greatest day of sledding in my whole life.  I don't know how many hours were actually spent there, but I'd have been willing to keep going by starlight, if they'd let me.

At one point, in the later afternoon, my brother and I were standing on the top of the hill, catching our breath after our most-recent uphill trek, and preparing for our next high-speed descent.  As we huffed and puffed, we looked around, taking in the scenery from the top of the hill, from whence we could see a surprising distance over the surrounding countryside.  At one point, we were facing away from the front of the hill, where everybody was sledding, when we noticed, for the first time, the back side of the hill.  It was steep at the top, just like the front, but about halfway down, the slope became more gradual, and it continued on for a long way - MUCH farther than we could go on the normal run on the front side.  There were even a few sled-tracks running down the back side, so it wasn't like you couldn't sled back there.

My brother and I looked at each other, an unspoken 'You wanna?' passing between us.  We didn't say a word, just set our sleds on the brow of the hill, pointing down the back run.  This was gonna be cool. . .

We pushed off, and instantly, we were flying!  My brother would pull ahead of me by a foot or so, then I'd catch back up and nudge ahead, and we just kept going.  It was the most incredible run either of us had ever had.  At some point, I was aware that, if we'd been on the front side of the hill, our run would be over, but we were still flying, the wind peeling our cheeks back, adrenaline still pumping through our veins.

Our speed dropped off, just a bit, as we continued onto the more gradual slope halfway down, but at that point, it became a contest just to see who could keep going the longest, and run the farthest down the hill, more than simply who could go the fastest.  Even so, my brother and I were eyeing each other, one of us, and then the other, nudging ahead by a few inches as we continued downward.

After a certain point, I looked ahead, and saw a fence.  When we were at the top of the hill, the fence had seemed ridiculously far away, that we could never go that far.  But now, it seemed quite possible that the fence would come into play before our run was over.  I looked along the fence, and saw a gap, maybe ten feet wide, with two large maple trees marking the edges of the gap.  The fence went up to the maple tree on either side, and whoever had built the fence had decided not to fill in the gap with an extra ten feet of fencing.  So I began to steer myself toward the gap in the fence, just in case I still had some speed left when I got there.

My brother saw what I was doing, and quickly ascertained that he should steer toward the gap, as well.  And we continued sliding down the hill.  We were still going fast enough, though, that our 'steering margin of error' was still pretty comparable to the width of the gap, and I began to get nervous as to whether I would be able to actually hit the gap or not.  My brother's sled moved closer to mine, and we began to bump each other sideways with the realization that it was gonna be a pretty close thing for both of us to shoot the gap together.

Finally, we were in the last few yards, still moving at a rapid clip, and I smiled to myself as I realized that, yes, by golly, I was indeed going to hit the center of the gap.  I sailed on through, between the two huge trees, and found myself cruising across virgin snow at the back of some farmer's field, and I only made it 20 or 30 yards into the field before I slid to a halt.

But where was my brother?  I looked around, and then I saw him, lying face-up in the gap between the trees, but I couldn't see his sled.  I grabbed the lanyard on my own sled, and trudged back to where he was laying.  As I approached, he looked up at me.

"Are you OK?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"What happened?"

"I had to bail."

"Where's your sled?"

He rolled over, looking toward the tree that had been on the left side of the gap as we approached.  There was his sled, a small dimple in the metal framework at the front of his sled.

"I was gonna hit the tree," he said, "so I had to bail.  The sled hit the tree.  I hope it still works."

We picked it up and gave it a quick inspection.  It looked like it might be slightly bent, so we torqued on it, to try and un-bend it.  Then we set it back upright.  It seemed to sit flat on the surface, so we pronounced it OK.

Then, we turned and looked back toward the hill, which was much farther away than we'd ever seen it, having never been down the back side before.  It was gonna be at least a half-hour trudge back to the top.

So, we adjusted our mittens and our stocking-hats, grabbed the lanyards to our sleds and began our wintry trek back up the hill.

"Coolest. . . run. . . ever. . ." my brother smiled.

"Yeah," I said, "and I won. . ."

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

I love this ancient hymn.  I don't know that it was written specifically as a Christmas hymn, but it sure seems to fit. . .

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From the 4th-century Liturgy of St. James
(translated from Greek into English by Gerard Moultrie):

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

Let all mortal flesh keep silence
And in fear and trembling stand.
Ponder nothing earthly-minded,
For with blessing in His hand
Christ our God to earth descendeth
Our full homage to demand.

