The Last

It is time for this thing to come to an end. It is a strange world in which we live, and indeed one that I no longer understand. Why should I write anything more when it is clear I don't understand the world and cannot be sure anyone cares to hear what I have to say? On top of it all my voice is rather superfluous. These are the days when all voices swell up to cacophonous irrelevance, for if every voice is only opinion, then they are all noise. In that spirit then, I begin the ending. 

Children believe their fathers to be larger than life. They might even brag to their friends of their father's greatness. I remember doing this in reference to my own father. I had to say goodbye to him recently. I promised I would never forget him, but that is a powerful lie when loved ones pass. We all know it is a lie, and that we all fade, but we cling to the comfort that we will not be forgotten. 

Just today I took my college-age daughter to dinner in lovely Wimberley, Texas, a mere 10 or so miles from her college campus. It was beautiful in so many ways, but it was also starkly self-revealing. At one point, my daughter said, in the relaxed lightness of safe conversation, that I was an average man; "mid" is the term she used. The context of the comment was playful, and I took it as such, but it did get me thinking not of my own vain pursuits, but of the vanishing brevity of life. 

They say I'm in the middle years of my life, but the reality is that I'm in the late fall or early winter of my life, if the averages are true. And in my case the averages probably don't apply, since my father died at 83 after medical heroics extended his life for nearly 20 years, and probably 10 years beyond any real quality of life.

What I have accomplished is little in the grand scheme of things. I feel like Socrates in boasting of his ignorance, which was a boast of humility, but then that too is a kind of prideful identification with the greatness of Socrates. You can see that even my boasts of humility cling to the hope of greatness. 

All this to say that the recent loss of my father has made me curiously and selfishly pensive. What is the real importance of my life? What is to be my legacy? Why did my teaching and writing career end? Was it my divorce and the necessary punishments that come? Why must it all fade away? 

Even the writing of this blog is a peculiar vanity which I know must end. I once told a friend that I wrote it for myself, but I'm through keeping my own society. It is probably best for me to finish my years simply listening. 

The time has passed for me to do the great things I once hoped to do. It is unlikely that I shall ever finish the Ph.D. I once dreamed of, or even the sommelier training that appeals to me. The arc of my life has turned in the direction of anonymity to all but my amazing wife and wonderful kids and a few friends, and that is enough. I'm no intellectual now if I ever was. I do a hard man's labor every day with all the attendant aches and pains to go with it.

I'm blessed to receive so many providential moments to heed in the last few years.

I once asked my church if they might want my services in teaching a class or two on topics I have spent many years studying and teaching. I believed my heart was selflessly interested in the moment. They did call me in for a meeting or two and questioned the length of my notes, and quibbled over things. It seemed they didn't want what I was offering and so I respectfully removed myself. 

Along with "mid" accomplishments come "mid" earnings. As such, I know I will probably not retire early or write or travel or learn from the schoolroom of the world as I once had hoped to do. There are too many obligations, reducing me to the grand laboring class of my grandfather, which I now see as a great blessing and compliment. I only hope I will live out my years with the dignity he demonstrated in all the hard labor to which he was bound for the sake of his family and in the end can set aside the whining of this confession. 

I once thought I would be able to make some claim to raising one of those countercultural families that contends boldly with the prevailing secular culture, but that also seems lost; a result of disunity and failure in my first marriage. 

My failures and disappointments are numerous and weighty, so obvious that they have pierced any delusion of perceived greatness. And though I still feel like an accomplished man in many ways, it is obvious to me now that my accomplishments will not shine in ways that my own kids will see. For one thing, I'm a man of faith and have spent much of my life in dedicated study of that faith. No doubt my children will see this as the height of my self-delusion and mediocrity. 

We live in a world where our children can measure the accomplishments of their fathers against not just the guy with the boat down the street, but all the fathers everywhere. Who will I be in the eyes of my children next to the world? 

