Santa's A Scam

That was the front page headline of the Christmas 1993 issue of Free Verse magazine, a little underground publication put out by my brother and his friends. I had forgotten all about it until I came across it today as I was cleaning out some old files. As I sat and read through it I had a good chuckle. Those were good days back then. I was young, naive and ready to take on the world.

A whole lot has happened in my life since 1993 but here are some tidbits from the past 13 years:

• I got married
  
• Received one speeding ticket
• Changed vehicles 7 times
• Moved 10 times
• Changed jobs 13 times
• Learned to play bass
• Saw a Major League Baseball game in Seattle
  
• Tore my ACL 3 times
• Saw a Ray Charles concert before he died
• Attended a Norm Stockton bass clinic
• Taught The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
  
• Became a foster parent
• Became a member of my church
• Paid off my student loans

In the middle of Free Verse was a regular feature called Poet's Corner. One particular poem caught my eye.

Ignorance

Wisdom all around me
I listen to your sound
hearing what you say
but going my own way.

- Myriad

I'm a lot older now (and a lot heavier) but the irony is that I still haven't lived half of my life yet. I feel like I've learned a lot but I also feel like I've barely scratched the surface.

I don't think I'll every truly be wise, not like Solomon, but someday, maybe, I'll have learned to listen to the voice of wisdom.

A Thought on Parenting

I'm not a parent. I have no plans to be a parent, at least not a natural parent. What this means is that while I may have ideas on how parenting should be done, I have no experience to lend any credence to my ideas and should be flat out ignored.

Case in point. I was talking about kids with my brother (who has three kids) and mentioned how I don't think its bad to let them cry once and awhile. His response was that "yeah, we thought that with our oldest son". As I mentally patted myself on the back, he proceeded to say that after awhile of doing that their oldest son began to hate going to bed and would start screaming as soon as they put him down.

So when they had their second son they did things differently. If he cried after they put him to bed, they went and got him, held him and waited until he calmed down and then put him back to bed. He never learned to hate going to bed. And once again, I learned that no matter what I think I know, I don't actually know anything about parenting.

Being from a family of seven (two younger brothers and two younger sisters) I have a sneaking suspicion that every child is different. What works on one child may work on another, but then again it may not. There were a number of years when I got spanked frequently for all the trouble I caused. I think that worked as I like to think I turned out okay. My youngest sister got spanked too for her infractions, for awhile, but Mom and Dad realized that she wasn't responding to that. It wasn't the same deterrent for her that it was for me.

So we've already established that I don't know anything about parenting. I have ideas of how to parent, some of which may be good ideas and some of which may be bad ideas, depending on the child they're being applied to. So how do know if someone is doing a good job with their children, or better yet... if I ever have kids how do I know when I'm doing a good job?

Let me tell you about what I saw last night. There's a church nearby that has been without a music pastor for awhile. They've hired a new one but he can't start for awhile yet so they've been having lay leaders and guest leaders for a few months. My brother with the three kids is one of the guest leaders and last night was his second time leading worship in their church. It was a Saturday evening service and there was no childcare provided. My wife, my youngest brother and I sat with his wife and their three boys, obstensibly to give her a hand although she had everything well under control.

As is typical with most churches the service began with music and as my brother walked out onto the stage, one of his sons proceeded to yell, "Hey, there's my Dad!" There was a little titter of laughter around us and a number of people turned to look. As the music started we all got to our feet and started clapping with the beat. At this point I wasn't paying too much attention to the boys as I had just noticed the bass player's bass and realized that it was one of those cool Novax Fanned-Fret instruments made by Dingwall. It took me awhile to remember that's what it was and for the first few songs I was completely distracted trying to think of the name.

As the worship set progressed I eventually remembered that I was supposed to be helping watch the boys. As I glanced around me looking for them (they tend to get out of sight very quickly) I spotted the oldest two, one on each side of my youngest brother. They were both standing on the bench and clapping with the beat and singing the words to the song. I was about to get after them for standing on the pew, especially with their shoes on when I realized what I was seeing.