King of kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth He stood.
Lord of lords in human vesture,
In the body and the blood.
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of Heaven
Spreads its vanguard on the way,
As the Light of light descendeth
From the realms of endless day,
That the powers of Hell may vanish
As the darkness clears away.

At His feet the six-winged seraph;
Cherubim with sleepless eye
Veil their faces to the Presence
As with ceaseless voice they cry:
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Alleluia, Lord Most High!

The Theotokos and Me. . .

It being Christmas time, and all (I know it's still Advent for a couple more days, but Advent does point toward Christmas, after all), and Christmas marking, at its most basic level, the Incarnation of the Word of God (OK, that would technically be the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25th, but work with me here. . .), several thoughts, of a Theological nature are swirling around in my head.  Perhaps you'll find one or two of them interesting (or, you know, perhaps not. . .)

'Theotokos' is a Greek word meaning, literally, 'God-bearer', and it refers to the Blessed Virgin Mary; in Catholic circles, it's almost always rendered as 'Mother of God' (I'm not sure how my Greek Orthodox friends render it into English; for all I know, they just say 'theotokos', and figure they know what it means).

Theotokos is a 'theological' word, born out of the Christological controversies of the 4th/5th centuries AD; the idea is to be utterly clear that Jesus, the 'fruit of Mary's womb', was the bearer of a divine nature, along with the human one he shares with us.  There were those who preferred the term 'Christotokos' - 'mother of Christ' - but that came to be regarded as tantamount to a denial of Christ's divinity (back in the 4th-century Byzantine Empire, they took their theology seriously).

It's hard not to have a certain sympathy for the folks who would have some reservations about a term like 'Mother of God'.  I mean, Mary, this teenaged Jewish girl, could hardly be said to have any kind of 'ontological priority' over the Creator and Sustainer of All Things.  God, who is Before All Things, can hardly be said to have come into being in Mary's womb.  And yet, Jesus, who was 'born of a woman' (and, more to the point, this particular woman), was certainly God, incarnate in human flesh, and in that sense, 'Mother of God' is precisely what she was.

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OK, enough woolly theology, at least for now.  I have been through my own journey relative to the Blessed Virgin, in the course of my Christian life (I gave an account of my spiritual journey here, more than six years ago).  I didn't grow up Catholic, so 'Marian stuff' isn't 'in my bones' the way it is for 'cradle Catholics'.  In general, my Evangelical/charismatic teenaged self was as suspicious of Marian piety as most Protestants are.  Basically, "what's up with the 'Mary stuff'?  Isn't Jesus enough for you?"  And I was exposed to all the more hard-edged stuff about pagan goddesses and fertility rites, etc, etc, etc.

When I undertook to be received into the Catholic Church myself, Mary was probably the biggest obstacle that I had to overcome on my way through the door.  I just didn't get what the 'Big Deal' was.  Honestly, at least at first, I more-or-less 'punted' on the whole 'Mary question'.  I had no problem with the Catholic Church as such, and so, if the Catholic Church told me I had to accept those doctrines, well, then, I would, if only as an act of trust in the Church herself, even if I didn't really understand them.  And I prayed that, as I 'lived through' my newfound Catholic faith in the coming years, that God would give me understanding.  And even some of my Protestant friends would point out that Scripture itself calls her 'blessed'.

And for several years, that's where I stood, relative to the Blessed Virgin, the Theotokos. . .

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For several years, starting around the time I turned 30, I wrote annual meditations on Christmas, Advent and/or the Incarnation.  In the course of one of those, on the Incarnation, it dawned on me: Jesus was The Word Made Flesh, God Himself in Human Flesh.  "For we do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with us in our weakness, but one who has been tempted in every way as we have been, yet without sin." (Hebrews 4:15)  Jesus' humanity makes possible for us an incredibly intimate and sympathetic relationship with the God of the Universe.  And the human nature that Jesus took on, he got from Mary.  She is, if you will, the Vessel of the Incarnation.  And suddenly, I understood a little better.

Much is made of Mary's example of saying 'yes' to God (or, as Scripture would have it, "be it done to me according to your word"), even when she couldn't possibly have understood what-all was hanging on her answer.  And amen, I should be so ready to obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit in my own life.

But sometimes I smile.  Being adopted, for many years I had no idea where, in human terms, I had come from.  The shape of my nose, the color and texture of my hair, the general shape and size of my body, the wacky way my fourth toe curls under my third - how did all these things come to me?  And when I met my birth-parents, I knew.