It is amazing how often I have encountered prideful people; people who believe themselves to be authoritative or culturally superior or politically instructive or in some other position to impress me. How often is their boast met with truth? Not often. Why should I think my own claim any different than theirs? 

I end with the concept of the "extraordinary average man." I have perhaps always been enamored with the idea. From the many examples in my life, such as my father and grandfather, to my coaches and teachers, to examples in art, such as the great poem, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," to the greatest Christmas movie of all time, "It's a Wonderful Life," examples abound of the anonymous greatness of ordinary virtue. Among the classical virtues, you will never find "internet star." 

I've always been deeply moved by the story of George Bailey; a man destined for greatness, but sidetracked by duty. And the virtuous fulfillment of his duty became his greatness in the end. 

These are not the people who go viral, but the people who namelessly move the generations towards civility and grace and excellence and truth. I hope one day to be in their company. 

The End. 

In Remembrance of Dad

Eulogy - 8/7/2023

One of the best ways to capture my father in a simple image is a scene from this past Father’s Day. The twins joined us at the nursing home to visit dad (I have video of this if you are interested in seeing it). It was a good night for him. He was responsive and engaged. We took him into the piano room of the nursing home and Charity broke out her guitar. The twin’s playlist largely consists of Taylor Swift songs, and I can’t say dad would normally be a big fan. Carrie Underwood, yes! Taylor Swift, not so much. But as their sweet voices echoed through the cold halls of that nursing home, dad broke into a smile and shouted out, “Praise Jesus!” That tells you who my dad was. Though his brain was broken by long life, his reflexive response to the beauty of that moment was to acknowledge what he believed to be its source. My dad really did see Jesus everywhere, especially when he saw his grandchildren, and certainly when he heard music, even if it was “Getaway Car” by Taylor Swift. 

The memories of dad are too thick to simply offer here an anthology of them. We will all no doubt have our opportunities so share together in remembrance of dad, as we already have to some extent. I wanted instead to focus on the legacy of my father, the good and precious gifts he bestowed upon me, that I hope to give to my own children. 

 

I’ll start with an easy one: dad was a foodie, and certainly passed that on.

 

Sondra reminded me that dad believed gravy should be one of the food groups. I certainly remember him saying things like that. My own kids will remember that we once had a discussion of various super-powers and which ones we would like to have. I said that I wanted to have the power of gravy. They were young and thought I was funny. 

 

But it is true that dad’s love for gathering around the table and laughing with family and friends is something that we kids have preserved. 

 

Dad also passed down a legacy of enduring love…

 

Mom and dad would have celebrated their 63^rd anniversary this month. They were married at 20 and 19. My daughter Trinity just turned 19. What do you think about marriage at your current age, T? 

 

The point is that mom and dad demonstrated that love is not a matter of the passions only. As Lewis put it: Love is an affair of the will, deliberately reinforced by habit, and sustained by the grace that both parties ask and receive from God. 

 

Mom and dad (mostly mom) demonstrated that love is a matter of tolerance, longsuffering. Did you know there are flaws in men that even wives can’t fix? I saw mom try. Kids today speak much of tolerance, usually of the political variety. But you almost can’t take them seriously unless they have been married for few years. Deep tolerance of the flaws in another, and mutual grace, are forged in the crucible of marriage. I’m so grateful for the example of enduring love that my parents provided. 

 

Dad also modelled for us the pursuit of learning…

 

Dad made many sacrifices of time as a young man in the Navy to earn his Bachelor’s and then Master’s degrees. He even did all the course work for a Ph.D. in Psychology. His children were inspired to seek out knowledge ourselves. Bob got a bachelors and then Master’s in Business Admin. Sondra took on the great challenge of earning the Juris Doctor degree and then went on to become a greatly decorated lawyer in San Diego. Not to be outdone, I went to school for a couple years too. Dad’s hunger for knowledge, his love of language, and his passion to grow intellectually certainly made a lasting mark on all of his children. 