The two boys were worshipping with us. Three years old and five years old. They weren't goofing off or drawing pictures or being loud and obnoxious or even sitting like well behaved dolls. They were entering freely into worship of our God, clapping and singing their hearts out. And they were a whole lot less distracted than me. At that momement I knew that my brother and his wife are doing a great job with their children. After all, what could be more important to teach them than to worship the Lord?

"From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise." Psalm 8:2

Thankful for Where I'm At

So normally I complain bitterly all summer about how hot it is here. Normally its 35-40 degrees Celcius every day from about May 15th until the end of August. Normally.

Not this summer. This summer we've had sprinkles, showers, thundershowers and torrential rain with patches of sun once or twice a week. Of course, most of the residents around here are complaining bitterly about it but, badup, bup bup baaa, I'm loving it.

And, while I like the winter a lot better than the summer, I'm very glad I'm not this guy.

Followup on Ravings of a Lunatic

I came across an interesting discussion on Slashdot today about the public education system in the US of A. Its quite a lively debate but some good points have come out of it. Considering my view of Home Schooling, its interesting to read what other people think about public education and their ideas for making it better.

Ask Slashdot question: What, in your opinion, would make primary and secondary education as good as possible? I have no experience of education outside the US, but I can say confidently that public education in my country sucks. And it may always suck. However, what can we do to make it suck less?"

For the purpose of this question, the following are givens:

1. I know that there is a strong libertarian faction in this community, who might like to see public education disappear. Let's assume, though, that that isn't going to happen any time soon, and that there will be a public school system for the foreseeable future.

2. Similarly, many Slashdot readers are brilliant people who have educated themselves to a large extent. Let's further accept that most people are not capable of doing this, or at any rate need help reaching that sort of educational self-sufficiency.

One of the first responses suggested the following improvements:

• stop inflating grades (a recent article reflected on how many schools now have so many valedictorians (one in Seattle actually had 47 valedictorians!) that many have had to dispense with the tradition of having valedictorian address the graduating classes). (The New Yorker article is here [newyorker.com] and is a long, but worthwhile read.)
• more emphasis on (mathematics) basics. Get rid of the calculators, at least until after the fundamentals are assuredly learned. Make students learn how to use slide rules, for the sake and feel of what is really happening during calculations (addition of log tables... illustrates nice short cuts for coming up with fast and accurate estimates for seemingly complex "problems")
• more emphasis on (language skills) basics. It would be nice to go an entire day without something totally illiterate on the CNN Headline News crawler. (We once had a "discussion" with our daughter's teacher because he said he wasn't so much interested in her spelling correctly and applying grammatical principles correctly as he was in what she was saying. While we agreed what she was trying to say was important, we felt it equally important (for a fifth grader) to be grounded in grammatical and spelling fundamentals)
• stop moving kids onto the next grade if they really didn't perform at the level necessary. It's become an "everybody gets a trophy" society, and that's not consistent with the real world. Kids more than ever need to understand rewards and accountability.
• standards of competency for teachers (rather than tenure by unions). We once accused our daughter of "doctoring" a bad grade when she brought it back with an updated "note" from her teacher. We were convinced she had not met with the teacher because the "note" on her paper from the teacher was illiterate. We were all embarrassed when we confronted the teacher and found he indeed had written the note (maybe that's why he was not so interested in our daughter's grammar).
• stop relying on technology as the next silver bullet in transcendental teaching philosophies and techniques
• get rid of MTV

As a huge proponent of "there's always a better way" I like what's coming out of this discussion. The next step is for parents and businesses to step up and effect the required changes.


http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/10/1719223

Are There Rules or Not?

Daryl talks about being an "uneducated" music pastor and why he is frustrated with the fruits of Christian Post-Secondary institutions. To give my post a context, you might want to read his post first.

