Daddy caves

Well, I did it. Took Mimi (23 months) to the Magic Kingdom even though I was pretty committed to not taking children to WDW until they were teenagers (my first trip was at 15 yrs old). So glad that I didn't hold on to that silly commitment.

Best part: while standing by the stroller with Scott, waiting for Krys & Cassia to get our "Adventures of Pooh" fastpass, I realized out of peripheral vision that Mimi was diving out of the stroller head first... then jumping up and down and screaming "PoooohTigg! PoooohTigg!" in a wildly crazed fit. She had spotted - 200 feet away through the crowd - Pooh & Tigger greeting kids. We wondered if it would be worth it to stand in line for 30 minutes so she & Waits could meet them, but as Cassia said, "that's why we came to the Magic Kingdom".

But later in the day, Walt's gig was up. After a 45 minute wait in the hot, hot sun to ride "Dumbo", both Mimi & Waits burst into tears when the ride ended after only 1.75 mintues. They were like, "whatthahell???" Hope that Mimi learns to hope for things that are certain - and not grow weary when paper-thin things disappoint.

I hope I can learn that too.

How did we get here?

News of financial failures are everywhere this week.  Patrick Deneen, who teaches political science at Georgetown has a sobering post today about "crisis" here at his blog: What I Saw in America: Unraveling.  While the facts are grim, he is very hopeful about the future - and his hope has nothing to do with us returning to a state of financial wellness as much as wellness of community and life and work.  (And for you Wendell Berry readers, Deneen was intervied about politics & Berry by Mars Hill Audio here).

Deneen and others (such as Rod Dreher) have pointed to the "go shopping" mantra that began on September 12 2001 - a rhetoric that echoed the spending that began in the 1980's - when we should have realized we were in a complex war that required sacrifices and changes in order for us to maintain our liberty.  Instead of looking for ways to become energy independent and thus stop sending our money to the middle east, we built more Suburbans.  Instead of tightening the belt on spending we bought more "stuff" from China.  They sure had some nice buildings for the Bejing Olympics - wonder where they got all that coin...

Krys & I have been watching "John Adams" this week and have been taken by the intense sacrifice that so many made in creating this new country - this bold experiment in self-governance - and it seems so shocking to see where we are today in light of where we began.  We are financially strained to the limits, morally bankrupt, lazy, under-educated, over-fed, over-entertained, without understanding of what things have real value, and to a great degree poor in spirit.  

I think everyone should either real McCollough's biography of Adams or watch the movie especially in the election season that we are in.  I want to post some comments about the political prospects we face but don't yet have the energy for it.  Maybe next week.

Dr's Martin & Martyn

I'm working today but still remembering MLK day.

The life to which Christ calls us simply doesn't fit our frameworks for Republican or Democrat - it is definately something "other". When I catch a glimpse of this - as Sarah Vowell pointed to so well in Dr. King's teaching on radically loving our enemies - it resonates deep within me how this is the way things ought to be: radical love - radical generosity - even radical hope.
Conservatives who grab the Bible as justification for economic hyperindividualism should remember what Jesus said to the rich ("sell all that you have and give the money to the poor" and "where your treasure is there will your heart be also"). And Liberals who cling to the Bible's teaching of justice and mercy yet say "hands off" to issues of personal morality also seem to stumble over the text ("...if you lust after a woman you've already committed adultry in your heart").


The Bible is often used to beat people over the head or as a weapon to give folks advantage (religious leaders in Jesus' day were pros at this). But if we really read it (as I too seldom do) maybe we would start loving each other more than we love ourselves. Seems like that would fix a lot of the problems our politicians claim to have the Big Solutions for.

But this leads back to a question for me. Do I live like I believe this stuff? Do I enter into this radical way of living, or do I just become cynical and start spewing venom when I see someone else not living right. Presbyterians have the corner market on "being right" theologically (or thinking we've got it right) but do we live it? I remember a black pastor coming to our church about 6 years ago and telling us proud, white presbyterians to get our noses out of our D. Martyn-Lloyd Jones books and get out in the world and start living the gospel we are "studying." Ironically Jones' teaching on the Sermon on the Mount had greatly changed my thinking, but do I live like it did?

What that pastor said to us that afternoon still nails me today... I haven't really changed very much.