Who is Joe Chip?

I wanted to say a few words about the type of branding people willing participate with, in conclusion (probably. I'm exploding all over blogger today for some reason.) I'm not talking about the fetish, or at least not directly. I am talking about how one associates one's self with labels, brands, celebrities, causes, movements,ect.
First of all, like I have been saying about Twitter for a while now, it is not the thing itself which is good, bad, vapid, destructive, wasteful. It is what people do with it.
People are going to brand no matter what. It is a necessary form of shorthand and it is something that humans have done since the dawn of recorded civilization. I have some that I have come to that serve to clear up any confusion and to direct things ("married heterosexual" comes to mind). I have some that are very helpful but I keep more of an open end on ("Christian" comes to mind. Sometimes I put on my Reformed Baptist hat, sometimes my Lutheran hat, sometimes my Quaker hat. I really do own a Quaker hat, by the way, but Laurie never lets me literally wear it.) Some are brand holes that I have never filled. (I have a very difficult time explaining which political party I most sympathize with.) I think that this is good.
It surprises and kind of worries me when people have all of their brands in a row and are unwilling to accept the slightest variation. First that suggests to me the unwillingness to think further on a subject. Second, take, for example, age. In my late 20s I felt a strong pull, one that I expect a lot of other young men in modern America feel, to hold on to adolescent irresponsibility. The problem gets to be when you reach middle age and still hold on to that. Things get a bit Death in Venice at that point. So some brands will change on you whether you like it or not.
Another example of this might be Martin Luther. In fact, a good deal of history can be viewed through the filter of "people who looked at a feature of the brand and said `hang on a minute here...'" Of course we know from church history that when that happens the brand doesn't tend to mutate, rather a new brand must needs be formed. Sometimes this is with the best motivations (more accurate views of scripture) and sometimes with the worst.
We must be willing to mutate because a time is coming when we will need to mutate.
Another thing about branding is that one must remember that the map is not the territory. You can know all of the brands of a person and not know a whole lot about their character. It's a bit of a defense mechanism, a form of abstaining from accepting responsibility. You can know someone who holds all of the brands that you like and not know if they are nice, good, decent, or will come out at 3am to help you fix a flat tire. I learned this early on when I discovered that just because someone likes the music of Tom Waits does not mean I will like that person at all at all.
And I would suggest that the converse is also true. This is one that is a very fine and important lesson in modern life. Just because someone holds all of the opposite brands dear doesn't mean they are horrible. They may be some of the nicest people you'd ever want to meet.
In short and in light of that last post I wanted to take a moment and say that it is important to keep an eye on our brands. What do they say? What don't they say? And while other people's brands are helpful in some ways, in some ways they can be
decidedly unhelpful. We ought to be able to pick our brands, shift our brands, change our brands if we need to, not to hold so tight to our brands that we let them change us in unhelpful ways or without our even realizing it has changed us.

P.S.

I was on Facebook looking at a quiz that my step-daughter Gina took on "How Well Do You Know Me." As I so often find myself doing I started to craft one for myself but quickly gave up. Partly because I really want to go on a hike and don't seem to have the focus to come up with brilliant questions. Partly because so many of the suggested questions illustrate my earlier point. So much of what we are is wrapped up in stuff. Here is a partial list from the Facebook quiz suggestions:

What is my favorite pizza topping?
Favorite childhood game is ________.
What body part would I like to get a tattoo on?
What color suits me best?
I secretly would like to be a ________ for a day?
What is my sexiest feature?
My favorite flavor of ice cream is ________.
What country would I like to live in?
What is my middle name?
What time am I usually in bed by?
What would I be willing to eat for 10,000 dollars?
Who would I most like to meet?
How many times have I traveled out of the country?
If I was running out of my burning house, what item would I grab?
What is my favorite store to shop at?
What am I scared of?
What would be the perfect present for me?
How many boy/girlfiends have I had?
What song would I choose to sing at a karaoke bar?
What is my favorite type of music?
My favorite sport to watch is ________.
What did I want to be when I was little?
What would I dress as for Halloween?
What is my favorite holiday?
My favorite drink is ________.
What is my dream car?
If I had to eat the same kind of food for a month, what type would it be?
What would I name my first child?
Who is my favorite Disney character?
Favorite fast food restaurant?
What cell phone network do I use?
My favorite show on TV?
What was my nickname growing up?
What is my favorite movie?
What city was I born in?

If I knew all of those answers, would I really know a person or would I know the brands they like to associate themselves with?

And now for something completely different

Some pictures from the past week. Here's Laurie's Mom with the presents we brought her for her birthday.





And Schubert was long overdue for a bath this week. I washed him in the sink.







The only part Schubert didn't like was when Ginger got too curious.

Puritanical Reactions

Yesterday was my final Puritan History class. I ended with a sum up of American Puritanism and the legacy of the Puritans in America, which largely seems to be that they are a group of people to say snide things about and distance one's self from as much as possible. I started by talking about something I saw in one of Tony's history textbooks. It was a column where they had a quote about resolutions on one side by Jonathan Edwards and on the other by Benjamin Franklin. Edwards' had a good deal to do with self-discipline, self-evaluation, self-control and the merits thereof. Franklin talked about how he would not wish to reach perfection because then he would become intolerable. I still remember Tony's reaction to Franklin's quote. He said "what a jerk."

I come not to slam Benjamin Franklin. Although I do suggest that his side won. There is a national church in America. It is the Church of Personal Freedom. Again, this is not a finger wagging session as I am well aware how deep I am in that particular Venn Diagram. Just cut in front of me in line and see.

I was talking about this to Laurie, and after I get this out I really promise to retire this story/allegory/metaphor from now on. But I was talking about the able bodied homeless guys in the beat-up camper a few months ago parked across the street, illegally camping, smoking crack right on the curb in broad daylight on lawn chairs they'd set up, and either cussing out or wolf whistling at anyone who came out of their houses. And then they were aggressively belligerent to the police when they inevitably showed up. I told Laurie that that is the logical end of the cult of personal freedom. To do whatever you feel like no matter who it harms with no regard for law, dignity, decency, kindness, or compassion (insert remark on modern American foreign policy here.)

Do not get me wrong. I have no desire to lose any personal freedoms. I love the freedoms we enjoy and I think I join the bulk of my fellow citizens when I say that I would hate to see any of them disappear. I love my country and, frankly, don't fear my government all that much. That is not what I am talking about.

What I am talking about is the culture of coveting. I am talking about how we are carefully trained by advertisers, schools, which prepare children for a life of consumption, and the entertainment industry to keep consuming. How much personal freedom does one really have when one is harnessed to the heavy yoke of one's immediate desires? Using myself as an example (because I don't pretend to suggest that I am anywhere near immune to such things) if I shun Megaplex theaters, the Eminem comeback, American Idol and so forth, but (in the land of make believe where I still have a disposable portion of my income) I would get a Kindle, the Glenn Gould boxed set, and Laurie and I would spend our evenings watching DVDs from the Criterion Collection. You see what I mean. And armed with the knowledge that this culture of coveting, which could never have supported itself more than a few decades, is collapsing upon its self... Knowing that this culture of coveting is what has, in fact, brought me to being laid off almost 2 months ago now, I still behave in the same way. Most of us will go on consuming in the same manner until 1) the whole world economic system utterly implodes upon its self with no hope of repair or 2) our hearts stop.

Let me also take a moment to say that I am not anti-capitalist. I am also not decidedly anti-any other economic system or most political systems up to and including peaceful anarchy -IN THEORY! But there is one main flaw in every economic, and governing, for that matter, system.

What about the Puritans? Why am I going on about economics and politics? Laurie posted a quote by John Adams a while back: "We have no government armed with powers capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." I think that the Puritans would wholeheartedly agree. In fact, I found this quote a rare instance of a founding father looking to what was good about the American past and looking to bring it to the American future. That has ended. Systems don't work because people are wicked. Systems don't work because this is a fallen and sinful world. People are, in essence, ungovernable.