While I have experienced God's grace and forgiveness I have to admit that I haven't fully embraced it. I attend a middle class church that looks down on people and I often end up guilty of doing the same thing.

A recent example of this is with the band that I play in. We had our acoustic guitar player and his wife leave the band early this sping. He is a music pastor and is going through his ordination and his wife just delivered their first child. On top of that they live 45 minutes away from where we pratice so coming into town every week (plus gigs) are four hour commitment every time. They realized that at this point in their life it was too much and wisely decided that for the time being they needed focus on their family and the ordination. It was a hard decision for them but as much as we miss them, we respect and agree with their choice.

As a result though, the band has been forced to make a choice as well. We either find replacements or write new arrangements of our songs, sans vocalists. Considering the hundreds of hours we collectively invested into the current song list it seemed easier to find replacements. Well, it hasn't been easy. In fact, we have had a hard time even coming up with people to approach. Those that we have approached are too busy and not able to commit the time required or are pursuing different musical paths (eg: professional recording artist).

Then one day, clear out of the blue, an acoustic guitarist I had jammed with a couple times mentioned that he was having a hard time getting on a worship team at his church. I don't know why I hadn't thought of asking hime before but I figured he'd be a good addition to our band. I knew he could play our music in his sleep and he has a knack for making everyone else around him sound better than they are. In my mind, he is the best type of musician: one who is supremely skilled and uses those skills to help everyone play better. Of course, he'd be even better if he could read music, but that's a rant for another day.

Anyway, I spoke to the band about him and described him pretty much as I have here. They were definately interested and gave me the go-ahead to ask him if he'd like to come out to a couple of practices. He did and it was great. Everyone liked him and felt good about the fit both musically and personality wise. (From here on I'll refer to him as "the new guy".)

Then I remembered something... The reason I know "the new guy" is because his girlfriend works at my company. They live together. They're not married. He's a Christian. She's not a Christian. If that's not enough, they drink and they smoke and they... *gulp* ...Dance.

Well, in my church, that's a bad thing. A couple of years back, another couple was not allowed to particpate in the music ministry because they weren't married, were living together and had a son together. He played in a secular band in bars around the province. Between that, the not married and some other "issues" they eventually left the church. At the time I was pretty upset. They needed a church more than ever at that point and we chased them out. (I use the word we because it is my church. I'm a member.)

So anyway, remembering the previous couple, I spoke to the leader of our band about "the new guy". At first he was okay with it and said that sin is sin and we're all guilty of something. There's no grey. The two of us decided that it wasn't something we needed to bring up with the rest of the band. A couple weeks later though we spoke about it again. It was weighing on his mind and he wasn't sure what to do about it. We kinda left it at "maybe God wants him in the band and will use it to convict him."

Since then its been weighing on my mind a lot and now I'm not so sure what the right choice is. Sometimes I think I should talk to "the new guy" and confront him about his lifestyle. After all, he's a Christian and should know better. Then I think about his girlfriend, my co-worker, and wonder what she'll think of me and the "church" if I do that. Does she not need to be gently led into the fold before we beat her over the head with our theology? Then I think no, its my church that needs to change. And as the pendulum inside my brain bangs on my ears I realize that I don't know what to think.

I've got friends who take the black and white view. Any one of them would be the first to admit that they're not perfect but will maintain that there are some things that are just not acceptable for a Christian to do. Things like sleeping with someone you're not married to. I've got other friends who "rely" on God's grace and forgiveness to let them live the lifestyle they want. And of course I know some fence riders. They show up at church every Sunday but don't seem to be aligned with the left or the right. (This is the category I'd place myself into.)

Then there's Daryl. Daryl has a view of God and God's grace that's truly different. Somehow he's managed to let God accept him as he is, flaws, faults and vices. When I talk with him, I start to understand his view. It brings hope and freedom and I think its too good to be true. As we talk he persuades me that it is true and I feel excited and peaceful at the same time. Then he leaves, or I leave and within a few minutes the understanding fades and I fall back to where I am now.

