smiles.

Ahem...despite all the best intentions of writing many many many things down here over the last eight weeks or so, the time has just not been there. Marcus should be happy because, really, instead of blogging, I've been spending time with the newest member of my family - Grace Ella.

So today, Father's Day, I'm taking a second to share just one of hundreds of new thoughts and feelings I've been having (first up: I'm listening to lots of Phish again and it is good, although as Jeff now knows, I'm really rusty when it comes to recognizing lyrics and songs, so I guess that's something to work on).

Grace isn't doing too much besides sleeping, eating, pooping, spewing, and making the occasional whine or whimper. But with increasing frequency, she has been blessing us with the soft glimmer of a smile. Her eyes sparkle, her lips curve upward a tad, and she gets a giddy little facial expression that could melt the Titanic into a puddle of goo. The smiles suit her like sweetness suits honey.

I could tell you all sorts of things about how it makes me feel, but they all boil down to this: They make every day a little better.

What a powerful expression - and one we experienced smilers take for granted.

More to come on Grace later, and many other things, but the smiles are by far the highlight of the last eight weeks.

any day now.

Beth is not technically due for another week, but we're hoping that the baby will be here soon. We're in this really weird phase where we have like nothing going on because we thought the baby might be here so we didn't plan anything. It resulted in us doing a lot of sitting around this weekend and being lazy. Not a bad thing, but just weird since we've been scrambling for several months to prepare for our daughter to arrive, and now we have nothing left to prepare and we're just sitting, waiting, wishing.

Everyone says we'll wish we had more of this time when she gets here. I'm sure that's true. And I'm really happy that Beth and I have gotten to have some really special time together just the two of us right before she is born. We've gotten to have a lot of fun together.

We're just ready to get things rolling, especially Beth. A lot of people don't understand how uncomfortable it is at this stage for the mother. I just want our little girl to show up so I can finally look into her eyes, but I also want her to come so that Beth can feel a little relief and so she can have her body back to herself.

So whenever you're ready little one...we're here waiting with open arms. See you soon.

what the heck are we doing?

My first read on this side project is a book I've been meaning to read for several months: Jim and Casper Go To Church.

And actually I read it about a week ago and it was a very quick read, so instead of my compartmentalized thoughts on sections of the book, all I have to say now is how I felt in general after reading it.

Condensed down, I have two arcs of thought. One, we Christians don't seem to be very good at self-deprication in a community sense. We as a body too easily carry around this sense that we've got it all figured out. Its pretty telling to me that it took a book in which a Christian pastor paid an atheist to attend church with him and tell him what didn't work for me to see that we might not have it all right in the way we do things. One of the most powerful suggestions in the book is that Christians need to practice the art of apology. Like, oh say, "we're sorry world for people who call themselves Christian and then say things like this."

We definitely could use a little humble pie from time to time. We don't have it all figured out any more than the guy who lives on the street. We need to act like it.

My other thought dwells on the importance of true conversation. I like that Jim and Casper make it a value of theirs, as friends, that they will be completely open-minded with one another and engage in conversation, not debate. They accept each other's emotions and feelings without reacting or becoming judgmental. They listen. Really! They listen! Most of all, they enjoy each other as much for their differences as for what unites them. Man what a concept. If I could only figure out how to do that better I'd really have something, too. And the same goes for so many of us.

I like the refreshing way that Jim and Casper poke at the Christian church to uncover some truths. The church isn't so great at taking a closer look at itself in the mirror, but I like that these guys have started a conversation about it.

For more food for thought on this subject, check these out:

Jim and Casper's Home Page

Beth and Traci Go To Church (an online conversation)

Churchrater.com (it is just what it sounds like)

side project.

While Cyrus and I work on getting this other project to "go live," I'm trying to read and pursue thoughts and questions on my own that have been on the mental to-do list for some time. For example, I sat down this morning and started writing down books I wanted to read and quickly came up with about a dozen. So this will be the side project to the main show Cyrus and I are constructing right now.

I hope to keep writing about these other things here, but between the project with Cyrus, life, volunteering with high school students, my marriage, and a baby soon-to-come (definitely not prioritized in that order), we'll see how much I really get to offer random musings about random things.

The first post in this side project should follow...

own what you know.

I'm so thankful for the response I've gotten to my last post. This will be a fun challenge and I have no idea where it will go, or what it will look like, or if anybody will want to talk to me afterwards.

