After an evening with the Houserville Social Club that included a LifeFlight helicopter takeoff, new friends Janine & Kimberly joining us at the table, Wengyi signing up for the email list, a game of cups (frickets) played heartily with Carla, Lara, and the kids, then more dowel/disc/cup fun with just the kids, I find further peace in my current station. I am a:
lover of God,
husband,
father,
brother,
son,
dilettante,
DiamondBack Truck Covers desk jockey,
church member,
neighbor,
community organizer,
someday adopter of children in need,
helper of the cause of the Gospel in the Maldives,
prayer warrior,
and patient, skilled, act-ive lover of anyone who happens to be around me at any time, regardless of socioeconomic class, IQ, or other human differentiator.
The list above is enough of an identity and set of pursuits to satisfy this hungry-for-meaning soul. I need do no other “great” things. If I fulfill my roles above with all my might (the specific, mutable ones subject to Your redirection), I shall be happy, and I shall not blink on Judgment Day.
More importantly, I shall no longer be subject to judge-and-second-guess-myself day, which used to happen, like, every day of my life but now wanes in frequency until it shall soon disappear completely.
And as for my doubts and questions, whether You are a restrictivist, an inclusivist, a universalist, or even a religious figment, my life will be best lived if I live it as though You are completely real. My prayer is that my doubts have three effects: More sympathy, less dogma, especially toward my children, and more action, since faith-as-action is much more important than faith-as-specific-credence to Inclusivist Yahweh, and Restrictivist Yahweh seems to prefer action as well.
Tom Lundin, Dan Sharda, and I trotted over to the ballfield at Spring Creek Park to toss a disc this evening during a Shardas-are-here! shindig at our house that also included Stacy Tibbets. In the end, we ended up playing a game in which Jori Sharda tossed the disc long-distance to all three of us and we fought for it. What happy, sweaty exercise it was! And now that I think about it, the fun bears some relation in my mind to my recent hypothesis that physical affection between heterosexual men in Western societies such as our own will rebound once homosexual men no longer face stigma.
Carla: Are you ready for your [chickens] meeting tonight? Scott: Yeah, it’s just a brainstorm and catch-up meeting. Sullivan: Ketchup? Ketchup is for eggs. Ketchup? Ketchup is for eggs.
Without an interpreter, my workday with Alexander Amelchev and his family visiting would have been a drag. As it was, with our Svitlana Budzhak-Jones in tow, we had a great time touring the factory, eating lunch at Retro Eatery in Philipsburg, playing at Discovery Space, and eating again at Happy Valley Brewing.
Carla was sworn in as a councilwoman today. I am proud. I only wish I wasn’t in a sprint toward completion of the State College Choral Society website so I could celebrate with her more appropriately. As it was, she walked in from the (very) cold night, all smiles and beautiful, thinking she did great (because she did). And I was tracking with her and happy for her for about five minutes before I begged off so I could get back to website work. Sigh.
We shared another New Year’s Eve and morning with the Potters. We started at at a fundraising soup dinner held by the folks in the basement of the University Baptist & Brethren Church building. It’s the Potters’ home congregation. At dinner, I missed an opportunity to inquire about Josh’s faith. Other times will come. And gosh, does the pastor’s son know how to make a caramel cheesecake.
Anyway, we proceeded through the regular Sidney Friedman Parklet and Allen Street routine for First Night, appreciating the percussive, paper-maché parade emanating from St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church building, kettle corn, the ice slide, the ice sculptures, the Christian Science Reading Room’s free cookies and cider, the phoenix in the Borough building, and the sight of the horses and carriages and Vamos' lit-up pedi-cab along the way. All four parents ended up carrying all four children back to the cars.
We had a dance party featuring upbeat selections from Stilson Family Mix 2013 (everyone participated with vigor except Sullivan, who tried for a little and then settled into a couch corner to read). We put the kids to bed, chatted, snacked, played Taboo (the men trounced the women), kissed at 11:59:50 for ten second while humming “Auld Lang Syne” and then had our grape-tossing contest (Stilsons won), followed by a frog-themed folksong and dance led by Greta, who stopped up for the stroke of midnight after the brisk First Night 5K.