 

Dad passed down a legacy of humor…

 

My kids probably wish I wouldn’t carry on this family legacy, especially when one considers the quality (or lack thereof) of my humor. But dad taught me not to take myself too seriously. I was meant to take God seriously, take truth seriously, take my commitments seriously; but not life, not myself. There is way too much about ourselves and others to laugh about. 

 

Dad’s brand of humor was definitely the art of sarcasm, mixed with general goofiness. I don’t even need to assess whether or not this has been passed down. All you need to do is listen to Bob’s kids or mine to know that it has in spectacular fashion. 

 

My dad taught me what fatherly love looks like…

 

My dad was not a perfect man, and at times struggled to be his best to my siblings, but after some years immersed in Christian grace, he became a truly wonderful father to me. He was my disciplinarian, my guide, my counsellor, my interlocuter, my quarterback, my ski instructor, and greatest friend. Quality time came out of the abundance of time my dad consistently gave to me. He was an affectionate, gentle, encouraging, and deeply present protector and provider. I simply couldn’t have asked for a better dad! Can any higher praise be afforded a man? I only hope my kids will feel that I’m a good dad too; that I have carried on my dad’s legacy in this regard. 

 

Finally, dad was a man of faith…

 

Many of the people in this room frankly don’t much understand dad’s faith. It is fairly normal today to find so many descendants of Christian parents whose life can only be characterized by indifference towards Christianity or a kind of oblivious default secularism. In my estimation, this often comes with a real lack of knowledge about what Christianity really is, and certainly without replacing it with anything of substance. Mom and Dad raised me in a distinctively Christian home. It was a deeply Christian world, and it gave meaning to my life.

 

In one sense the Christian belief my dad affirmed is so simple: He believed in an unbending moral universe, grounded in the character of God, expressed in the Bible, leaving us all exposed as deeply flawed. Dad chose at times, as we all do, to pay attention only to the flaws in others. I firmly believe that he grew in this respect over time and really did feel the full weight of his own sin and how it affected others. He believed that the only place to go with this discovery was to a God who had made a way of forgiveness. Doing so became a practiced reality in dad’s life, a continual return to grace, and it changed him over time. It softened him, humbled him, made him sensitive and sorrowful and created in him, especially in his final years, a peaceful confidence and sweetness that I think we all yearn for in this life. 

 

But it was also obvious to dad that the most common sentiment we throw around at funerals is simply untrue. We always say of the loved and lost that they will “live on in our memories,” but even when we say it we know it isn’t true. Dad affirmed the resurrection of Christ as the only safeguard against simply dissolving away. And he didn’t affirm it as a kind of wishful thinking. It was a firm and confident conviction that enabled him to release his grip on this life with great hope and dignity.  

 

Dad’s last days reminded me much of a beloved C.S. Lewis quote, and I will simply leave you with these words.

 

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” 

I Don't Mean to Brag or Anything, but I'm Probably a Prophet

Time has proven that I am a prophet, probably. My students would not remember these things, but I distinctly remember predicting certain realities that would emerge from our culture's slide into secular postmodernism. Nobody calls it that, by the way. It isn't as if there is an orientation class in college called "Instructions in Proper Secular Postmodernism," or a band called "The Secular Postmodernists," about which my former students would be alerted to say to themselves, "Wait a second, my entirely prophetic teacher in high school warned me about these scalawags, these rascally secular postmodernists. It's so helpful that they have made themselves so easy to spot." No, it is so pervasive that it is water to a fish. Everyone today is intellectually oblivious to the fact that this worldview is becoming our acrid atmosphere. It's like smog to people in LA in the 80's. You breathe it in until you don't notice it. People think carbon emissions will kill us, but I am confident we are currently dying of a noxious and unquestioned ideology, an ideology incidentally that is displacing much better, older, stronger, truer ones. 