Ah, I hear some of you taking in breath to ask if this is where I talk about the greatness and perfection of Christianity. Clearly, if you have that in mind to ask at this point, you have never had any interactions with the governing bodies of a church. This is why Christ reminds us to remove the board from our own eye before we try to pick the speck from someone else's eyes.

What do we do? Well, last week I talked about how we ought to look to the great cloud of witness to run the race that is set before us, and about how we may must needs content ourselves with being one voice crying out in the wilderness (and probably several other metaphors from scripture pulled wholesale out of context.) What we do is to live utterly consumed with love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance. Ah, that last one is what Laurie and I plan on naming our hypothetical daughter. Self-control brings up the rear of that list. Self-control is the opposite and antidote to the current economic crisis.

And, at the end of it all, what does this say practically to me, Paul Mathers, in my daily life? What have I gleaned from this long study of the Puritans? I think what I take are two lessons. One is to cloak one's self in the truth constantly, daily, earnestly, and fight falsehood like a wounded,cornered badger. But temper that with the overlying lesson, the most important lesson, the superobjective as it were from the more successful of the Puritans. That lesson is grace. When Christ atoned for our sins, allowed us a restored relationship with God, imputed His perfect righteousness to us fallen men, the flood of grace that washes over us is beyond our comprehension. Believer, you are entirely the product of undeserved grace, and you continue to be in constant need of said grace. I think what I learned most from the Puritans, some by positive and some by negative example, is to be ever diligent to walk in grace.

A Celebration of Information Participation

Yesterday I had my penultimate Puritan history class and very soon I shall write more on this. At the moment I really only want to direct you to an idea, a 350 year old quote from one I perhaps flatter myself in considering simpatico, but I assure you that it is born from the deepest levels of respect I contain. This week I wrapped up the legacy of Puritanism in the United Kingdom (next week the legacy of Puritanism in America.) My normal format for the class was to discuss one or two Puritans in particular and view the history of the movement through the lens of that person's life. The glaring exception was the week on the Salem Witch Trials.
It felt a little lonely this week. I had the sudden realization that the people I've been surrounding myself with for the past few months are long dead and largely forgotten. Also the legacy of the Puritans in the United Kingdom is not exactly a raging success story. It ends in compromise and about 300 years of soaking toast in milk. In the end I came to the conclusion that the Puritans had some major flaws and some very ugly sides, but they were not by any means the historical villains that a good portion of the modern West likes to paint them. There were many that I love dearly and feel privileged to have had the opportunity to know more about. Richard Sibbes and his loving graciousness. John Bunyan's longsuffering. Thomas Cartwright's revolutionary streak. Gentle old William Perkins. Brilliant Jonathan Edwards. Of course, there were also several I couldn't imagine even sharing a meal with civilly. Many of those were the American branch and, oddly enough, specifically the Mathers.
But I very much appreciated the opportunity to hear different ideas from the mouths of the ones who hold those ideas. I think that is always a profitable and noble endeavor. In fact, I found a wonderful quote by John Milton in my studies. I wanted to take a moment and share it with all of you.

In 1644, John Milton made an impassioned plea for toleration in England through a pamphlet. Milton wrote, "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for not without dust and heat." England was reputed abroad to be the home of liberty on Earth at the time. "I could recount what I have seen and heard in other countries... where I have sat among their learned men, for that honor I had, and been counted happy to be born in such a place of philosophic freedom as they supposed England was, while themselves did nothing but bemoan the servile condition into which learning amongst them was brought; that this was it which had damped the glory of Italian wits, that nothing had been there written now these many years but flattery and fustian. There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licencers thought. And though I knew that England then was groaning loudest under the prelatical yoke, nevertheless I took it as a pledge of future happiness that other nations were so persuaded of her liberty. Nor is it for nothing that the grave and frugal Transylvanian sends out yearly from as far as the mountain borders of Russia and beyond Hercynian wilderness, not their youth, but their staid men, to learn our language and our theologic arts."

Long, Long Ago

Yesterday we wandered into stories of losing things through theft. I told Laurie about a time when I was in my late teens and my car was broken into in front of my parent's house. They stole a few things, including a coat in the pocket of which was a copy of The Portable Woollcott which was an anthology of the writings of Alexander Woollcott put out by Viking Press in the late 1940s. Out of the whole experience that was the most heart breaking for me. Besides the fact that I loved that book and that I had lent that particular copy once to the first girl I ever had a concrete crush on, there was also the knowledge that the person who stole the items, simply by virtue of their actions, I knew would have no use whatsoever for that wonderful little volume. I imagined through grinding teeth the small book being discarded within a one mile radius of my home and never seeing it again. About a decade later I found another copy of it in a used book store and cried.
When I was in junior high I discovered the works of Alexander Woollcott through Harpo Marx's autobiography. Woollcott's works can be a little dated, can be a bit too purple for some people's taste, but I found and still find him to be excruciatingly beautiful. I cannot stress enough that I cannot recommend him highly enough. He passes his eyes for you to borrow for a short time and you find that instead of vitreous humor they contain wonder.
He was a very well known war correspondent for Stars and Stripes in WWI. He came back to become a theater critic of great importance for the NY Times, the New Yorker when it started, and finally for CBS the radio station. He become even more important after the Schubert brothers (no relation to Franz or my dog) banned him from their theater for writing unfavorable reviews of some of their shows (because he cared deeply about the art and would not permit bad productions on his watch) and found themselves on the business end of a massive boycott. When they ended the ban on Woollcott, Woollcott received a standing ovation when he entered the theater and sat as a member of the audience! How often does that happen?
His fame increased with a radio show called The Town Crier. I have a few rickety old cassette tapes of those radio shows. They are delightful. The show was pretty much Woollcott talking about things that he felt like talking about, things he felt compelled to share with the world. He bought an island in Vermont where he would summer, inviting the world's best and brightest to join him. It is possible that Charlie Chaplin and Walt Disney would not have reached the level of fame they reached without Woollcott (although those are just cubes on the tip of the iceberg of the luminaries with whom he shared intimate friendship.) It is also possible that we would not have come to the aid of England against Hitler's Blitz had Woollcott's voice not been broadcasting from London at the time. He was a rabid anti-fascist and a rabid supporter of Churchill and Roosevelt. He died of a heart attack while on the air in a radio panel discussion of Hitler in which he said "Germany was the cause of Hitler as much as Chicago is responsible for the Tribune." At one point in the show he stopped talking mid-sentence and scribbled on a chit of paper "I am sick." Noel Coward remarked at the funeral that a more healthy Woollcott would have written "I am ill." On the way down to the ambulance Woollcott pulled his hat over his eyes. Friends later remembered a favorite story of Woollcott's about a boxing match around the turn of the century where there were almost riots because the man who was supposedly K.O.ed pulled his bowler hat over his eyes to shield from the sun. The match was rigged.
By the time I finished high school I owned what I assume is probably the largest collection of Woollcott's writing in a private collection on the west coast. Again, not a lot of people read him anymore and his works are not in print although they were once in such an abundance of print that you can find him in most used bookstores. And having been in such wide print as well as losing popularity in the past half century since his death, his books tend to be cheap.
Last night I pulled out The Portable Woollcott and read to Laurie his review of Mourning Becomes Electra which, even if you don't know the play (I vaguely remember reading it in college), the review is a study of human nature, the modern world, the arts, and social dynamics. Along with that it is a hilarious review filled with bits like "I must add that I saw the play when it was being listlessly performed for the hundred and fifteenth time before an audience so bronchial that the infuriated players doubtless felt the only real sin the Mannons ever committed was in building that pillared mansion of theirs on the edge of a frog pond."
Of course, the whole book is not old play reviews although those alone are worth the price. It also has accounts of murders, war correspondence, travelogues (he travelled to at least two space-time nations we cannot: Stalinist Russia and pre-Mao China), remembrances, character sketches, history and acres of nostalgia.
At the end of it Laurie said "It's clear that you've read a lot of Woollcott." I assume because we both can read like we grind a few pages of the OED into our breakfast smoothies every morning.
If I were to point people toward an author, it would be Alexander Woollcott. Today he is rarely mentioned outside of people who have never read him parroting (or occasionally misparroting) a few of his bon mots. Doubtless your Tweet Homepage has brought to your eyes "All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening." Or possibly "I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it." Or, if the person is feeling the motivational itch "There is no such thing in anyone's life as an unimportant day." I am here to tell you that Woollcott is far too rich of a feast to relegate into morsels. To reapply here what Woollcott says of over performed plays "but after all such folly is only one aspect of the witless jig we have all been dancing on the red-hot stove lid of American life." Please do go find and read some Alexander Woollcott.