Cyrus, no doubt feeling singled out in my story about the genesis for this project, emailed me and we bounced ideas back and forth and we have agreed to start this project together, as a way to keep us accountable to it. The plan: to read and study things from all sides and offer up our thoughts and more importantly, offer up the sources for our thinking so that you can make up your own mind. Because that is what this is all about.

We hope that others may join in the conversation through comments, suggestions, other blogs, etc. But it will start with the two of us.

So what in the world do we want to tackle first? Intellectual property law.

Yeah, I'm surprised, too. But the more I thought about it, what better place to start a journey toward owning my own knowledge than to start with the rules of our society that protect what I do with what I know. And Cyrus is a little bit excited about this subject. And he and I are major-league geeks. No really.

And we have lots of friends who are creatively geared, and who market their creativity, and therefore could benefit from what we unearth.

So there you have it. Its time to own what you know.

a challenge to you.

and by you, i mean me.

I used to feel really great about my writing, my thinking, my ideas, my ability to process and critically analyze things. Lately, though, I feel as if my mind is in a mental bog; whatever that means. I feel slow to adjust, slow to react, slow to change directions, slow to realize, slow to........................just slow and uninteresting.

Lately, I've been missing reading and new ideas and challenges and questions that make me re-think my own woefully self-interested truths. And gray. I miss gray.

(tangent: On the way home from Barnes & Noble tonight, Beth wisely observed that I'm hopped up on espresso - a caramel macchiato with an extra espresso shot. I quickly added that after perusing Jeffrey Sachs' The End of Poverty and Common Wealth, Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope, Shane Claiborne's Irresistible Revolution, and Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz, I'm also hopped up on ideas. Nonetheless, in college I felt this energy so much more than I do nowadays, whether today's stimulus is caffeine or a synthetic longing from detouring into the minds of some brilliant, if not eccentric, thinkers.)

I recently had dinner with a high school student who is on the cusp of his own great inward personal journey of faith and exploring the ideas of this world and this generation and what it means to be a Christian on this planet and what that looks like for him. When I'm serious with myself, this one meal is probably what has triggered this hunger for a renewed sense of exploration. Here is this high school student reading and learning and questioning and debating and agreeing and disagreeing and starting all over - something I wish I had done at his age, and that I wish I would do now, and that I'll probably wish I had done five years from now. It has left me discontented in the same way that I imagine people feel when they experience their "mid-life crisis," only I'm not quite there yet in terms of age. Call this my "quarter-life crisis" I suppose.

Anywho....I'm tired of feeling envious of those around me who can digest new books and ideas on the order of hours and days, as opposed to my own personal speed of weeks and months. I'm tired of hearing about this or that great read, or this or that interesting website, and not taking the time to check it out and gnaw on it a bit with my intellectual molars. I'm tired of feeling like I'm not challenging myself, or letting others challenge me enough, with ideas and thinking and truths.

A few months ago, I was talking to Cyrus and we were expressing our own frustration with people who don't take time to actually study a certain thing, but who instead study what people say who have studied that thing (e.g. reading books and opinions of people who have studied the Bible, instead of just studying the Bible). A confession: I'm absolutely guilty of this regarding just about every subject we've ever thought or talked about.

But the conversation triggered an idea that I've left on the backburner and now am feeling like is ready for the light of day. I told Cyrus that it would be both fun and stimulating to take some subject like global warming or poverty in Africa or how to build a more energy efficient toothbrush holder (fine, you're right, I didn't tell Cyrus that) and study it for a period of time, say a year, and then present the results of that study on this blog (and as I went along). The idea would be not to just present what I had learned in a book-report format, but also present where I had learned it for those who wanted to make the journey there and back for themselves for a richer and more vigorous discussion. And, the challenge for me would be to read both sides of the debate - and try to present them fairly and honestly - for the sake of the greater discussion.

This is really not all that earth-shattering of an idea. And I give partial credit for it to Michael Crichton and his approach to the book State of Fear (he studied global warming intensely for three years, then wrote a fictional narrative about it, at the end of which he presents his own opinions and where he formulated them - something that seemed highly persuasive and engaging to me).

All I'm really wanting to do is pursue truth, wherever I can find it and whatever it looks like, and however black, or grey, or white it is. And the convenient reality is that I love to research.