And I told my students exactly the ideas to beware of! I even told them how things would go if these ideas were to gain sway over the culture.

Here is a list of the things I told them would happen:

1. Secular schools will simply choose a secular religion over Christianity and teach that. Why? Because you cannot separate religion and the state; specifically you cannot separate religion and state schooling. 

Another way of saying this is that there is no "value-neutral" form of education. We are not A.I. simply crunching data. Actually, I predicted that just about anything would fill the void, so long as it could be speciously defined as "science" or "reason" or "practical education," etc. And so now we have Marxism, scientism, identity politics, socialism, and postmodern relativism, all incoherently filling the void left by Christianity in schools. It is not as if students are simply given brute facts, after which they go home to make their own decisions. No, these schools have given them a God (The Earth), unquestioned authority (scientists or leftist "experts"), sin (disrespect of individualistic identity, or harm to the planet), the devil (those of the old religious paradigm), penance (renunciation of privilege), salvation (having one's penance accepted), and heaven (a world of nebulous green and race harmony which never comes). 

The end result of all this is a staggering lack of self-awareness on the part of educators in particular, but students as well. These people affirm with uncritical zeal that religion and education are a toxic brew, but then turn around and boldly claim that it is a manifest truth that capitalism, for example, produces all manner of moral problems in a society. Now, whatever your view of capitalism, surely you can see that claiming such a thing is a bald moral pronouncement. On what basis is the claim made? These same people will say that old cultures defined marriage a particular way and it produced patriarchy, but now we have evolved. And then they will, with all the severity of Jonathan Edwards, claim that their utterances are wholly grounded in authority, and that reason manifestly affirms the truth of their utterances, and that an apocalypse awaits those who don't heed! Their inability to see this glaring inconsistency compromises their ability to analyze the truth claims that matter most to humanity and make them the worst kind of religionists--namely, those that merely make claims to their authority in advancing their positions. 

2. The new postmodern paradigm is offered as a solution to the evil old system of certain truth (dogmatism), and as such claims to solve conflict in the world, but paradoxically will create more conflict in the end. 

You would think that telling people that everyone gets to be philosophically correct would lead to peace and harmony. Nope! The most intolerant of all people are the pharmaceutically pacified clones of the modern university and their intellectual parents. They all think exactly the same way and are ready to tear everything apart, especially anything that seems old, Christian or American. They like vintage; they just don't like old! 

But I even told my students why this would happen, and it seems so obvious. If you take two minds in conflict over something, say religion, and you tell them that the truth of their beliefs is subjective, and there is nothing outside the two minds towards which they are arguing, then of course you can only be right if you shout louder or exert force or get a mob to agree with you and beat back the other view. If there is no "Truth" and there are only ephemeral "truths in minds," then argument loses its art and becomes merely an evolutionary struggle to win. 

3. The new apostasy will never be viewed as such because in a postmodern world any amalgamation of ideas can live under the arbitrary label "Christian." 

If Christianity is a "relationship and not a religion," then it collapses down to subjective experience. This is why so many people are offended when you try to define them out of being a Christian. There are no definitions because words are a power play, and why should anyone listen to you? And that will always be the reaction of the postmodern to an argument. He or she will become offended that you have the audacity to claim that your brand of Christianity is the correct one. You might as well be a Buddhist Christian or Muslim Christian in such a state of affairs, for there can be no contradiction in such things definitionally. 

4. Postmodernism will lead individuals to solipsistic isolation and then depression and meaninglessness and despair and ennui and disease and psychosis. 

If reality or truth only exist for each individual within the ongoing self-defining exercise of personal experience; if it all reduces to the accidental personal theater of neurons and synapses creating a kind of personal matrix, then what can come but desperate loneliness? 