So, sometimes, I think of Jesus and Mary, and I think, "Oh, he got his divinity from His Father's side; his humanity comes from His mother."  And that makes sense. . .

For Your Consideration. . .

I came across this today.  Coming, as it does, in the aftermath of the Newtown tragedy, and in the wake of yesterday's post, it resonates with some of our experience.  We've never feared for our lives with any of our kids, but we do understand what it's like to wonder what your kid is gonna do next, and what's gonna set him off this time?  And to feel utterly helpless to do anything about it.

Friends of ours have dealt with something even closer to what Ms. Long describes - a grown son (brilliant, by the way; can't a few of these guys be dolts?) who would fly into rages and berate the stupidity of his parents, and any other authority figure at hand, and vandalize their house.  He physically attacked his father (than whom he is considerably bigger) at least once, but thankfully, not with a weapon.  But it's not a given that he never would.

I also understand the isolation that Ms. Long describes.  I know another family whose mentally-ill son brought them unsolicited comments from 'friends', telling them what terrible parents they were, and that their son's deeds (which were suitably awful) were chargeable directly to their parental account.  Thankfully, no-one has ever been quite so brash with us (frankly, it's doubtful anyone would say anything to us that we haven't already said to ourselves), and our children's misdeeds haven't landed them (or us) in the headlines (at least, not so far).  But we have experienced some of our friendships becoming more 'distant' as doubts about our parental competence came to seem more plausible.  (One of our friends did think it might be helpful to point out to us that "some people tell their children what to do, and they do it."  Just, you know, in case we were wondering.)

As I've often said before, Jen and I have not been perfect parents (and if any of you have been, feel free to go ahead and chuck the first stone our way).  But we've tried to do the best we could, and even so, our hearts have been broken.  I think that might be one of the reasons that Newtown is hitting me so hard; I have some distant, dim idea of what it might have been like to be Adam Lanza's parents. . .

Pardon the Interruption. . .

. . . but this essay captures my thinking very well, and I would commend it to the attention of my friends, if only to understand where I'm coming from (feel free to go ahead and read it; I'll wait. . .).  But, you might even find it worthwhile yourselves. . . (and, just because I know you'll wonder, because I did - as far as I can tell, Elizabeth Scalia is not closely related to US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.)

I almost studiously avoid political topics on this humble little blog of mine, mostly because I find the 'Politicization of Everything', so rampant in present-day culture, to be pretty severly cramped, in terms of its contribution to human life and flourishing.  Politics is good for what it's good for, but the tendency these days (and really, since my youth) has been to invest it with something approaching Ultimate Significance, and it just doesn't work that way.

So, then. . . I know that, the electoral season having just recently ended for a week or two, before the next cycle starts back up again, many of you are weary beyond telling of anything that smells remotely of politics.  Me, too.  But, if we can train ourselves to see our neighbors as Human Beings, made in the Image and Likeness of God (regardless of how vehemently we may disagree with them). . .

Well, what kind of a world might that be?

The King Shall Come

This is one of my favorite Advent hymns.  Our family has performed a version of it a few times, together.  If I were really ambitious, I might make an audio file and embed it here, but really, it works pretty well just as a poem. . .

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The King Shall Come
(translated from Greek by John Brownlie)

The King shall come when morning dawns,
And light triumphant breaks.
When beauty gilds the eastern hills,
And Life to Joy awakes.

Not, as of old, a little child,
To bear and fight and die,
But crowned with glory as the sun
That lights the morning sky!

O brighter than that glorious morn
Shall dawn upon our race,
The day when Christ in glory comes,
And we shall see His face.

The King Shall come when morning dawns,
And light and beauty brings.
Hail, Christ the Lord! Thy people pray,
Come quickly, King of Kings!

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"Even so; come, Lord Jesus!"

Briefly. . .

Today, the temperature is hovering right around freezing, and there's a wet mix of snow and rain intermittently falling from the sky.  Besides which, I don't feel very well (too much rich holiday food; or maybe a really mild flu).  So, I won't be out on my bike today, the first weekend since February that I haven't been.

I took a vacation day this past Tuesday, to get some medical tests done, and it turned out to be such a nice day that I went out for 24 miles in the afternoon, bringing my total for the year to 1821 miles.  I sure didn't see that coming.

There are still a couple weeks left in Calendar Year 2012, so that number could possibly crawl a bit higher.  But even if not, my legs, to say nothing of my heart and lungs (or my butt), can be happy with a job well done for this year. . .