Of all the ways to look at things, I like Daryl's the best. Its also the way that I understand the least and am the most unable to defend. And that's the problem. I'm a largely rational person who likes rational explanations for everything. (I say largely because the only proof I have for believing in God is my own existance, but given that to stand on, the rest is relatively easy.) For some reason though I haven't been able to fully comprehend his view to be able to incorporate it into my own. I can't rationalize it and therefore I can't live it.

Daryl blogged about not having any education past high school but has been clearly led and prepared by God for the role he fills now. Well, other than a failed attempt at electronics engineering degree, I don't have any formal education since high school either and I too can see how God clearly prepared me for the role I'm in. The difference is, Daryl seems to understand what he's called to do while I don't have a clue.

Where does that leave me? Sitting on the fence wondering what to do about "the new guy". Heck... Forget about the new guy! What about me? Am I forgiven or not? What does that mean? Are there rules or not?

Now I don't want to come across as just another poor lost soul on the Internet. I'm not. I'm saved by grace through faith and I know where I'll be spending eternity. Its just the time between now and then that I'm having a hard time with. And I sure can't hold anyone else to a standard while I'm figuring it out.

"While I am in the world, I am the light of the world." - John 9:5.

God's Backhand

So one of the guys I know (I'll call him Peter but that's not his real name) suffers from Ulcerative Colitis. Its a nasty, uncurable disease of the digestive system and its taken Peter about 20 years and even more doctors to finally find a doctor who could help him. The good news is that he's now relatively symptom free.

About eight years ago Peter's best friend (I'll call him John, BTNHRN) used Peter's disease and suffering against him to steal his wife. Peter has had relatively little contact with them since then but in the last few days Peter has been hearing via the grapevine that John has been recently diagnosed with Crohn's Disease. Its a nasty uncurable disease similar to UC, only worse.

Us mere mortals might think that John is getting what he deserves and for awhile, Peter thought this way. But after 20 years of suffering Peter knows what John is looking forward to and feels a lot of empathy. So now he's got a decision to make: Send John the name of his doctor or let John suffer.

Over the course of this story unfolding a phrase was used several times: God's Backhand. Some people view God as this big guy upstairs watching their every move, just waiting for them to step out of line. When they do, he'll knock them off their feet with a good backhand to the head. Richard Hackley is one such person and subsequently wrote the song, God's Backhand.

So, you're probably wondering what Peter did. Did he help John out or is he going to get even and let him suffer? Well, before I answer that, I'd like to know what you would do.

Oh, what did you think of the song?

The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster

I'm sure I'm the last person on the net to find this but if you're a Star Wars fan you really should check out this blog:

The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster

I haven't finished reading it all yet but that hasn't stopped me from assigning a preliminary rating of 4/5.

Man's Best Friend

Normally its a nice dog. Very friendly and very playful. It seemed to live outside, rain or shine and we could frequently see it playing, digging and generally doing what dogs do. Its not our dog. It belongs to our neighbors (and I use that term loosely) to the North. We didn't mind it too much. In fact, from time to time we felt bad for it. It was generally alone and never got outside of the fence. Not even for walks on a leash.

So, about two weeks ago our neighbors decided to chain the dog up outside permanently. They put a pole about 25 feet from their back fence and then strung a cable from the pole to the fence. On the cable they clipped a chain and to the chain, the dog. I don't know why they did this. The yard is completely fenced and from what we can tell the dog had never gotten out.

For those of you who have visted us, you know how hot it gets in the summer time and while this summer has been a lot wetter and cooler, it still stays pretty warm overnight. Our usual habit is to put fans at each end of the house, one sucking air in, one blowing air out. In addition we leave all the windows open and sleep on top of the covers. It works but its not great. I sleep, but its fitfull and restless. Little did I know that in two weeks time I would be longing for fitfull and restless sleep.