In such a belief structure, there can be no real connection, or at least the connections with others that exist are only a part of the self-defining and self-experiential complex of experiences necessary to find oneself and define one's own reality in a potentially meaningless world. And so people look within, elevating themselves to the position of arbiter of all sense impressions from the world; in fact, combing the internet and social media for more data, drowning in an unmanageable sea of data. And they do it to enlarge their own self-created world, to interpret it all, to arrange it as they wish. They are in fact God, presiding over all of reality, and that is precisely why they are so miserable. It is far too much to arrogate to oneself. And their worlds always collapse or at the very least become unmanageably fractious and incoherent. Then they start asking what difference it would make if there were one less naked ape locked in this game, and of course they know the answer. 

5. The meaning of categories like male and female and marriage and sexuality will be rendered so meaningless that people will push for things like identifying as an animal or polygamy or pedophilia or just about any imaginable perversion. Marriage will become so meaningless that fewer and fewer people will seek to be married. 

Did you realize that women seeking a traditional experience of marriage and motherhood are now given the countercultural name of "Trads?" That is the counterculture! Having as many partners or abortions as necessary to be able to be Vice President of marketing for some exceedingly important widget maker and delaying marriage to 40 if at all is the new culture. No children, just a Burmese Mountain Dog and an apartment in New York or Austin. Certainly there will be more time for a total submersion into self in such a state of affairs, and that is why it is to be preferred. 

And if children come into it, a true postmodernist would not raise his child to be male or female, Christian or atheist American or anything else. They put upon their children the same god-like burden of creating and sustaining all of reality! A true postmodernist would attempt to somehow raise a child in a state of pristine neutrality, or infinite idealogical openness, so they can be truly free to create their own subjective world. To do anything else would be to imprison them. And yet it never occurs to such people that they are in fact raising the child with a set of philosophical assumptions. One obvious assumption is that human beings can function in prolonged states of philosophical neutrality. Another would be the entire network of uncritical assumptions brought in by the secular postmodernism that clearly informs such an insane view of reality and human psychology. 

In conclusion, think about the realities that this series of changes entails. It encompasses one's view of reality, identity, authority, ethics, and sense of purpose. In other words, in the past few years there has been a seismic shift in the intellectual ground of every area that is most significant to human life, and it has happened with most Christians living in blinking cluelessness. Applaud the godless for their power in terra forming the entire intellectual world, and in one generation rendering Christianity and any other Theistic religion nearly obsolete. The only problem then is what they have left in its place. 

Mother Gaia Democrats Raise Alt Right Christian Republican

Autin, Texas

Moonbeam and Chaz Lovegood didn't mean it. In retrospect, they probably shouldn't have had a child in the first place. The planet groans under the burden of the human parasite as it is. But they were modest. They were only going to have one designer child at age 40, participating humbly with mother Gaia in creating life. They gave birth in a natural spring to their one daughter Aurora, fully expecting her to find her own identity, and by that they meant she would become an enlightened modern person and think just like them. 

Instead, and much to their horror, Aurora grew up to be what they call an "Alt Right Christian Republican." 

"We just don't understand how this could happen," said Moonbeam, spluttering ugly tears as she said it. "We were careful to raise Aurora in all the best schools--open, expressive schools without draconian rules or absolutes, creative communities of care and inclusion. And we didn't even raise her to be a girl or a boy or an American or any religion. We raised her in pristine neutrality, giving her the gift of creating her entire universe, unlike the stifling sectarianism of our parents and their blind Christian white privilege. How could she do this to us?" 

"As a father I was careful to manage my toxic masculinity," said Chaz with a flip of his beautifully maintained dreadlocks. Chaz was adorned in hemp clothing and Birkenstocks, and spoke truly about doing everything he could to downplay his masculinity. His diet of lentils and kale gave him a sleek, almost waif-like physique. Certainly few people on planet earth would be intimidated by the androgynous skeleton of Chaz, even in his most aggressive stance of protest. 