The Lonesome Highway

Yesterday morning I taught my class on Jonathan Edwards. It went extremely well, not to gloat, but more to draw attention to the subject.
But I was struck by the cognitive dissonance in studying for the class. Chico is becoming a rougher town, especially in the past two years and especially since the economic downturn. On Thursday we decided against going to Farmer's Market partly on account of the large fights that have or almost have broken out at Market lately. Two days ago, after studying, Laurie and I took a walk to talk about Jonathan Edwards. We walked past the dive bar 2 blocks from us and the one 3 blocks from us. We walked past the soup kitchen and the tattoo parlors (not to cast aspersions. Bear in mind that I am marked with ink for life thanks to past decisions with permanent consequences. Thank you very much, young and impetuous Paul!) Past the college children strutting like French aristocracy and the shiftless basking in the glow of cheap highs.
I am not meaning to wag fingers. Not at all. Mearly to point out that the once quaint and decent little college town is going the way of all flesh. It is a time of economic downturn, therefore crime is on the rise as is desperation and, needless to say, the television has been slowly undermining behavioral skills for about three generations now.
I look at Jonathan Edwards' time and the usual question of the moralist comes to mind: what happened? Of course, I am not too ignorant of history to know the many answers to that question, nor am I naive enough to think that people are somehow more depraved than ever (although as I heard John Dominic Crossan quip last night, people do seem to be far more efficient at their depravity than ever before.)
A few modest examples:

* Laurie pointed me at an article on the diaries kept by young girls. Around 100 years ago the bulk of their content was concerned with the quality of their character. Today the bulk of their content is concerned with the quality of their physical appearance. What do I mean to suggest by mentioning this? Well, I think I mean to suggest that young women have been carefully taught to preen above all. This is not an original observation. Let's move on.

* Likewise we know from history that Jonathan Edwards' self-disciplined style, especially in creating and sticking to resolutions, was continued on through the next generation. We see this sort of behavior in the founding fathers of our country. I do want to take a moment here to put a fine point on something. This self-discipline was practiced by Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was not a Christian man at all at all. He was not a pillar of Christian virtue or Christian faith or certainly Christian behavior. I say this to say that you can perfect your self-discipline, you can be perfectly mannered, you can exude virtue and you can still be skipping merrily down the primrose path to perdition. In short, we are not saved by works. We do not get time off for good behavior. The Gospel is salvation by faith alone in Christ alone. Adhering to right resolutions, good manners, and good behavior is like flossing as far as your spiritual life is concerned. Sure, it's a fine idea but it really doesn't indicate a whole lot one way or the other about the condition of your soul (and, at risk of speaking for the dead, I daresay Edwards would heartily agree with me on this point.)
Edwards was a bridge from the past, taking the best of Puritanism, and looking forward to what might be best for the future.
Which rather put me in the mind of a song I made Laurie listen to the other night. It was an Arlo Guthrie song about the Watergate scandal. I grew up listening to a Pete Seeger/Arlo Guthrie album (well, among other things. I wasn't part of some weird experiment. It was among the things I listened to as a child) on which this song appeared. It's called Presidential Rag and I cry almost every time I hear it (if you're going to seek it out, do not find the album version with the full rock band. That robs so much from the raw emotion of the solo piano live performance versions.)
And in that song there is this stanza:
"Mothers are still weeping for their boys who went to war
and fathers are still asking what the whole damned thing was for.
And people still are hungry and people still are poor.
An honest week of work these days don't feed the kids no more.
And schools are still like prisons 'cause you don't learn how to live.
and everybody wants to take nobody wants to give."

And I was reminded of an article we read about how the economy is bouncing back as I sat on the couch still laid off and unemployed with the future still ahead of me as though through a plume of smoke. And I thought the exact opposite. I thought "Nothing has changed."

* Which reminds me of an op-ed column (also to file under "Paul reads a lot of atheists") by Kurt Vonnegut several years ago which I always loved over the perennial kerfuffle over having the Ten Commandments in courtrooms. Vonnegut observed that this did not seem to be orthodox Jews arguing for this. It tended to be conservative Christians. He offered the suggestion that they might be more consistent with their beliefs if they put the Beatitudes up in courtrooms. Can you imagine coming into a courthouse and seeing this in big bold letters behind the judge?:
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

"Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you."


* Laurie also pointed me at an article about the church. Specifically those who break off into not going to church at all because of the failings of the church and, instead, of a Sunday morning going on a hike with a Rob Bell book or perhaps calling it church when one hangs out with two buddies and talks about the spiritual implications of something written by the ancient Greeks. Of course anyone can understand that these groups were not who St. Paul was addressing when he wrote letters to "The Church."

I mentioned to Laurie my experience with the homeless people smoking crack on the curb across the street from our house and hurling swears at me last month. I commented that this never happened to Jonathan Edwards. Upon reflection, if I'm not wrong about that specifically I think I was at the very least misguided in the spirit of my comment. The Golden Age did not exist. People have been doing wicked things from the Eden tree on. They just, with apologies to Mr. Wilde, didn't used to do it in the town square and scare the horses.
I talked a bit about form, formalism and the loss thereof although I really don't think that figures in largely. Or rather if the loss of form and formalism is part of this conversation it is purely symptomatic.
Anyway, at the end of it this is where I found myself. We are exhorted to look to the great cloud of witness that came before us. While we may never get to be a Jonathan Edwards (he studied for 13 hours every day) we can certainly seek to emulate him. In fact I highly encourage people to look to the church fathers for encouragement and models of godly men who earnestly sought out the truth of scripture, the advancement of the Gospel, and the glory of God.
But I don't think we can count on influencing anyone. If the Lord pulls His hand away no amount of formalism is going to cure a depraved society. If the Lord pulls His hand away nothing we do is going to cure a depraved society.
And then that morning, after my class, Pat taught on Matthew 7:13 "Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few."
I guess all of this may be once again flaunting both my Calvinism and my Quakerism. I think we all ought to love one another and show grace as much as humanly possible. I think that we ought to seek to have the best of all possible worlds through love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance (and never through legislating morality and certainly never by hating sinners. The concept of "Hate the sin, not the sinner" is extra-scriptural. If anything it would be "love the sinner. I am a sinner too. Let me tell you about what Christ did for us." People who sin are fountains from which sin flows. It's like saying "I love sin fountains, but I sure hate that stuff that comes out of them all the time. It is very hard to disassociate the sin from the sinner. In case you hadn't noticed, to "the sinner" that sentiment almost always comes across as "I hate you." Christ says that He "came not to call the righteous, but sinners." I know I ruffle feathers when I say things like that because of course sin is an attack on God and to be hated. We are in the business of loving and spreading the good news of Christ's atonement. Ask yourself two questions: "Is my neighbor a sinner?" And "do I deserve one lick of the grace that's been shown me?") But remember that truth is about the hardest sell there is. As I read Edwards' remarkable "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" I was struck by how much love went into that sermon. So often it is painted as "hellfire and brimstone" and the model of fearmongering sermons. It is not! It is a sermon with heartbroken love for anyone who would listen.
There is a part of me that thinks about, before the money runs out, going down to the hardware store, buying some wood, then going to the sign printing shop and printing up a huge sign that reads "The End Is Nigh!" and going each morning down to City Plaza and marching around downtown with the sign. Although, really, I think I am probably more useful and properly focused in spending my days looking for work which will support my family and, as Schweitzer said, living my example. Although there is probably a book in the experiences that carrying that sign would bring.
You may find yourself the only voice crying out in the wilderness.
But what of it. Play on.

