Little maman

There are plenty of things fascinating and adorable about the girl tirelessly taking care of her three baby dolls. Like the way she immediately agreed the third should be named Gladys, and consequently explained to her repeatedly, "Yername, Gladys."

But most fascinating and most adorable is the way she whispers to herself small words of reassuring self coaching like every French parent does as she tends to their every need : allez, hop, tac, and voilà.

On Consolation

It was early Monday morning when I definitively learned I would help a friend bury his dad the next day. They didn't know exactly what they wanted, but they wanted an homme d'église saying something, anything as they lowered him down. Ils avaient raison. Because saying goodbye to a dad with no one speaking truth by our sides is desperately hopeless indeed.

It was another one of those out of body twilight zone moments, as if I'm watching a film of an unlikely story. How did this kid from Pennsylvania end up in a bourgeois home outside of Paris to help lay to rest a man he doesn't know? Ce cheminement avec Dieu est drôlement étonnant, I wrote to a friend. Don't ask questions, count it as the extreme honor that it is.

At midnight the evening prior, I was led to write about the privilege it was to share these moments with this family I did not know. That I was not there to make their grief disappear, but I was there to share it with them, live it with them. And that reminded me of our God who promises the same. I read words declaring who our God is, that he is close to the broken-hearted, that he is merciful, compassionate, full of goodness, an ever-present help. Then I read words of our Jesus, sent to do the same. A man who had a habit of suffering, as it's put in French, a man who sympathizes with our weakness, a man who understands and is ready to share it all by our sides. A man who promises rest for our weary and heavy-laiden souls. A man who wept before the grave of his good friend, because he loved him, because he was overwhelmed with sadness, because he was revolted by death.

We don't have a God distant and indifferent, but a God who understands and shares and enters into pain with us. This is shocking. This is unlike anything we know in this earthly experience. This should surpass our understanding. What king is like this?

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort... 

He is the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. He is the source of mercy and comfort. And what do we human beings need more in this life than mercy and comfort? We who recoil at hardened dictators, demanding bosses, exigent teachers, we look to this King ready to sit at our side as we sob uncontrollably and know he must be good, he must be true, he must be what we've been seeking all this time.

...who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

And if he consoles us -- and he does -- he does it not just for our own well-being, but so that we can extend this consolation to others when our turn arises. He wants us and expects us and nudges us to pass it on. And here we see the overflowing fountain of generosity that comes from the heart of God: spilling over and onward and outward, using awkward and weak vessels to get the job done.

But don't miss what's implied. If we're passing on consolation that came from God, that means we very likely received God's consolation from someone. The first person you called who dropped everything and came to sit with you, it was not just a friend, it was God himself. The friends that pulled themselves together to order flowers and make you meals, that was more than friends, that was God himself. The person who didn't try to cheer you up, but sat and cried in silence with you, that was the Father of mercies and God of all comfort. And it also implies that if we are not opening ourselves up in vulnerability to allow others to comfort us, if we are hiding our grief or doing it alone, we are resisting the consolation that God offers. 

And now I realize what exactly was going on in my presence at the graveside. It resembles only moreso an unlikely story, and all the more an honor.

Bref, consolation comes.

Don’t back down, concentrate on seeing
The breakers in the bar, the neighbor’s greeting
My brother had a daughter
The beauty that she brings, illumination

An analysis of pebble beaches in a list of pros and cons

Cons:
1)  no sand castles
2) kills your feet after a while
3) get pelted when waves crash in
4) kids are constantly throwing rocks into the water...in the direction of swimmers' heads 

Pros:
1) does not enter your car or travel home with you in all of your belongings
2) kids are not tempted to eat it
3) the sea water makes them magnificently smooth and round and they glisten like gems when they're wet
4) when the water moves out and drops them they make a mesmerizing sound like shaking a sack of marbles
5) makes for a surprisingly comfortable bed

Unless a grain of wheat dies.

Calvin on Jean 12:24-25

For not only do we think that we perish in death, but our life also is a sort of continual death (Col 3:3). We shall therefore be undone, unless we be supported by that consolation which Paul holds out: if our outward man decays, the inward man is renewed from day to day (2 Cor 4:16). When, therefore, the godly are distressed by various afflictions, when they are pressed hard by the difficulties of their situation, when they suffer hunger, or nakedness, or disease, when they are assailed by reproaches, when it appears as if they would every hour be almost overwhelmed by death, let them unceasingly consider that this is a sowing which, in due time, will yield fruit.

In short, to love this life is not in itself wrong, provided that we only pass through it as pilgrims, keeping our eyes always fixed on our object. For the true limit of loving life is, when we continue in it as long as it pleases God, and when we are prepared to leave it as soon as he shall order us, or--to express it in a single word--when we carry it, as it were, in our hands, and offer it to God as a sacrifice. Whoever carries his attachment to the present life beyond this limit destroys his life; that is, he consigns it to everlasting ruin, devoting it to destruction.