At around 8:30 PM, the first night the dog was chained outside, everything changed. First the dog started yelping. You know the sound. That high pitched cry of pain like when you accidentally step on a tail and whatever the tail is attached to yelps. Every few minutes we'd hear a yelp. We had all the fans on as well as the TV so it was pretty easy to ignore so other than an occasional glance out the window we kept about our business. When we went to bed the dog was quiet again and we quickly fell asleep. That's when the howling started.

I've heard howling before. I used to live in rural Alberta where, if you were quiet at night, you could hear coyotes off in the distance. As a teenager I had read The Call of the Wild by Jack London and watched Kevin Costner's movie Dances with Wolves. Suffice it to say that I had a fairly romantic view of howling. Until that night.

First the yelps started again and gradually got louder. That was enough to wake me. Then the howling started. Not the romantic hollywood howling. No, this was a bone chilling, mournful howl the likes of which I had never heard before. I lay there and listened to it and the only thing I could figure was that maybe the dog was hurt. I got out of bed, went to the window and looked. The dog wasn't hurt.

Since I was awake I went to the bathroom, got a drink and wandered around the house. (I've noticed that this tends to happen more frequently the older I get.) When I completed my circuit the howling had stopped and I went back to bed. I feel asleep. The yelping started again and woke me up again. Then howling started. Again. This time when I got up and looked out the window I thought about going over to the neighbors. I wasn't feeling very neighborly though so I just closed the window and went back to bed.

It took a little longer to fall back asleep but eventually I did. About 2:00AM I woke up again soaked with sweat. With the window closed the room had heated up to about 27 degrees (that's 80 for my Anonymous readers from USA) and we were cooking. I opened the window, listened to the dog howling and then went and took a sleeping pill. The rest of the night passed ever so slowly and when morning came, I was in the most foul mood of my life. Or so I thought.

As I alluded to earlier, that was two weeks ago. Every night since then has been the same. We go to bed and fall asleep. The dog decides we shouldn't be sleeping and begins to howl. My thoughts of going over to visit the neighbors take on a violent tone and all hope of getting any sleep vanishes.

Now everyone knows that certain stages of sleep are needed for the regeneration of neurons within the cerebral cortex while other stages of sleep seem to be used for forming new memories and generating new synaptic connections. When you don't get enough sleep on a regular basis you will start to feel tiredness (duh!), irritability, and edginess. As sleeplessness continues you will be unable to tolerate stress and will notice problems with concentration and memory. Eventually you will experience behavioral, learning or social problems, frequent infections, blurred vision, vague discomfort, alterations in appetite and activity intolerance.

Well, after two weeks of sleepless nights I was feeling all of that and then some. So on July 1st at 5:30 in the morning while laying awake listening to the dog yelp I decided that enough was enough. I got dressed and stormed over to the neighbors house. I didn't know what I was going to say but I was going to say something. As I walked up to the door I noticed that it was very old and I could see through spaces around the edges. I banged on the door as hard as I could in the hopes that it would splinter into thousands of pieces and I could just barge right in. Alas, it was not to be. The door held firm but I was rewarded with huge booming thumps that resontated through the cool morning air. After many hard and particularly loud knocks I realized that if I didn't want the neighbor as upset and angry as I was I should probably stop. Too late though, he was already at the door.

Now we've lived next door to this house for a bit over two years. We've seen a lot of people come and go from that house and had come to the conclusion that more than one family (I use the word loosely) lived there. The guy that came to the door in nothing but his boxers, saggy gut and curly white was not someone who I had seen before. Nope. Caught completely by surprise at his nakedness and lack of familiarity, my anger diminished and I managed to say "Would you PLEASE keep your dog quiet." Wow. What amazing restraint! When I walked over there I was planning on damaging something and yet when the time came all I could manage was a Please! Puh-Leese!

Anyway, the naked guys says "Who are you?" and I respond, "I'm the neighbor who hasn't had a good night's sleep in two weeks because of your dog's barking howling and whining." He says "I'll see what I can do."