Everything I Need To Know About Economics I Learned From Ira Glass

For your general amusement, I am posting the "explanation of bank crisis" I wrote to help Tony with his econ homework. I don't know if I quite got all of it right. Mainly I learned what I know from listening to This American Life and the Planet Money podcasts. I am no economist. So, please bear that in mind.


Before the Clinton Administration, this is how someone would get a mortgage. They would go to the mortgage company with proof of their income, savings, all of the money that had at their disposal. They would have to have a large sum for the down payment on the house and the mortgage, ideally, would cover the rest of the price of the house. The bank/mortgage company would determine how big of a mortgage they could afford to pay back monthly. This would determine the size/price of the house they could buy. If they didn't make enough money to pay enough back each month, they wouldn't get enough money to buy the house.
The Clinton Administration deregulated the mortgate industry which allowed more risky loans. This seemed like a good idea at the time because more money would flow, it would be freer enterprise and so on.
There was a huge boom in the housing market. People were buying houses left and right and the price of houses kept going through the roof. So mortgage companies, in hopes of making more money, kept giving out riskier and riskier loans. More loans means more money in the pockets of the mortgages companies. They started giving out loans to people without making the people prove how much money they have and make. In short, people who did not have the money to pay for their loans could get loans. If they paid their mortgage, Yatzhee. If they couldn't pay their mortgages, we get the mess we're all in.
Let's say I am going to start a bank. I have $10 of my own. Laurie has $100 to deposit in a savings account. This is the capital. Now Gina comes along and wants to buy a house for $100 (a very small house.) I loan her the $100, she will pay me back with interest and anything over and above what is Laurie's money I get to keep. That is how banks make money (in essence. It's a little more complicated than this, but this is the basic idea.) Now, time comes for Gina to pay me back and she says "Oh, sorry, I don't have the money." You see the trouble that puts me in. So I take the house from her and try to sell it to make up Laurie's money.
Problem being, if people all over the place did this, the price of houses would drop dramatically and I would not be able to sell the house for enough to give Laurie her money.
Here's where the government comes in. So, these banks are failing in this manner and the government proposes a bailout. They just had a bailout of some of the largest money lenders in the country and it did not go well. They took the bailout money and did whatever the hell they wanted with it. There was public outrage. It was a debacle. So, this time the government is going to take the tax payer's money, the money that we all pay in taxes, and they are going to buy into the banks. An analogy would be that the first time it was like they gave someone the money to pay their rent and the person spent it on booze or something. The second time, the bank bailout, is more like they are paying someone's rent and, in return, they not only get to move in, but they can kick out the tenant if they want to. The government owns part of the banks now. This keeps the banks afloat but there are ramifications for the future that some people don't like. For example, the banks are not free, independant businesses, they are accountable to the government and the bank owners don't like it because the government can kick them out.
So, anyway, along with this, the banks are not giving out any loans. It has become far too risky. This is a problem because a good portion of American businesses run off of loans. It is how they rent commercial spaces, how they often get their supplies, and so on. Businesses fail. Then other businesses start to fail that held them up. For example, say there are a dozen restaurants in town who need to take out some kind of loan to get something that will keep them in business. Suddenly the banks aren't giving them loans. Add to that the fact that everyone in America is terrified. They've watched their investments lose a huge amount of money. They've watched their retirement funds almost disappear. People don't feel like going out to eat anymore. The restaurants fail. Suddenly produce distributors aren't getting the kind of business they used to get. They aren't making enough money to pay all of their employees so they lay some of them off to try to stay in business. This is why I am here writing this right now and not on a forklift in Durham.
So, there is a group, a branch of the government called the FDIC. That stands for Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Suppose a bank is failing, it no longer has the money that people have put into the bank. The FDIC insures the people that they will take care of it should the bank fail. Usually what this means is the FDIC will come into a bank that is failing, very secretly because you don't want the public to know that the bank is failing (if they find out they might all run on the bank, trying to get their money out, and you'll have a huge economic disaster. This is one of the things that happened during the Great Depression.) They will take over the bank, say on a Friday, call another bank to get them to take over this bank, and that is why downtown the old Washington Mutual now has a sign that says Chase. The FDIC is there to insure that banks do not fail and that there is not a run on the banks. It insures people's deposits up to $250,000. This was started in the Great Depression and backs our savings (those of us who still have any savings left after this mess) with the full security of the US Government.

quick check in

I thought I ought to check in over here on my blogger. I don't nearly often enough whereas I seem to post incessantly to my twitter: http://www.twitter.com/paulmathers
and to my livejournal: http://possumbane.livejournal.com/
This is supposed to be my protein journal. I am the first to admit to my sweet tooth.

So, tomorrow we hit the 3 week mark from my lay off. I have been far from idle. I have covered and recovered Chico with resumes daily and constantly. I have had one interview and I have many leads. I find positions I am qualified for and apply for them daily (even today when I spent the bulk of the day helping Laurie at her job.) In short, while the belt is tightening a notch or two for the moment (I try not to dwell on it) it seems to me that it is only a small matter of time before I find something.

I have started work on my book. Laurie and I received equipment today for our new secret project (and we cannot thank Christov enough.) More on that soon. Not to mention the baked goods I've made.

So, life is decent and blessings rain upon us like white lotus petals. We still have food on the table and a roof over head. Laurie has been so good and encouraging to me through this. I am blessed.

Idomeneo

We just finished Mozart's Idomeneo on DVD. This was the 2006 Salzburg Festival production with the fantastic Ramon Vargas in the title role. It was phenomenal. I cannot encourage you enough to seek out a copy of this production and enjoy it.

The set design was stunning as were the costumes. The negative space pulled attention to the action (especially in the scenes where the four leads all sang the same lament, each having separate meaning for their lament) while the catwalk around the orchestra, the use of flowing fabric suggesting the sea and the removable screen/abstract seashore behind kept the set from being stark. I loved loved loved having Neptune as a silent, invisible, menacing figure lurking around the action throughout. While all of the cast were beyond the pale, Ramon Vargas (Idomeneo) and Anja Harteros (Electra) were quite simply marvelous.

Laurie and I agree that this was by far the best opera production we have seen and for me that includes those I saw before ever knowing Laurie. Which is high praise from a confirmed Wagnerite.
Do yourself a favor. Find this production.

3 points

1) The personal updates.
Laurie is quite slammed with allergies. Last night she couldn't breathe at one point. I have allergies, but hesitate to even mention it in light of what Laurie is going through. She is taking medicine that looks toward the long term. We have researched and are deciding which trees must go before next Spring.
Laurie wonders if we didn't have the swine 'flu. Turns out the symptoms are exactly like the stomach 'flu we had about a month ago. And we did lay around like swine for several days. Essentially this is a meaningless observation as we survive and neither of us can see a doctor in the foreseeable future.
I remain unemployed, but I have been far from idle. We have some income in Laurie's job and unemployment and we have savings. The wolf is not at the door. Also I have put in many applications to jobs that I am qualified for. I don't know. It's hard to desperately want to work and keep your house and have the rug pulled out from under you. But in spite of these predicaments we forge ahead. One does one's best to be joyful and grateful for the blessings one has. As Wagner wrote, "Joy is not in things. It is in us."

2) The Radio
Laurie and I are avid NPR listeners. We love our local station although when I was in Orange County I was so envious of KUSC. When I lived down there, I would listen to Jim Svejda constantly. His show was like a music appreciation class. He would say that the best way to learn about music is to listen to a lot of it. One could gain a rich education from his show, The Record Shelf, alone although the rest of the station was excellent as well. It was a 24 hour classical station. In Chico we have classical in the afternoon however the DJs seem to play 1) the major canon, pieces I knew when I was in high school (Beethoven's 5th, the 1812 Overture, Air on the G String, ect.) and 2) (shudder) film soundtracks. Okay, that may be overstating my case slightly, but that is the atmosphere. The station removed all but a 1/2 hour opera show from Saturday's schedule. They used to play the weekly Metropolitan Opera in its entirety. Apparently the good people of Chico felt that cut too much into Car Talk. Okay. I'm getting catty.
But don't get me wrong, there are wonderful things about our station. We have Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, This American Life, Talk of the Nation, Radiolab, The Opera Attic (which I used to think was The Opera Addict to which I would heartily amen), Garrison Keillor in several of whatever it is he does, BBC News as well as Morning Edition. It's a fine station. I am not slamming our station. It just reminds me a bit of when I went to a church with no teaching whatsoever and found that I would supplement my spiritual life by downloading good preaching. Now I download good music as well. And there is a wealth out there. I highly recommend everyone subscribe to WGBH's Classical Performance Podcast.

