During the first weekend in October, I traveled to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to see the annual Balloon Fiesta. The balloons were colorful and big as expected, but what impressed me most was their quietude. Despite hundreds of them hovering in the sky, all that could be heard was the occasional propane burner releasing hot air into the balloon.
The Fiesta was the primary reason for the trip; however, other highlights included:
• Petroglyph National Monument
• Santa Fe
• Hyde Park aspen groves (at their peak!!)
• Taos Pueblo
• Rio Grande Gorge.
In June, I went to Yosemite with my mom and my aunt. This was their first visit to Yosemite and it had been almost five years since my last visit, so it was a fun trip for all of us. What I enjoy most about Yosemite is how it makes me feel very small. I like how nature can so quietly and elegantly put humans in their place. I find comfort in knowing that there is something greater than mankind on this planet–something that we have not harnessed and that we don't fully understand, a beauty that we can't recreate.
Small
Beneath the towering red wood
That is soft and fragile, yet fierce,
Below the imposing granite walls
Supporting the very Earth
From which they came,
Amidst the vast valley
Where the river flows
And the bear roams
And the mist and wind compete,
I am small.
The world is greater, is wiser,
And I am at peace.
My favorite furry companion of 9 years passed away yesterday, and I am amazed at the size of the hole that she left in my heart. Peanut, a cat who had the social personality of a dog, brought so much joy to my life. For me, she was the glue that held everything together–the one constant that always brought me joy. From Idaho to RV living to branching out on my own, Peanut was by my side. She introduced me to my neighbors providing me with a sense of community; she took walks with me at night; and she was always within reach (often on my pillow) in my bed at night... a true kindred spirit who I love and miss so much.
Over the past two years I have been supporting the education and public outreach efforts of NASA's newest lunar mission, and on Thursday, June 18, I was privileged to watch the two featured spacecrafts launch on their journey to the Moon. I spent the eight days leading up to the launch sharing the news about the mission with the guests at Kennedy Space Center's visitors complex. It was a hectic week, with ups and downs juggled between the launch of our lunar mission and the launch of the STS-127 shuttle mission to the space station. The ups were getting to see (and touch!) the Atlas V rocket at the Vertical Integration Facility and then to see the over 200-foot tall setup poised and ready to go on its launch pad. The downs were that twice I woke in the wee hours of the early morning and dressed in eagerness to watch the space shuttle launch, only to receive a disappointing phone call saying that the launch had been "scrubbed" due to technical problems. (It's no easy task to go back to sleep at 3:00am with a let down like that.) Add to that the daily back-and-forth discussions as to which mission (shuttle or lunar) had launch priority and how the weather forecast was stacking up, and you can see how the emotional roller coaster took its toll. Even on launch day, the anxiety didn't let up. At 2:30 in the afternoon, we arrived at the viewing site and spent the next 3 hours sitting in the humid Florida heat watching the threatening rain clouds build and move closer and closer to the launch complex. There were three opportunities to launch: 5:12, 5:22, and 5:32. The first two time slots were "no go" due to the impending weather, and the third slot looked pretty bleak. Then, just as heavy disappointment was setting in, the announcer said launch was a "go" and the exciting checklist dialog and final countdown began!
The experience included a mixture of excitement and mild disappointment. The overcast clouds limited our viewing of the rocket to about 30 seconds which was a bit of a let down, especially since we could still hear it rumbling above the clouds for several seconds. However, seeing the billowing smoke and the bright orange flame as the rocket lifted off from its pad followed 10 seconds later by the loud roar of the engines was pretty spectacular. It was truly awesome standing there watching the rocket move straight as an arrow into the sky like a pencil on fire while reflecting on all the effort that went into planning the mission, designing the spacecraft, and coordinating the efforts leading up to this moment. Then, to me, it was even more exciting to think about what was happening after the rocket left Earth's atmosphere – the firing of the second stage after 4 minutes, the separation of the orbiter after 45 minutes, and then the eventual flyby of the Moon after 4-5 days. It fascinates me to think about all the work that each little instrument and robotic spacecraft component will do over the next few months while we go about our day-to-day lives here on Earth. Pretty amazing!
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/main/index.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/main/index.html
This book comes highly recommended for anyone that has ever considered adoption or has been involved in the adoption process. But the book goes beyond promoting adoption. In the author's words:
“In this book I want to call us all to consider how encouraging adoption—whether we adopt or whether we help others adopt—can help us peer into the ancient mystery of our faith in Christ and can help us restore the fracturing unity and the atrophied mission of our congregation.” As Moore explains, “The gospel of Jesus Christ means our families and churches ought to be at the forefront of the adoption of orphans close to home and around the world.” It is the gospel that calls us to adopt but it is also the gospel that teaches us how to understand adoption. In fact, “as we become more adoption-friendly, we’ll be better able to understand the gospel... I want to ask what it would mean if our churches and families were known as the people who adopt babies—and toddlers, and children, and teenagers. What if we as Christians were known, once again, as the people who take in orphans and make of them beloved sons and daughters?”
I see the adoption of a child into a loving family as a beautiful reflection of the gospel. Like the orphan, we were once outcasts and strangers to God, but because of the sacrifice of Christ, we are welcomed with open arms into God's family and provided an eternal home. I hope to read this book soon and report back with more thoughts at a later time.
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world," - James (1:27).