"Whenever Aurora had questions about hard moral dilemmas in her life, or questions about death or God or meaning--you know, all the hard questions--I was careful never to mansplain things to her. She needed to find the answers to these questions for herself. We would always encourage her to ask the hard questions whenever she asked the hard questions. Answers are not as important as endless questions. We wanted our daughter to join us in our confusion." 

"And then one day she asked us whether the claim that answers are not as important as questions is itself an answer rather than a question, and we knew she was headed down a dangerous path toward absolutes. She was trying to find answers, and that was distressing to us. Why? Because we could sense her fear. And fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. And hate leads to suffering. I heard that quote somewhere once, and it is so deep." 

And on Chaz and Moonbeam went, telling their woeful tale of losing their daughter. It began with a search for truth, which assumes a belief that there is a truth to be found. She went off to college, took philosophy classes, and met the most endangered of all species--the intelligent Christian. She found answers to the endless questions, answers she could believe. And now she lives a life of conviction rather than confusion. Whenever she opens her mouth, her parents think she is speaking Ancient Greek or something. 

And get this! Aurora does't even smoke weed anymore. She drinks non-organic Chardonnay, and sometimes doesn't even recycle the bottle! She is truly lost.

Couple Laments Trip to Napa not Bougie Enough

Napa, California

A wine tasting at an upper tier winery in Napa is fraught with expectations. Will it be truly special enough to make the specials feel that they are special? It is the feeling of the thing that matters, and feelings are subjective. Will the experience make one forget that all pleasure is a mere vacuous distraction from this long march to the grave? Will it be enough to make some VP of accounting for some random exceedingly important widget maker feel the weight of his exalted position in life? And what happens when it falls short, when it isn't bourgeois enough?

Just such an experience afflicted poor Renard McPhereson and his new wife Trina just recently. After some time recovering from the encounter, they felt the courage to open up about the harrowing experience.

“I don’t even know where to start,” said Renard indignantly. “It all began when we pulled up to the enormous metal gate with the logo of the winery on it. We used the gate keypad to dial in, explaining that we had a tasting appointment. Ridiculous! It felt like we were on some squawk box ordering Mc Donald’s.” At this the 26 year old Trina plaintively mewled, “Eww!”

“Surely they could have had an actual person, perhaps a footman at the gate with a splash of bubbly there to greet us. Instead we had to wait until we pulled all the way up to the winery parking lot to be greeted by some millennial with a $200 haircut, sculpted beard, and Patagonia vest. Where was the properly dressed footman? I don't mind the pretensions of the proletariat as a general rule. Hiding class distinctions in the capitalist structure is helpful to prevent things like guillotines, but this is Napa!"

On Renard went, bravely telling his tale of woe, with Trina chiming in occasionally with an “Oh my gawd,” or “seriously," or her favorite, “eww!” His critique began with their pedantic host. His title was “Executive Enological Experience Expert," and somehow that all fit on his name tag. He had little interest in Renard or his bouncy bride, and spent the time name dropping about this celebrity winemaker and that celebrity winemaker, and how the clay loam this and alluvial that and the Sun on the ridge at 4:33 pm each day made truly exalted wines worth $2000 a bottle. But in all of this, Mr. Shimmering Beard oil audaciously ornamented with the fat watch clearly didn’t notice how important Renard and his trophy wife really are, how they like to name drop too, how they like to talk about their wine collection. He showed no interest in them at all! It was as if Mr. Italian Loafers thought Renard and Trina were the lucky ones to be there; that they were just another appointment printed on special linen paper. 

Not only that, but they didn’t even call to see if Trina likes black truffle, which she doesn’t! The whole tasting menu lacked any personal touches. The Iberico ham leg displayed in the tasting room was a nice touch, but it wasn’t even from Huelva! 

The interview ended with Renard simple dissolving into incoherent ranting. “It was all so derivative, unsurprising, more ponderous lighting of barrels and perfectly appointed rooms and polished glass and pretty gourmet food bites of caviar and cheese from some terribly important farm. And the multi-million dollar architecture merely to introduce them to Mr. Fake Smile. Where was the footman? And every one of these places is like that, with minor variations for the style of the fountains! I’m just bored with it all! Bored! Bored!” And he began to trail off and stare blankly, obviously compensating for his pain with anger. 