3) Twitter
I avoided Twitter for a long time. I'd heard the jokes about how it is vapid and how it undermines meaningful discourse. Which I bought wholesale.
I finally signed up on a lark (http://twitter.com/paulmathers for those of you on Twitter) when my friend Turi posted a livejournal entry listing celebrities on Twitter and I went to check out Stephen Fry, Russell Brand, John Cleese, Neil Gaiman, Amanda Palmer, Eddie Izzard, Weird Al, Penn Jillette and so on (The other day I opened my email to find "You have a direct message from Yoko Ono.") So, yeah, I was dazzled with the celebrities that I happen to like.
Then I started Tweeting and it was a fun diversion. A way of micro-journaling and, for one who has a very poor memory, a good, simple way to remember what I've been doing and when. But then I found myself within 48 hours being laid off and travelling hundreds of miles to be with my Mom who was very close to death in the hospital. Suddenly the ability to connect with my loved ones around the world and update them on what is going on with me from a device I always have in my pocket became something I could not place a value on. As well as the emotional tether it provided.
I am a convert. My conclusion is that, like all technology, it is as good or evil (or vapid) as those who wield it. As for me, I see it as a wonderful tool of modern life.

How about some pictures from our trip, eh what?

I posted and, in fact, took no pictures of Mom since she was very sick in the hospital and they weren't really memories we wanted to frame. But here are a few with my grandmother.




Here's Laurie at the house where I grew up.





Here's my parent's guard dog.

Laurie in the hospital waiting room.

Me at Old World.


Dad and I had a really strong weekend together. It was really wonderful to spend that time with him.

I think this was a Lutheran church at Old World although Laurie said Lutherans would not have a big statue of Mary in the front door. Who knows!

And here was the birthday dinner.

Act Two?

We made it home. Schubert was very excited to see us. Upon our arrival we found the very good news that unemployment is going to pay me only about $100 less a week than my job paid. This is very good news as Laurie and I have spent the past 5 days asking things like "What are we going to do about Laurie's Mom?" "What are we going to do with the 6,000+ books?" "What are we going to do with the dogs?" Meaning when we inevitably lose the house. Now that is beginning to seem like less of an inevitability while I struggle like a crazy man to find a new job.
No one we've told this news has been as excited as we were, but then we realize that pretty much everyone we're surrounded with are going through their own very hard times.

I don't believe in omens. Ever. I hate reading too much into things. On the way out of my parents house a wolf hybrid dog was in my parent's yard and came to the door, preventing us from leaving. It also chased their cats. I made a "wolf is at the door" joke. But then we got back to Chico and found that we have unexpected roses in our yard. See. You can read anything into either of those. Better to just keep going and not be at the mercy of moods, suggestions or the wind.

We have no air conditioning in Laurie's car so our ride home, as Laurie said, "was like travelling by stagecoach." We are wiped out, dirty, sweaty, emotionally taxed, and ready for a spot of wine and a good sit down.

Tomorrow, for me, will be the dentist (I still have dental through the end of the month so it behooves me to get my cavities filled ASAP), filling out unemployment forms, sending in at least two resumes, and calling the mortgage company to beg for a period of relaxed rates. Times being what they are I am lead to believe that they will agree.

Stalling like Carl

And so we are heading back. We are about to get into the car. In fact, I am stalling. In fact, Laurie was pretty much hovering over me as I sit here until she decided I was taking my sweet time and she could go have an English muffin. We really ought to get back on the road. I am stalling because I don't want to go back to the uncertain. Although I do want to go back to my dogs.
Pretty much the trip was going to the hospital with my Dad (who I set up with a Twitter account, by the way. Go check out Terry Mathers.) This was good. Laurie and I agree that the hand of Providence was blazingly obvious on this trip.
Mom did almost die. The doctor came to her yesterday and said, "Mrs. Mathers, you almost died." On Friday when they took her into the ER her blood pressure was 60/30 and falling. It was an allergic reaction to some medicine for her polymiositis. As of last night she looked fine and I just got the message that she will be home today although, unfortunately, we will be halfway back to Chico by then.
Dad took us out to dinner for my birthday. That was nice.
Laurie and I have packed up and are about to get on the road.

But I am stalling.

Ask Dr. Paul

It's time for everyone's favorite feature: Ask Dr. Paul. This time our question comes from Laurie on Twitter.

Laurie: The History Channel is talking about the end of the world. Is that history already?

Dr. Paul: Yes. Yes, it is.

If you have a question for Dr. Paul, send it, comment it, or write it on a piece of paper and stick it in a jar in the middle of a field with a rock on top in case some wolves passing by bump into it they won't knock it over and make the paper blow away.

On the world

Laurie and I were talking about the Recession, the state of the world, the depravity of humankind, and so on. I must first ask the Calvinists in the crowd to stick with me through this first part. In one sense, we could make the world whatever we wish. We could have a Utopia. We could do whatever we choose.
Which is what we have done. We made it what we chose. We could have made the world whatever we wanted and what we have done is create... this. A mass of evil, depravity, isolation and greed. I fully believe that the hand of God is the only thing staying utter chaos and social Darwinism of the worst kind (remind me to post on Darwinism at some point. I don't subscribe wholesale to the party line Christian perspective on Darwinism except for when it is applied socially, politically or economically.) The state of the world shows the condition of the collective heart of the world.
I have been thinking about political hierarchies, peaceful and Utopian anarchy, Libertarianism, corrupt or at the very least morally reprehensible business practices in the free market, and so on. Also it has run past the back of my eyelids about who is to blame for me losing my job. In some sense, greedy mortgage brokers, irresponsible home buyers, credit lenders, timid consumers, those using deregulation for political purposes rather than... well across the board actually one could say those who did not consider the consequences of their greedy practices. Of course immediately it occurs to me that none of that matters. What has happened is what has happened. One needs to make the best of one's circumstances, even if those circumstances include losing everything after toiling and laboring to do everything right.
I have been thinking about that amazing scene from the end of Chaplin's The Great Dictator where the Jewish barber (played by Chaplin) is mistaken for the Hitler character (also played by Chaplin.) After great suffering at the hands of a tyrant, he gets up and delivers... okay, I know I keep leaving sentences unfinished like I do in real life. Needless to say I have been a bit emotional in the past few days and this is no exception. I know some people think I fall too much on the side of social justice in my Walk and I will concede that it is in my blood and heritage.
This world is harsh and you will suffer. As Albert Schweitzer said, "Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth. You must give some time to your fellow man. For remember, you don't live in a world all your own. Your brothers are here too."
and "What really matters is that we should all of us realize that we are guilty of inhumanity. The horror of this realization should shake us out of our lethargy so that we can direct our hopes and our intentions to the coming of an era in which war will have no place."
and "Don't let your hearts grow numb. Stay alert. It is your soul which matters."
And as my brother so graciously texted me yesterday, "The cross, the cross, the cross! It is our all! Never lose sight of it, my friend."
I think what I want to do now is to be a blessing where ever I can and to glorify God in all that I do.