What's the challenge to you then? Push me. Don't let me not do this. Hold me accountable. Honestly, only about five people read this blog, and I love and trust you all profoundly. You all carry substantial sway in my heart, and if you all teamed up, you could get me to do some pretty crazy things (except listen to country music). All I'm asking here is for some nudging to do something that I don't have the motivation to get myself to do in a reasonably consistent way.

In the end, I don't want to look my daughter in the eye fifteen years from now and have to tell her that all I learned about the world, I learned through somebody else's learning. I want to own my own wisdom, and the corresponding, vastly bigger side of that coin, my own lack of wisdom.

And I'll be that much more interesting (or realistically, I imagine annoying) at cocktail parties and Marcus' infamous Christmas bash.

winter retreat 2008.

Last night I got back from a three-day trip to Laurelville, PA with about 200 high school students. The goal of the weekend was to get away from our normal lives to a place where we can reflect and refuel. A lot of good things happened, and I hope that a lot of good things will continue to happen as students and leaders process the weekend and the things we learned together. The early reports I heard gave me the impression that everyone considered this to be one of the best winter retreats ever. To read and see some of what went on, check out the official Retreat Blog, written by my friends Cyrus and Maya, whose regular blogs you can find to the side.

For me, it was incredible. My high school guys challenge me to be a better leader and a better man. Some of them are so mature it blows my mind. I crave more time with them just to hang out and talk and be guys. Worship was emotionally intense, creative, and beautiful. And the messages, all focused on the question of what do we do when God is silent or appears silent to us, gave me plenty of stuff to wrestle with in the coming months.

This morning, I'm pretty tired, and a conversation I had on Sunday evening challenged me to figure out why. I would say its largely because I'm an introvert, but I hope I'm not using that as a crutch. I don't draw my energy from being around people, like some people who I know and love. For me to get out of my shell, let loose, and love on high school students and other adults for three days straight takes a lot of focus and disregard for my own self. But I realized that I do complain a fair amount of being tired, and I hope I'm not a whiner about it. I don't want people who talk to me this week to take away from our conversation that it was a good weekend but man that guy expended too much energy -- why would anyone submit themselves to such insanity? I want them to take away what I took away -- that spending the weekend with high school students and the adults who care about them is inmeasurably rewarding, but that's not even why I do it (I hope). The weekend is, at its heart, an investment of love, energy, and thought in the future of these kids' lives and in the lives of those whom they will touch. I pray that the investment will pay off for the kingdom and for the poor, weak, and marginalized of this world.

And for those of you reading this who want to know the real truth about the weekend, more than the soundbyte, lame response that "it was great," please ask me about it and prepare to spend some time listening (and check out the Retreat blog).

I am exhausted, but it is so worth it.

thought doodles.

Writable thoughts have not come to me lately. Maybe I've just been too stringent regarding what I'll post publicly, but I think I'm having trouble writing in what I'll call "my voice." I had a thought to write about change a while ago, but couldn't really get it off the ground mentally.

It may be that I'm transitioning so much right now that what I consider my own voice is changing. Maybe that's why I felt like talking about change. I'm looking for a new job. I'm waiting for a new daughter. With Beth, I'm emotionally preparing to close the book on this time in my life.

I also feel that my thoughts have become more and more serious and weighty, and I don't want to always write about weighty things because it gets...well...too heavy.

So what I can I write about right now to change the direction of this post into something lighter, something that kicks off 2008 with a snap? Let's see, there's a Super Bowl coming up...no, too many reporters covering that one. We're electing a new President soon...no, that's back to that heavy stuff. Beth is having a ba....oh yeah, I told you already.

Well, here goes.

Do you remember what life was like before computers? Before the internet, email, blogs, websites, google (before google for pete's sake!), surfing, even having a computer at every desk?

I remember my elementary school days, when you'd have to go to the computer lab, and then you'd have to boot up your Apple IIGS with a 5" floppy disk just to play Oregon Trail or Frogger. Forget about word processing and downloading, and who the heck knew what gigabyte meant? Computers in those days had to work just to make the screen show colors!

How in the world have we come so far in 15 or so years? Imagine what things will look like 15 years from now....my kids won't even be driving by then.

Personally, I'm looking forward to the digitization of all forms of information as we know it. Word documents are child's play compared to entire movies being passed around from computer to computer. We'll be beyond movies, though. Think of all of the different ways we transmit information and entertainment: paper, disks, CDs, DVDs, HD-DVDs, television, radio. All of these will become irrelevant sooner or later.

The geek in me is so amped.