what does a professor name his pet?

Augustine.
or
Augie, for short.

Or perhaps the question is, What does a theological professor name his pet dog?

Isn't that just geeky.

formative memories

I remember the voiced worries of my mother when there was only hot milk soup to eat. My father’s cows gave the milk and butter but where were the crackers going to come from. Grandma gave fabric for dresses but often the pieces weren’t quite big enough for me. Mom pieced things together like a puzzle in a decorative design, so no one would know she had run out of fabric. That got us by until the church banned pieced designs on all women’s clothing. The house was cold during the winter, heated only by a solitary wood stove in our living room. If you stood next to the window you could feel the howling wind from a Minnesota winter. My dad stacked straw bales around the house to help insulate us from the cold. One winter some kind soul gave us earmuffs and mittens enough for everyone. I treasured mine, guarded them with my life for years. Loosing things was a careless abuse of the grace through which we received them. I shared a double bed with two other sisters. And later shared the small room with three sisters as they became too big to sleep in their cribs in my parents’ room. My three brothers slept in the third bedroom on a set of bunked beds. I hated everything about the house I grew up in. I was glad to help tear it down. I had not a moment of privacy in that house. Someone was always involved with what I was doing. I tried writing a journal one time. Its pages were found and I never wrote again. I decided to keep my memories and reflections to myself. I developed a coded system to record the events and important happenings.

Sometimes I still feel like I live back then. I pray for the material things I need rather than buy them. I check the price on everything. I only pretend money doesn’t matter when I go out with my friends. I secretly wish we could just make a meal at my house—it tastes better anyway. Sometimes when my roommate is gone I let the thermostat drop to 40. I save things like a packrat. I’m afraid some day I’ll have even less than I do now. I remember the helpless fear that hung over my head during those formative years.

the best mom I ever had

Today is my mom’s birthday. I’m going home with a dozen of roses. And I can’t wait. I’m really excited because I love my mom and I wanna put that happy look on her face. I like seeing the happy look. I know that look. I love that look. It’s the look that only a humble, practical, conservative, always giving housewife displays when you do something outlandish and lavish for her. Pleased. Elated at some level too deep inside to uncover. Embarrassed. Maybe I should sing her a song too. Once, for valentine’s day my sister bought my mom a singing valentine. Roses along with a serenade by an exuberant, expressive African American friend, singing some love song. My mom did only what any other Amish-Mennonite housewife would have done. She blushed 7 different shades of pink.

I love the way my mom is so practical. Everything has a simple solution. And it usually involves hard work and dedication. After all, that’s how she raised 10 kids. I love how she listens to and accepts anyone. Literally, anyone. She even sat on the phone talking to the mentally altered lady who had just swindled her daughter out of $200, until the lady was done talking. She loves her husband even though his “disorganization” gives her nightmares. Her organization puts anyone to shame. Each item in the entire house has its place. My mom is talented. She knows how to be inventive and frugal. She’s busy from dawn till dusk, always doing something, making something, talking about something. She enjoys the simple things in life. She’ll go to bat for her children any day. And she isn’t afraid to take a bat to any one of them either…er, well, maybe not a bat. That would have broken bones. In fact, we had her over the barrel sometimes too. Once my brother was getting punished for something he did and was howling much louder than was necessary, leaving her with the impression that the lesson was learned. She put the stick back into its place and my brother ran off out of sight to laugh his head off about the little trick he had played. She’s sincere. She’s true. She’s so trusting. She trusts me. She believes in me. And I want to protect her from the world that would take her for a ride in a heartbeat. Don’t mess with my momma!

weekends without homework

Last weekend I was at gathering of overly witty intellectuals.

My friend Oleg does these gatherings and always an eclectic crowd shows up. I find myself pulling out my most cultured vocabulary and reaching into the dusty corners of my mind to interact with the plethora of folk that show up. This time my favorite guest was Ari, who told me he has been painting genesis for the past x (significant number) of years. I think he’s got a book out too. He’s also from the southern part of Germany, which makes his low German much more comprehendible, to me.

http://olegvolk.livejournal.com/

But here is a link to the matchmaker’s site. He likes guns or something more than likes. I don’t pay attention to that bit so much being a pacifist and all. Makes me wonder how I ever met him…oh, but that would be the camera bit of him. Whatever it is, he likes shooting it. He has shot me and once it appeared as though he was going to shoot me but as you might find the shot was only a shoot. I'm on his site somewhere--good luck finding me. Oh, and he likes to be matchmaker…friends, new relatives, and yes, marriageables.