Dispatches from the Valley of the Shadow of Death

So, the morning after the lay off I rose very early and pulled out my Geneva Study Bible. I was aiming for Psalms but, wouldn't you know it, opening right to the beginning of Job. It was exactly what I needed to read. It has been on my mind and heart ever since (and Laurie can testify on my tongue as well.)
We decided to take a breakneck trip down to OC to visit my parents. We are driving back to Chico on Tuesday. While Laurie and I were driving down my mother suffered a tremendous allergic reaction to some medication (she has a rare, auto-immune disorder) and ended up in the Emergency Room. She is still in the ICU.
I went to the hospital with Dad this morning. Mom is not well by any means, but she was better when we left than when we arrived. She could potentially be out of the hospital before we leave on Tuesday. Maybe. Providence brought Laurie and I down here at the perfect time. I think it was very good for all of us to be together right now.
They carted Mom off for tests. Dad brought me home. Mom left us a few hundred dollars she had been saving for our originally planned trip in June. Laurie and I went to a used book store that is liquidating its inventory for closing and we spent about a third of the money on books. Many were presents for ourselves which I almost felt a little guilty about except that 1) that was what Mom wanted us to do with the money and 2) Richard Wagner's autobiography and the collected letters of Mozart!
We are going to dinner with Dad soon.
For those readers who fancy themselves the praying sort, the job search is loaded into my cannon. Also, the people who were left behind. The people who have to lay people off are heavy on my heart. Also, from what I'm hearing, the ship seems to be sinking at my old job. Those people need prayer and help as well as I. Also, my mother.

Ave atque vale

This blog may very well be more interesting in the near future. One of the pleasant side effects, I suppose, to an otherwise bleak malady.
I lept into action and filed for unemployment immediately. I also found 2 jobs to apply for. There is always Hope. And there is always Crosby.
As you can well imagine, a good portion of the day was consumed with phone calls and discussions of the future.
We came to a few decisions.
Tomorrow we are going to Orange County. We pushed Laurie's next cleaning job back to Wednesday so we are leaving tomorrow and returning on Tuesday. Providentially, my 32nd birthday will occur down there. I needed to go to Orange County. I needed to see my parents and I needed to see the ocean. We have people to watch the pets.
We return to Chico Tuesday night at which point my full time occupation is job hunting. We have enough money to see us through a couple months should worst come to worst. I have no intention of seeing worst come to worst.
People have been very supportive and I thank and love you all. May you live in less interesting times.

The sword falls.

I apologize for the maudlin title of the post. It was that or "The Laws of Entropy."
This morning I was in the dairy room as usual. My supervisor came in, not unusual, and told me to take a walk with him, also not unusual although you are probably already way ahead of my story. We walked passed the room where I take the dairy products and I thought "Aw, crap." Because I knew that we were headed toward the HR office. Sure enough, the Foreman was there, the HR guy was there, my supervisor sat next to me. The Foreman started with "these are tough times and..."
Here I am at home and I am unemployed. I have to take my uniforms from my delivery days back at noon and then I am going straight to the unemployment office. We have enough for maybe like 2 months and we do still have income (Laurie's, the book business, unemployment.) But, needless to say, I will require a new, full time job of comparable pay.
We are also planning on bugging out to OC in the very near future as I will have no vacation in June, nor anytime in the near future even if I found new employment immediately.
Yeah, so I am no longer employed at ProPacific. An interesting fact is that tomorrow was to have been my 2 year anniversary at ProPac.
The future stretches before me like a thundercloud. Every morning I wake up and thank God for providing for me and my family. I shall continue.
If you are the praying sort, prayers are appreciated. And if you are the employing sort, we are willing to relocate.

He won't shut up about Shakespeare.

We borrowed a DVD of As You Like It with Helen Mirren (before she was a dame.) I am very excited to watch it. It is one of my favorite shows. We seem to be going through shows that I have been involved with productions of.
The Macbeth was a disappointment. So much so that we actually didn't make it through. They sacrificed diction for "madness" and they seemed to think that whispering inaudibly made it spookier. Maybe it was just bad sound quality on the film, but I rather thought it was the performances. Anyway, I am hard pressed to think of a great film version of Macbeth, even the Orson Welles who, as many of you know, is one of my sacred cows.
Another is The Tempest which has Helen Mirren as a female Propero (I guess England was out of old men who could play the part. They are all working on comic book films I suppose.) It also has Russell Brand as Trinculo presumably in keeping with, in the wake of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, his trend of being cast as people who very much resemble him. Julie Taymor directs. Along with Where The Wild Thing Are, it is the other film I am looking forward to.

Time may change me. But I can't trace time.

I decided to import this blog on Facebook instead of my Livejournal because my Livejournal can be a bit impersonal. It is solely for things I find online that are neat (like some sort of weblog.) This is the journal where I write about me and things that happen to me or, mainly, things that rattle around in my noodle, so I thought it might be the more appropriate thing to stream into my Facebook. For those of you who read this on Facebook, here's more Paul stuff. If you miss the photo dumps, you are going to have to go to my Livejournal to see them here and after: http://possumbane.livejournal.com/

my John Bunyan class

The John Bunyan class went really well. Laurie said she thought that it was my best so far. I am only inclined to say that John Bunyan may very well be my favorite in the series. He was pretty much everything that was good about Puritans with nothing for me to have to explain. I talked about his suffering, our global chaos compared to the global chaos of his day, I mentioned a sermon by Robert Krulwich, I almost cried at one point when I talked about how Laurie may outlive me. I talked about Bunyan enduring a life of great suffering by focusing on the only eternal, the only source from which all good flows. He says it way better than I could ever manage when he talked of his conversion in Grace Abounding:
"It was glorious to me to see His exaltation, and the worth and prevalency of all His benefits, and that because now I could look from myself to Him, and would reckon that all those graces of God that now were green in me, were yet but like those cracked groats and fourpence-halfpennies that rich men carry in their purses, when their gold is in their trunk at home! Oh, I saw that my gold was in my trunk at home! In Christ my Lord and Savior! Now Christ was all."

Good Friday

I am studying for my class on Sunday. This week I will be teaching on the life of John Bunyan who really was everything that was good about the Puritans. But his life had such a thick vein of suffering running through it.
Teaching a class on the Puritans has been enlightening in a number of ways. It has been sort of like when you get glasses for the first time when you need them and you put them on and suddenly the world is clearer than you could have imagined. Some Puritans were very good. Some of the long lasting legacies of the movement were one of the great gifts of history. Some of the Puritans were about as evil as humans can be. At the very least there were a good portion who fell into very unhealthy thought and behavior patterns. And some of those legacies are some of the worst curses of history. I highly recommend deeply studying the Puritans to everyone out there. There is so much more to the movement and the people involved than you think. There is much wisdom to be mined.
Right, I was talking about veins of suffering on the night of Good Friday. No matter who you are, you will suffer more in the future unless, I don't know, a stray bullet hits you in the brain right now. That being highly unlikely, made even more so by the fact that you just read those words and how creepy would that be for the cops to find on your computer screen in front of your corpse, you will most likely suffer. My condolences. This is why it behooves us to, as Bunyan might put it, to strive for the narrow gate which leads to God, the only constant, the only inperishable, and the source of all good. All else is so much kindling.
I should shut up before I reveal my whole class before I teach it. Just a few thoughts while Laurie is out there reading Warren Ellis of all things.

B-Day pictures

This is what we got Tony for his birthday (that and we're getting him his driving test.)

The birthday man. Tony, my step-son, on his 18th Birthday.

The Birthday Cake

Spark up a blog post

I got a Tweet from David Porter who runs the always fantastic and astoundingly prolific blog http://www.boomerinthepew.com/ which if you don't follow you're totally missing out and I feel sorry for you. The subject was briefly about cigars which we are getting for Tony for his 18th birthday tomorrow. Laurie and I had just talked about my own lack of topics to blog on and it struck me that I may actually have something edifying to say about smoking, leisure and Christianity.
I started smoking cigars when I was 15 because I was eccentric (good thing that phase ended!) I moved on the cigarettes which I smoked much and often until either the age of 20 or 21 (those years are hazy for other reasons.) I quit when I was coming down with yet another in a seemingly endless series of bronchial infections. I quit because I was tired of getting sick so often and because, to my delight, I realized that were I to quit smoking I would have way more money for books and music.
Laurie and I have a cigar once or twice a year. For a time I smoked a pipe when Laurie and I were first married but getting tobacco became another chore and I never really adopted it as a habit.
I like smoking. I like how it looks. I like how it feels. I like taking a few moments away from whatever else is going on. There is a zen to smoking. Sometimes I will smell someone who is smoking and still, all of these years later, it makes me kind of want to smoke. But honestly I don't think about it very often anymore. And I think that's rather the point for me.
All of these years later I still miss smoking. It was a great pleasure. As Laurie says, cigarettes have given smoking a bad rap as an occasional cigar or pipe is really no worse for you than going to a campfire. I think I look good with a pipe or a cigar. But I have a hard time imagining doing it habitually ever again. Even if we were in the black at all times.
I have no problem with the concept of Christians smoking (my brother recalls one church in Wisconsin where they had ashtrays in the armrests of the pews) any more than having ice cream or listening to popular or otherwise less than sanctified music or reading non-religious specific works. Clearly I have no problem with any of these things although I can already imagine the scathing comment my mother is probably cooking up for me saying so. Smoking was probably one of the things in my life that I did that most grieved my mother. For that I am very sorry.
As one who has a difficult time stating a specific opinion, I think I can say here and now that I am decidedly smoking neutral.
I may have arrived at deeper profundities on this topic, but I find that, rather than nicotine, I am presently being called out a slave to two canines who are demanding their basic rights to use the yard for unclean purposes. Which brings me to my point. We all serve something be it our desires, be it our obligations. The Gospel provides access to serving God which is the function that we were created to fill.
Okay. Gotta go. Es muss sein.