Yay! Finally! At last someone is going to silence that dog! I was almost giddy. Not so giddy that I couldn't think straight though. As I walked away from his house I realized that since I had never seen that guy before, chances are he wouldn't know which neighbor I was. So instead of walking straight back to my house I headed off in the opposite direction and walked around the block. Not bad for someone who is suffering from sleep deprivation, eh!

As I got back to the house my wife was just coming out the door with cell phone in hand. She had heard me banging on the door (cool!) and then had panicked at how long I was gone when I didn't come back right away. I reassured her that I was fine but after that we were both too wired to be able to go back to bed. Bummer cause the dog had stopped its yelping for the day.

As far as Canada Days go, it was a good one. I bummed around and caught up on some work, TV and XBox while my wife cleared a truckload of weeds from the back yard. After a trip to the grocery store and some BBQing we settled down for the evening in front of the TV to flip between a program on the Snowbirds and Canada Day celebrations across the country. It was all good.

Despite the next day being a Saturday, I knew that it would be foolish to stay up late when I was already so tired so at 10:30 we got all the fans set up, checked all the windows, did the bathroom routine and went to bed. And it was quiet.

Until 2:30AM.

Right on cue the dog started yelping, whining and howling again. I figured that if I was going to be awake and the dog was going to be awake, the neighbors shouldn't miss out on the fun. So I got up, got dressed and got ready to head over to their house. My wife, realizing the foolishness of such actions in the middle of the night, suggested that it would be safer if we called the police instead. Not wanting to argue with her I figured it was worth a shot. I knew they wouldn't come on a night when they would be quelling out of control Canada Day celebrations. After all, we weren't witnessing a drug deal, a gang fight, or an accident (maybe I could make it look like an accident...). It wasn't anything really serious. I called anyway.

After one ring the automated system picked up and asked me to press 1 if it was an emergency. While I debated about whether this was an emergency the voice then suggested that I press 2 if it was not an emergency. By this time I had decided it wasn't an emergency yet, so I pressed 2. About 2 seconds later I was talking to a real live person who was also awake in the middle of the night! Kudos to the RCMP! She asked what city and then proceeded to log my complaint. I told her that I knew the officers had more important things to deal with but if they had time for this I really would appreciate their help. She said that a car would be dispatched but that because of the Canada Day events they might not get there. Then she said the most wonderful words I had heard in a long time: "Sir, if they don't get there tonight, please call back again tomorrow night." Can you believe that! She called me Sir!

After I asked her if it was appropriate for me to bother them with such a trivial issue she reassured me and said that it was up to the officer who responded on whether or not anything could be done but that I was right to call. So for the first time in two weeks I began to feel a glimmer of hope that I would be able to sleep again. After profusely offering my thanks I hung up. I knew an officer wouldn't come that night but at least I had the option to call again the next night if the dog decided that I still didn't deserve to sleep. I walked around the house checking all the windows again and took a few moments to stare at the four-legged deamon next door.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught a flash of headlights turning the corner on our street. It was a police cruiser. A glorious white car with a beautiful set of red and blue lights on top. I felt the tears welling up in my eyes as I watched an officer step out of the car and approach my front door. I quickly went and turned on the outside light. I was so excited that I couldn't wait for him to get all the way to the door! Out I flew, running down the steps and stopping in front of him on the sidewalk.

He asked me a number of questions and then said that he was new in the city and would have to check on what action he was able to take. My heart sank a little but having read the noise bylaw thoroughly I knew that the law was on my side. As the officer left my house he promised that he would call and let me know the outcome. An hour later he did and we haven't heard the dog since. It's chain hangs limply in the yard but the dog is nowhere to be seen.

Once again the evening is approaching and I can't help but think about how soon I will be crawling into bed. I can already feel the sheet laying lightly across my body, the sound of the fans moving air gently through the house. The neighborhood peaceful and at rest. Tonight I will have a good sleep.