forgetting her

You carry her inside
she beckons to me there
I reach out to touch Her
but you are there

I must ask before I touch
words fly through my mind
I pick at them carefully
they form in my throat

the picture I see in your eyes
makes me swallow
the words fall into my stomach
they torment me there

My own picture passes before me
it becomes my nightmare
I chose you for this pain
I should have chosen myself

I want to tell you I’m sorry
I want to take your guilt
I want to take your picture
I want to show you mine

I reach for you
but you step aside
you look at me
but I avert my eyes

you have chosen your pain
I have chosen mine
we forget about Her
and simply remember our pain

I wrote this poem soon after my sister died. I just found it again today. I wrote it about the weird triangulation that happens between the deceased's remaining family and the deceased's friends who are specifically her's.

the day he slept at my feet

He came to my door often, this oversized over-exuberant St. Bernard. The exuberance coursed through his body in every drop of excited blood. Tense tendons trembling. The air around him bounced with eagerness. He stood there with ears lifted, eyes alert, toy in his mouth, as though begging to play. His sheer size overwhelmed my doorway. His eager energy filled my house. Yet only an occasional tremble could be seen in his brow. And an underemphasized wag.

I would invite him in and he would respond immediately, moving quickly with each eager step. I was in constant anticipation of the exuberant leap, which would level me and put us nose to nose, licking and slobbering everywhere. Ugh! I feared the moment. I anticipated it every time. I braced myself for it. Yet it never came.

One day, however, I detected the slightest invitation. The Bernard inclined his head to my hand. I scratched his ears and patted his head. He rolled over and I rubbed his belly. I checked his eyes and he was sound asleep, paws hanging in mid-air. The eagerness and energy abated into a restful calm. Eyes closed. Ears fallen. Toy forgotten.

guilt

Many nowadays do not understand the place of guilt in modern day protestant churches. Confession is rare and not understood by those who bear the name of Christ. Yikes!!! Other less-Christian models of dealing with the human condition of guilt have taken center stage in Christian churches today. Oddly enough, the secular world has barfed out something that looks like a confessional on www.postsecret.com. I’m not surprised. This secular confessional, demonstrated by its popularity, is providing a therapy not otherwise available. Here people embrace their guilt and reveal their secrets.

The problem with psychotherapy today is that it often attempts to alleviate guilt in the human person by justifying it with reason and circumstance. It does not face guilt head on with courage and with faith. It does not know faith. Unfortunately, the culture is such that most church’s “small groups” fall into or are intentionally formed therapy groups after the psychotherapy model not after the Christ model of accepting the unacceptable.

In Paul Tillich’s “The Courage to Be” he talks about the human person’s need to accept acceptance in its relation to human guilt. This is the foundational story of Christian faith. God embraces us. He welcomes us. He brings us into his “household” as adopted daughters and sons even though we are guilty and do not deserve this acceptance. Guilt and condemnation in Tillich’s schema is category of existential anxiety. The other categories consist of fate and death and emptiness and meaninglessness—all of which lead to pathological anxiety and are expressed in the human body as neurosis, if taken to its natural end. In the reformation evidence of the manner in which the anxiety of guilt was addressed is reflected in such phrases as “forgiveness of sins” and “justification through faith”. Our reformer forefathers overcame their anxiety of guilt by owning their guilt and embracing the acceptance, which accepted them in their guilt even as though their guilt was non-existent. This is the Christian’s salvation. This is the Christian’s encounter with God. The person who attempts to convince a person, expressing his/her guilt, that he/she is not guilty is doing his friend a great disservice. While the friend’s guilt anxiety is rationally alleviated, the spirit suspects otherwise and the nagging suspicion of being unacceptable drags on and on and on. Yet the friend is best a friend and becomes a brother if he faces his friend’s anxiety of guilt, staring into its ugly face, declaring it unacceptable, terrible and worthy of the punishment of eternal separation from himself. Yet in this moment of anxiety on the precipice of eternal separation, he makes a movement of grace. He embraces his guilty friend as though he were not guilty, giving him the courage to believe he is accepted despite his unacceptableness, inciting him to walk in the “courage to be” above the anxiety of guilt. He then is transformed by the acceptance, rising above the particular behaviors which feed into his guilt bank.