An Argument for Singular Love

As I grow older, I'm struck by the number of things I've re-thought. And the number of things I committed to and then re-thought that turned out to be true. Life forces us to experiment with our ideas, and tests them by hard experience. 

I used to argue, with no small measure of my own teenage passion, the prevailing wisdom of my age--that there is only one person out there for each of us, and if that love is missed then all hope is lost. One would after that merely have to settle. This passion, set to flame by every film and every song of my youth, impelled me to look carefully for "The One." Then when I failed to find said person, as do many, I started to heed more mature voices. "Be the person anyone can love, and then you will find true love. And that person could probably be just about anyone." 

Perhaps I should confess that I wish I had been wiser; that I was less foolish in my youth. I was taken in by an ideology that turned out to be wrong, and by a desire to be useful, and by a foolish reaction to the passions of youth, merely because in my impatience there were no immediate results while I was in college. I didn't hold out for a goddess because I no longer believed in goddesses. I exchanged the futile hope of finding and worshipping a Venus of my own for being a nice fellow who could attract someone who could help me finance a mortgage and be a respectable minister in the vaunted Wesleyan Church of America. I was an adult and it was time to start acting like one. 

But I was propelled to this renunciation of foolish youthful fancy by emerging "wisdom," which after 21 years of miserable marriage resulted in divorce and devastation. This experience of course taught me only that love, defined by the romanticism of youth, and then by the mature and sober wisdom of my betters, were both wrong, and so I was probably too much of a fool to even know what I was looking for when it came to love. I had been too muddled by romanticism and pragmatism. The poetry had died, and I could no longer pay the mortgage. And I was alone, doing my part to raise three girls whose lives were now fractured by divorce. 

And then the answer found me. As in my entire life, any understanding of love had to be furnished by forces external to me. I have been quite entirely passive when the best things in my life have happened. My parents showed me how to love others, how to be in a family and sacrifice for the greater good. God loved me in the midst of my rebellion against Him and gave me a life of undeserved blessing. And then, after all this, at the age of 47, I met her. I met "The One!" 

She simply descended miraculously into my broken life and saved me in so many ways. Obviously, I know the dangers of such effusive language. I feel as C.S. Lewis did when he said of his wife Joy that he probably "loved her too much." I think if my love for Amy is excessive, then I can only lay the blame for that at God's feet, because he designed this angelic woman to be as near perfection as any woman can be. Or at the very least, she is a creation so sublimely fitted to me that I can only see her as perfect. 

Can it be that God built this woman for me, and me for her? We are still awed by the circumstances of our meeting and our marrow deep compatibility. We met as strangers in the large city of Austin after I moved here from California. She lived only a few miles from my first little apartment here. Her beliefs, her interests, her strong mind and playful wit, even her love of sports, golf, hiking, knit our passions together seamlessly from the start. We are not the same person. Indeed, our personalities are quite different, but they are differences that bring needed perspective to the same shared life mission and goals and even hobbies. In that sense, we have become truly trusting friends who listen intently to each other, knowing always that the other only seeks to selflessly enhance the experience of the other in this life. We have not fought, and many would see this as a fault, but we simply haven't found an occasion to be angry with each other. How could I ever speak to Lewis' Sarah Smith with anything but reverence (she is a heavenly woman in Lewis' Great Divorce)?

I certainly didn't deserve to meet her. I don't deserve her now. I receive her daily with surprised, delighted, even trembling gratitude. My failings and sins are significant, but God chose not just to give me a second chance at love, but to plunge me into the fathomless depths of incomprehensible love, and to nearly drown me there. And He chose to give me a woman of soaring attributes, suffusing life with laughter, stimulating conversation, meaningful purpose, and blessing and delight and rapturous pleasure and reverie and all! But perhaps beyond all that, He gave me a woman who can see me and love me and help me heal from the wounds of the past, a truly Christian woman whose profound depth is rooted in the boundless grace of God. She is quite literally the most whole of the human beings I've ever known. 