Day approaches the nearest to perfection this side of the Blue

Of a Spring Afternoon, Laurie and I walked in Bidwell Park.

Gorgeous Laurie on the amazingly beautiful trail on the fantastic day. Really it was the very zenith of spring afternoons. This was taken slightly before I broke out in singing "Poisoning Pidgeons In The Park." You can tell by Laurie's face not yet saying "Oh no, he's doing something horrible again."

I seem incapable of hiking without climbing things. In this case it was the tree stump where I proposed to Laurie about, what, like almost 3 years ago.

Me on the trail.

Here is Laurie at the One Mile Pool.

Here is our Tulip Tree which I planted in our front yard.

Twit

I have no idea if this will go anywhere or even what to do with it. But there is now this:http://twitter.com/paulmathers
Go follow me and I will follow you and together we will turn in a circle.

Spring Cleaning of a different color

I neglected to mention that Tony was horribly sick with some kind of stomach 'flu earlier in the week. About 48 hours later, everyone who was in contact with him came down with the stomach 'flu which is to say Gina, Erika (Tony's girlfriend), Laurie and I.
I will not go into gross details (at one point Laurie and I noted to one another that we have now "been gross" together as a couple.) I will say that I threw up for the first time in almost a decade. I did go to the doctor. As I entered the nurse noticed that I was carrying a bowl, my hair was a mess and I was wearing a Les Miserables t-shirt. I went to the doctor because I was scheduled for the Downieville route at 3am this morning. There was no way I was capable of driving 10 hours in the mountains this morning but in order to take 2 days off in a row, one must return with a doctor's note.
I woke up about an hour ago with a raging headache and even more raging desire for toast,bananas, and yogurt. We are on the mend (the kids bounce back so quickly. As of last night they were already off to Farmer's Market while Laurie and I lay wailing.) I go back to work tomorrow. It is my intention to be stationary as much as possible today.

At least my breakfast held no disappointments

The world's leaders are meeting in London to try to solve the world economic crisis. The lives and well being of literally billions lay in the balance. The World Economic Conference in 1933, the biggest comparable summit of the kind in history, failed while seeking solutions very similar to the solutions they seem to be suggesting now. Of course, the world is quite different now. However we all have an enormous razor sharp, sword of Damocles, Question Mark hanging over our heads.
ALL major news sources are entirely concerned over whether or not a few bricks will go through a few windows and (save for Laurie and my sainted NPR) not a lick toward informing the world as to what all of this actually means (to be fair, NPR also has the brick throwing stories, they just have informative stories as well.) This should make us all furious. This should make us all demand that every major newscaster now has to report weekly to Jon Stewart for a public dressing down. I'm just throwing thoughts against the wall here, but maybe this Western culture of irresponsibility and the consequences of same has something to do with why those people are that angry in the first place. It is far easier to parrot whatever slides down the AP wire than to take the responsibility reigns and, as Newton Minnow might say, rise to the great potential for an informed and enlightened world that we have with our global media. I guess the biggest surprise is that I actually find this odd enough to remark on it.

Rattling

When I was a child, one of my favorite films was The Neverending Story. I could probably have recited the entire film to you at one point in my childhood. One of the things that appealed to me at the time was the fantasy world, escapism, the lack of a need for peers when one has mythologies to play around with.
As I grew older I realized that one of the things that I had not even observed being a huge influence on me was the overlying theme of books that blur reality, change you, change the world around you, leak into your experiences outside of the book. I remember before falling asleep playing out stories in my head of being "saved" from school by Gandalf or Charles Xavier and taken to a place where reality was more mutable.
In my late teens and 20s I started to learn that such books did exist on some level. Robert Anton Wilson, Philip K Dick, H.P. Lovecraft and even to some extent James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon and so forth. The book I am reading right now, House of Leaves, is similar. All of them would kind of creep into reality or destroy how I look at things and rebuild it from the ground up. I imagine this is may have something to do with why I was so deeply into LSD for a time. I knew I was chasing something but I'm not sure I could have articulated what (especially when on acid.) Also I had a dream once or a vision which I don't talk about often but which gave me a glimpse behind the curtain of reality. It has haunted me all of my life. It was horrible to come back. I've told Laurie about it.
But there was always a disappointment that reality didn't really change in a Dali-esque kind of way. Blue giant beetles didn't dance on the walls.
Anyway, my spiritual walk falls under this heading as well. God kind of divinely invades His elect. The conversion of Paul is certainly one of the stories I am talking about.
I wasn't really going anywhere else with this except to explain a little about what goes on in my head, what I hunt for. I have been thinking about it since a meme I completed on my other blog earlier today.
Pardon the interruption. I guess you can set back your "Days Paul Has Gone Without Acting Utterly Berserk" calendars back to zero.

P.S.

My mother had a dream where she came to visit Laurie and my house. We were at work and across the street were the bums from the last post (although she has not seen those bums on this side of The Dreaming.) So she went over to my brother's house with a tub which she filled with goat droppings. She brought it back and fertilized our lawn in the hot sun. Which, needless to say, took care of the bum problem.

I have to admit that I seriously considered this option when she told me her dream.