Wandering

Today I walked the platform among a mass of people descending from the same train as me making the typical pilgrimage to which we've grown accustomed and looked over them feeling the lostness of modern man.
I listened to the fascinating noise that echoes in the center hall of a metro station with the beeps of daily passes clicks of rotating turnstiles clops of hurried leather shoes and the dull drone of confused mutters.
I read about Muslims only having 2,500 mosques in this country with a desire to double that number and thought it a curious statistic knowing we have almost as many churches with a desire to triple the number. 
I searched for space invaders and found a few. 
I heard a man make a millennium of church history simple in a matter of minutes and wanted to hear more.
I had the luck of falling upon the band of Balkan men with their dulcimer and upright bass and accordion and two full and soaring clarinets whose music has a strange capacity to fill me with life and stopped to listen before stepping on the long rolling sidewalk.
I watched two shots of espresso drip into a plastic cup half-full of tap water and heard the kind Frenchmen warmly call my first name as if I had arrived home from work after a long day.
I peered into the dark windows of an 'exceptionally closed' Burger King to find a ghost-town of lifeless abandoned booths and upon looking closer was surprised to see a Muslim man among them kneeling on a mat to say his mid-afternoon Ramadan prayers. Evangelical church planters are not the only innovative ones and perhaps abandoned fast food restaurants could answer the need for more mosques.
I wrestled incessantly with myself over a variety of trivial matters and tried to feel again whatever it was in the first place that got me to where I am wondering what in God's name could be next and how in the world it might unfold recalling countless dreams and brainstorms that were never pursued largely out of fear preferring to tackle projects that are instead surefire and easy to finish.
The death of self-importance is long, hard, slow, and painful and it's a stubborn zombie of a beast that just when you think has been killed once and for all comes right back to continue haunting you. The cross we are called to bear is a daily one.

Praying with Flannery

I dove into Flannery O'Connor's prayer journal last night. It's a plain, intimate and fascinating affair, even if it feels at times intrusive to read. I don't anticipate it being a source of model theology, yet it is certainly a worthy model of frank and vulnerable praying. For me there is added interest as it was written just a few years before being diagnosed with Lupus. A distant and sterile introduction by a scholar and friend does not ascribe much to the reality of the recipient of her prayers, yet he tends to affirm that prayer does in fact change things, that many of her prayers were, in one way or another, and even with a bit of irony, answered. I could quickly turn this blog into a record of appreciated quotes, lines I might be led to pray with her, and in that way the book is therapeutic, cathartic, perhaps not unlike some of David's intensely personal prayers becoming the corporate songbook of the church.

So, this was last night's...

All boils down to grace, I suppose. I am afraid of pain and I suppose that is what we have to have to get grace. Give me the courage to stand the pain to get the grace, Oh Lord. Help me with this life that seems so treacherous, so disappointing.

Added track to sleepy-time mix

Yes, I am still gradually adding to the sleepy time mix, which, if I've done things correctly, is downloadable here (without this song).

So, here's the newest addition. Is there a more beautiful song with which to tuck in your children and prayerfully end a day?

John My Beloved

I'm not nearly ready to try and say something worth reading about this album, except that it's exceptional. So far this is my favorite track. There's a lot of reasons why, though I recognize I've always been immediately partial to songs using a sustained note over the entire chord progression... (see also: this song, 10 years old this year and that sustained note halfway through still gets me)

Working on the non-verbals

Now that the girl has fully mastered norwegian babble, she's been working on things more sophisticated than actual words, like non-verbal communication.

Since the other day, she's been offering elaborate conversations, all in babble, but accompanied with complex movements of the head, eyes, eyebrows, mouth, shoulders, arms, and hands. Hips are not excluded, either. She knows exactly what she's saying. We don't, though we are certain she is drop dead serious; there's no mistaking that.

There are very clearly multiple levels of communication going on: explanation, exclamation, negotiation, rationalization, interrogation, collaboration. All that in the hands, though mostly in the shoulders lately.

She's really concentrating on developing her shrug. It's already close to perfection. She'll lift the arms and twirl the hands for extra expression. She'll do it repeatedly to get it just right. It may be a shrug to express delight or to shift the blame. The repetition gives us several tries to understand, as if it weren't clear the first time.

She's furrowing and raising eyebrows. Shaking, nodding, bowing, tilting, turning the head. Raising, folding, flapping, crossing the arms. Pointing, wagging, waving fingers.

I could go on and on. I didn't know the body was capable of such expression, especially not from a 1-year old. Scarier: she's observing all this elsewhere, carefully recording this, seeing, studying, downloading and installing, learning and practicing.

Maybe even from us.

La Vie des Gens

Our cinéma closed in September. There is one that's even better, but it requires a 30 minute drive on country roads. It's worth it.

This was at least the third occasion to go out on a weeknight to hear a director humbly present their film. Each time it's been an immense privilege. I like country cinemas that show good films and invite their directors, films and directors that otherwise would remain unknown. And it was also a privilege to realize, halfway through the director's talk, that I was understanding what he was saying. I was not lost, I was enjoying it as much as anyone else was.

This is probably not a film that will make its way subtitled to the states, and for that I'm sorry. It's a year of following a firecracker of a visiting nurse and her host of patients that become like family. We don't always fear death; we fear growing old, the limitations and the ailments and aches and the pains that come with it. And in spite of it all, there are smiles and bright spots, most often due to the visits of caretakers, those moments when solitude and loneliness are broken.

It's a tribute to humanity, and to those who give of themselves for others.

The title is simple and brilliant: it's about the life of people.

If Christianity is about visiting the sick and caring for the widows, we could all learn a thing or two from Françoise.