It is a curious trait of singular love that after five years I can no longer even see other women. (She is so bright that I struggle to see anything else at all.) Or perhaps it would be better to say it this way: In seeing other women, I only see dim reflections of the goddess with whom I am privileged to live! I see them as participating in the category of womanhood, the ultimate expression of which is my Amy. If I see a beautiful woman, I see only a copy or shadow of the most beautiful woman. If I see a woman of kindness, selflessness, intelligence, then I only see a lesser expression of my angelic Amy. In other words, I see her everywhere! And yet there is infinite joy in the discovery of this goddess woman, and infinite pleasure in experiencing our truly wonderful marriage. It would be an idol, this marriage, if it wasn't held gratefully in the arms of two people receiving it as God's most lavish and undeserved of all gifts next to the gift of unmerited salvation in Christ. 

In the end, God has taught me that the romantic was far closer to the truth than the pragmatist. I would never have believed it except that daily I experience it. 

Pickle Ball World Championships (Costa Mesa Parks and Recreation Championships)

Costa Mesa, California

During the Ides of March, when fools place bets on College Basketball and there is otherwise a great dearth of meaningful athletic competition to behold on the American sports scene, there is on display some of the great unheralded athletes of our day. 

These gods and goddesses of sport compete for the love of the game, for the purity of sport, without pay or promise of glory.

They wield rackets forged in iron and fire, destined for the conflagration of the ages. They descend upon Costa Mesa with hearts pregnant with honor and courage, virtues the common man only dreams of or views from a distance in pangs of pathetic envy.

Not just anyone makes it to the Pickle Ball World Championships, also knows as the Costa Mesa Parks and Recreation Regional Championships. 

After many days of intense competition in the senior division (the only division); of grunts and the smell of liniment, of neoprene knee braces, of matching almost tennis outfits, of fallen heroes, of the crucible of hot battle, the final two emerged. We would be remiss if we didn't offer our sincerest congratulations to the two teams who fell in glorious Pickle battle to the two triumphant teams. Were it not for a sciatica injury to Bill "The Night Nurse" Juroviski (so nicknamed because of his talent for taking out the crap), things might have looked a lot different. But enough unbearable build up! Let us introduce you to the championship teams, each vying for the coveted Pickle Ball Trophy, which is just a whiffle ball made of bronze with names etched in immortality.

Team 1: Rackets of Fire

Captain Janice "The Executionist" Jones and Marvin "The Machete" Smith

Team 2: The Luftwaffe 

Captain Helga "The Howitzer" Heinrickson and Gunter "The Junk Baller" Ackerman

One would think that with the matching socks and head-bands and knee braces, team Rackets of Fire could perhaps be taken lightly. We asked the members of Luftwaffe what they thought of their competition before the game, and Helga Henrickson said solemnly, "We know we have our work cut out for us, but we feel confident we can hang in there with them. We've faced a lot of adversity lately, what with Gunter's tennis elbow, but that has only made us stronger." 

What ensued in this game for the ages was nothing less than the furious energy of the stalemated athleticism of finely tuned athletes prowling the courts, reflexes like jungle cats. It could only be described as a blur of rackets, like long swords in combat, every move countered by an equally dazzling answer, until all players lie exhausted on the court, having moved a total of twenty feet during the entire two hour long match. 

For all their effort, Rackets of Fire fell to Luftwaffe in a game so close it required two instant replay sessions to grant the winning points to Luftwaffe. Unfortunately for Luftwaffe, they were ultimately disqualified for violating the tournaments doping policy, having each spiked the Ensure with performance enhancers.