Apocatastasis is my middle name

It was not a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. As anyone who reads Laurie's blog knows, we have been having experiences which I will relate in brief and then discuss some unexpected side effects. Warning: this may be way more interesting to me than it is to you. Or perhaps you will get something out of this, a few moments diversion, and possibly a lesson in what to do and what not to do should you find yourself in similar circumstances.
Also, this will most likely prove to be a very long post.
We live behind a motel and across the street from us is their back wall. In the past several months, slowly and steadily, homeless people who own vehicles have parked across from our house for days, weeks, and in one case around 2 months. These are not those forced from work through massive layoff. These are not the victims of the tanking economy. These are people who have lived their entire adult life in pursuit of methamphetamines and other intoxicants. You may think it unkind for me to practice what sounds like casting aspersions on their character, but I assure you there is a point coming in this story where all of the characters involved (except for me, of course) smoke speed or possibly crack directly in front of me. To put it in Biblical terms, this is not "The Poor" that I am talking about. This is "the slothful man."
Mainly these people seem to have the last vestiges of wisdom to at least A) not bother the people who live here legitimately and B) not do and/or sell their drugs in full view of the people who live here legitimately. Or, at least, that was the case at first.
There are about 5-8 vehicles that alternate and on a few rather stifling occasions all end up here at once.
So, early on Laurie and I decided that, property values aside, they are not directly hurting us and we would rather save our "cry wolf" card with the police for when wolves are at the door.
There were two vehicles in particular that started to scream "problem" to us. One was a brown van that showed up for one day and, in essence, threw a party of tweakers directly across the street from our house. They shouted things at my family when family members were in the yard. They left within 24 hours and have yet to return.
The second red flag of a vehicle was a truck with a camper. This is the one where, about a month ago, I was walking Gina (that is my step-daughter for the newbies on this blog) out to her car after dark and someone wolf whistled at her. I went around the front of the house. Dude was sitting in the shadows across the street by the truck and camper and started cussing me out loudly. I called the police. The police came by. The truck remained and returned often although no more profanities or threats greeted us for the time being.
Over the past few weeks the man in the truck had grown far more bold in selling drugs from the back of his camper. Or, rather, we had observed people who had every physical feature associated with advanced methamphetamine abusers entering the back of his camper and leaving a few minutes later or simply knocking on the door, giving the man folded up paper, receiving small baggies which they stuff in their pocket as they leave. We naturally took this to mean that illegal drugs were being exchanged for cash, goods or services and I still see no reason to think we were mistaken in that conclusion.
Finally as we were planting our new magnolia tree (more on that in other posts very soon) I saw a car pull up to the camper full of tweakers and I watched them. In fact I did not break focus once and they grew more and more nervous as they talked. They kept looking over at me and looking away quickly. Finally they all entered the back of the camper.
The next morning Laurie called the police station's non-emergency number asking for increased patrols. When I came home... I should probably break for a moment here and add that when I came home Laurie told me that our tax return was deposited and now we had the few thousand we need to pay our property tax. Meanwhile, directly across the street...
I went out on the porch to read and the tweakers were out on the curb directly across the street on lawn chairs. They were passing around a joint. The guy with the truck left to walk to the liquor store. He brought back two forty ounce bottles of malt liquor which he gave to two of the men there. But before he did he turned, looked directly at me, and yelled out a profane suggestion (or command I suppose) for me to lay lips upon a portion of his anatomy interspersed with a word used for scatological emphasis which describes the act of copulation and rendered all the more profane being coupled with reference to maternity. And then he flipped me off. And they drank without bags. And then the pipe fashioned from aluminum foil came out and was passed. All of this on the curb of the street, all of this as I sat on my front porch, all of this directly in front of me. So I stayed there for a long time and watched allowing them to get good and intoxicated in their brazen scoff-lawery.
Then I came inside and had a good old fashioned freak out. I called my parents and my brother. My brother offered very good suggestions on how to deal with them as my brother, some of you may know, worked with indigents for many years as the director of a local soup kitchen before he was ordained. My parents offered the very good admonition that in the future one ought to avoid staring down drug dealers. Which, on one hand I took to heart and shall endeavor to follow all the days of my life that remain, on the other hand struck me with the realization that I had not handled the drug dealer well nor wisely. My brother suggested 2 things, one of which I did immediately, the other I shall do Monday on normal business hours. The first was to call the police, tell them everything I just told you, sprinkle in the phrase "I'm a home owner," and others like "I just want peace in my home and to be able to sit on my porch of a pleasant Spring evening without being sworn at and watching people smoke crack" and "I work early and my wife is here alone" and "I'm afraid for the safety of my family" and "threatened" and so on. And be very polite and well spoken to the dispatcher. Pat said along with the benefits of the police running these people off immediately, there would be the added benefit that word would get around in homeless circles that people in this area will call the police on you. The other thing he suggested strongly was calling the local soup kitchen, describing these people, telling the kitchen that if they are serving these people they are in code violation (the kitchen operated with the code that they employ a private patrol to keep their clients from camping in the surrounding neighborhoods and that they may not provide services for anyone who is camping in said neighborhoods.) In other words, cut off their food supply and they will move on.
When the cops came the people across the street, well, most of them fled immediately. The guy in the truck and two of his guests first turned into simpering fools and then into belligerent jackasses. I told Laurie that they were falling apart and that it did not look good for them. Meanwhile the cop picked up bits off of the street where they had been smoking crack or whatever. Also the cop caught one of the guys hiding something however he did not, sadly, recover whatever the man had hidden. Another officer pulled up. One came to my door and told me that the vagrants would be leaving within a few minutes. After the cops left, the guy stayed all night, but did not make a sound all night and left the next morning. He has not returned as of my writing this although both Laurie and I have observed him walking in the neighborhood within the past 48 hours. The police patrolling has increased and we may enjoy a few months of peace in our home, Lord willing.

So, I came away from this experience with 2 personal lessons. The first was upon some self-reflection the next morning at work. I realized that I need to bridle my tongue a little better and refrain from profane utterances for my own sense of decency, for my own ability to look myself in the eye in the mirror in the morning. Not in some weird, legalistic, finger wagging sort of way. And not that God isn't gracious to those of his elect who occasionally, accidentally drop F bombs directly after dropping heavy things on their toes. Or those who occasionally burst out into a bawdy tune or delight in the occasional double entendre. But I felt conviction after seeing what kind of life lays about 400 miles down a road that I occasionally take a few steps on. Or, put another way, Laurie and I recently had a conversation about racist jokes and about how one can't shake the Devil's hand and say they're only kidding. In short, seeing depravity to the point where zero regard for law, decency, morality exist filled me with a desire to nail my sanctification to my own forehead in hopes that I can more constantly set my eyes on it.

The other thing I kept thinking about, that kept nagging at me, was what kind of a man I've become. A few years ago I would not call the police for anything short of violent crime being committed against me personally. Now I'm using words like "property values" and I am using words like "bums." And I thought about what a bourgeois, suburban sell-out Paul of 12 years ago would think of modern day Paul.
"What's the matter, man? You used to be cool!"
But I think I came to a place of peace over this last night in talking to a friend of ours from the next block over (where they do not have these sorts of problems.) We were talking about (and later I followed the thought to include) improving the community through keeping a nice yard, planting things, going on walks, using and supporting the library, supporting the local NPR station during their current pledge drive and so on. There's a concept in my spiritual walk called Apocatastatis. You can trace this concept through Christian spirituality (although it is not entirely peculiar to us and you will also find it rich in Gnosticism.) Hopefully not to put it in too poetic of terms but it means the transformation of the infernal to the celestial. Which rather strikes me as being a description of the Gospel. My namesake's story is certainly a textbook example of the concept.
I think I can say that crack is not a good force in the world. I am coming out right here and now as anti-crack cocaine and anti-methamphetamine abuse. I think I can also say that able bodied men ought to do their best to work at a job which supports them financially if possible or, if not possible, seek to find employment. I know the times in which we live. I know that jobs are scarce and that people are being laid off left and right. Believe me, I am hyper-aware that this could just as well happen to me. However, I am not talking about that or those people. I am talking about people on curbs with crack and bad beer. And don't even get me started on my hypothesis that bad people drink bad beer.
Brightening the world around you in any way you can not only expands the light (sorry to get all Quaker in my lingo) but in doing so the cockroaches tend to flee more to the darkness. We realized as we talked to my friend from around the block that had we a motion light on our garage, the graffiti (of the territorial peeing variety, not of the art variety) that appeared on the side of our neighbor's garage last week probably would not have appeared. Light drives away darkness.
I hasten to add that the Gospel is a message in words. It is that we are all depraved sinners who fall short of God but that God, in His grace, sent His Son to atone for the sins of those who believe in Him. I do not believe, nor does Laurie, in the (probably apocryphal anyway) St. Francis quote of "Preach the Gospel. Use words if necessary." No, Frank, it is in words (or rather Apocryphal Frank. I think I just came up with a new band name.) Expressing the Gospel in words is necessary. Seeking to do good in the world is an expression of one in whom grace has been shown. One will not communicate the Gospel message through giving out cold bottles of water on a hot day without also communicating the Gospel, passing a tract with the bottle, or at the very least identifying yourself as being a part of a congregation where one could learn more if one were so inclined. Any number of reality tunnels can lead one to do something that ameliorates the community. This is not salvific and does not communicate the means to salvation although it can be the natural expression of one who experiences the infinite mercies of God.
So, I do want to do good and I do want to spread the gospel. Working to keep my area tidy, safe, and beautiful does make the world a better place. Did I forward the Gospel? Well, maybe not directly in the story, but the story did give an opportunity to talk about it. Did I handle the experience well? Mixed. I think it worked out well. I think I learned some valuable lessons. Hopefully you did too. I am sure I should not have stared the drug dealers down (lesson learned.) And boy oh boy you have no idea how much freaking out I did when the police were in transit. Laurie called my brother to come over and talk me down.

More soon.