Recently I've been thinking about the issue of "finding God's will", and came across this book. It offers a refreshing perspective that counters the paralyzing notion of waiting for God to directly guide us in all of our major life decisions that aren't clearly addressed in the bible. Here's a quote:
"...when it comes to most of our daily decision, and even a lot of life's "big" decisions, God expects and encourages us to make choices, confident that He's already determined how to fit our choices into His sovereign will. Passivity is a plague among Christians. It's not just that we don't do anything; it's that we feel spiritual for not doing anything. We imagine that our inactivity is patience and sensitivity to God's leading. At times it may be; but it's also quite possible we are just lazy. When we hyper-spiritualize our decisions, we can veer of into implusive and foolish decisions. But more likely as Christians we fall into endless patterns of vacillation, indecision, and regret. No doubt, selfish ambition is a danger for Christian, but so is complacency, listeless wandering and passivity that pawns itself off as spirituality. Perhaps our inactivity is not so much on God as it is an expression of the fear of man, the love of the praise of man, and disbelief in God's providence."
- Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something, p. 51, 52
In response, someone might push back and say that it sounds like he is advocating for a cavalier approach to decision making. I'm sure he has heard that objection before and I think he addresses it in his book. Nevertheless, I tend to agree with him that for every 10 Christians that are too reckless in how they make decisions, there are 100 who over-spiritualize their passivity and fail to do anything.
(2nd post - taken from my notes from a parenting course we took in 2007 called "Growing Kids God's Way")
The Parent Factor
Unfortunately, many adults parent in response to their own unresolved childhood fears, conflicts and disappointments. As a result, they sometimes parent their own past more than their children. For example, if the growing-up years were pleasant, there is a strong tendency to employ training techniques similar to those by which you were raised. If your childhood years were stressful, the tendency is to swing to the opposite extreme of your parents' methods when rearing your own children. For example, parents brought up under unfair, restrictive or even abusive methods often unknowingly move toward permissive parenting, allowing their children to become self-centered. These parents in many ways become more concerned about their children's feelings than about their actions. They elevate psychological health above moral health, and any standard of right and wrong is subject to how their children feel, not what they do. Parenting Extremes Permissive/child-centered parents fear inhibiting the child, so they go to the extreme of creating an environment of unrestrained freedom, resulting in an under-controlled child. On the other hand, authoritarian parents fear spoiling their child, so they see their salvation in the power of rules and limitations; resulting in an over-controlled child. Both extremes deprive the child of basic skills necessary for healthy adolescence. Authoritarian Parenting Permissive Parenting
My son Benjamin recently turned 2yrs (Feb.23) and has since made it clear to us that he is now in a new stage of life - the "terrible twos". His will of defiance is constantly testing the patience of his parents. Although his vocabulary has increased exponentially over the past year, the one word we still constantly hear from him is ... "NO!" (in a loud disobedient tone accompanied by hand flailing). As such, I will soon be investing more time in learning about parenting/discipline.
Jeanie and I took a parenting course a few years ago called "Growing Kids God's Way" and found it to be very helpful. It was a big investment in time and energy (we travelled to Aurora, which is about 1&1/2hrs from Toronto, every Fri night for about 5months in the middle of winter), but we both received valuable paradigm-shifting life-lessons - both from the perspective as parents and as children. I'll try to share some of what we learned in the next few posts. Here are a few points from the introductory session:
Here's a helpful nugget for parents taken from a recent Tim Keller sermon:
- When we are raising children, if we push them away and keep them at arm’s length in order to preserve our freedom and independence, they will grow up emotionally dependent and damaged. The only way our children can grow up with freedom and independence is if we sacrifice our freedom and independence, for years on end. Once again, it’s them or you.
I have a good friend, Peter, who recently took up the cause of defending the unborn in the Vancouver pro-life movement. He has been raising awareness about abortion in his community and has committed to approaching every church in the greater Vancouver area in order to challenge the pastor/leadership to give at least one message each year that addresses this issue. He's also mobilized some of his friends to stand up for this cause. I'm wondering if I'm going to be one of them.
I've always been burdened about abortion, but just never made the time to do anything about it. There was always something else that demanded more of my attention (school, work, family, friends etc). But now that I'm almost middle-aged and running out of time and excuses, I'm wondering if I should be doing something about this too. Having become a father of two young children in recent years has only increased this burden for me.
With an aim of highlighting the gravity of the issue, some have compared abortion to the issue of slavery in the 19th century - in that although some of us may believe it's wrong, we still allow ourselves to live with it because of the extreme inconvenience and "collateral damage" that would result otherwise. The abolitionists fought against slavery even though it was clear to everybody that to end slavery would lead the country into economic suicide; and that's exactly what happened for a whole generation of the British empire. To quote Tim Keller:
"When the abolitionists finally had British society poised to abolish slavery in their empire, planters in the colonies foretold that emancipation would cost investors enormous sums and the prices of commodities would skyrocket catastrophically. This did not deter the abolitionists in the House of Commons. they agreed to compensate the planters for all freed slaves, an astounding sum up to half the British government's annual budget. the Act of Emancipation was passed in 1833, and the costs were so high to the British people that one historian called the British abolition of slavery 'voluntary econocide'. Rodney Stark notes how historians have been desperately trying to figure out why the abolitionists were willing to sacrifice so much to end slavery. He quotes the historian Howard Temperley, who says that the history of abolition is puzzling because most historians believe all political behaviour is self-interested. Yet despite the fact that hundreds of scholars over the last fifty years have looked for ways to explain it, Temperley says, 'no one has succeeded in showing that those who campaigned for the end of the slave trade ... stood to gain in any tangible way ... or that these measures were other than economically costly to the country.' slavery was abolished because it was wrong, and Christians were the leaders in saying so."
As such, I wonder what future generations will think of the decisions we make today as a society in regards to abortion. The stats show that over 1.2 million babies are aborted each year in the US. It's a tough and complicated issue with plenty of inconvenience and potential "collateral damage" if we ever succeeded in abolishing abortion. But I can't think of a more clear wrong than to take the life of an innocent unborn child for the sake of convenience or a woman's "right to choose".