We went to bed around 1am, arose for a nondescript but enjoyable breakfast, and bid the Potters farewell on their trip to O-Ma and O-Pa’s house. Later today, we went to the Peters’ house for chili dinner, grilled (by me) Diner stickies, and college football. Krysti left for Colorado. This ended up being much more of a record of days entry, and I think that’s OK.
Carla insisted the four of us go outside in the 6–8 inches of snow after dinner this evening, and I’m glad she did. We pulled the kids around on their sleds, enjoyed the scenery and relative silence, sledded down the steps of the new footbridge and down the hill near Meadow Lane. O Lord, You’re beautiful.
Éa and I enjoyed the above concert today very much. Plus, we got to see Jimmy Hutasoit, Jo Lash, Joyce Robinson, Dana Carlisle, and a Russell Bloom who heavy-handedly—literally, with lots of downward pressure applied on my left shoulder by his hand—tried again to recruit me to Pirates of Penzance.
Carla called me intense this evening at the College Township holiday party and appreciation dinner at the Nittany Lion Inn. Too much face. She meant it as an constructive putdown. Boy, did it dampen my mood. But she’s right: I need to control my energy in social situations that are tied to exciting ideas or where I feel my reputation for something good (singing, progressive vision for the township) goes ahead of me.
Carla and I parted ways for the evening after a noisy, meh-but-enjoyable “food fair” (glorified, overpriced kosher hot dog party) at Congregation Brit Shalom: She to a council meeting, the kids and I downtown for the tree lighting ceremony. We missed the actual lighting by literally three seconds but enjoyed the tree anyway, along with hot chocolate, popcorn, secular Christmas tunes, Animal Kingdom, the bathroom at Irving’s with Éa while Sullivan waiting in line with Lucy S-M & her mom, dancing on my shoulders, and Sullivan on Santa’s lap asking for mittens and a whole dinosaur skeleton for Christmas.
But the real pick of the day today is how much time I spent crafting simple HTML email signatures at work. Was it a waste of time? My desires said no, but perhaps it wasn’t the highest priority. Why do I let myself get carried away with trifles?
Don, a fellow tenor at the Choral Society, shared with me this evening that last week at his usual post-rehearsal social hour at Texas Roadhouse, Russ Shelley, the music director of the Choral Society, gushed momentarily about the beauty and power of my voice.
Obviously, that’s a heady sort of thing to hear. It inspires me to pursue more opportunities to share my voice. But at first, at least, this inspiration feels akin to the addictive high that I imagine you get from using recreational drugs. That’s dangerous.
It’s good to sing for my own enjoyment (or Yours, God), and it’s good to sing to delight someone else. But it’s unhealthy to sing to elicit praise.
Father, as I get deeper into singing performance in State College, please protect me from the intoxicating effects of people’s praise.
Éa, most of these eight swim class evenings you roamed the bleachers while Mom watched. I spectated with her twice, although the second time I came, I mostly meandered through the school lobby with you, appreciating athletic trophies and girls basketball practice with you. You were mesmerized by the girls’ dribbling skills.
Since I’m always looking for lessons, I’ll say the the main lesson I gain from yesterday evening is that there is value to meandering with someone. I felt closer to you, Éa, because of the twenty minutes we spent ambling through the North Building lobby.
Sullivan, You enjoyed yourself in the water very much. And you made friends easily, including Lily, a fellow Houservillian with purple hair with whom you always ran out ahead of Mom and Lily’s grandma after class was over and you were heading home.
The most significant thing to happen to me today was a visit from Jami and Jordan. We chatted in the sunroom, stuffed ourselves into Jami’s Honda Fit, bought a shelf bracket and some window plastic from Ace Hardware (where Sullivan’s, Éa’s, & Carla’s eyes all got very wide) from fetched milk and ice cream from Meyer Dairy, did a very quick motor tour of parts of campus for Jordan, picked up two pizzas from Corrinado’s, ate together & watched the film below so Jordan could do his Nutrition class homework.
The most significant thing to happen to me today is that I car-, er, truckpooled with Ethan and Ben up to Philipsburg to work at DiamondBack. It’s significant for a few reasons: Ethan and I reconnected during lunch about his life and about the future direction of DiamondBack (especially creating a “spiritual space” for transformation), I reconnected with several other folks in Philipsburg, and, I met Ben, our Christian finance director, who living on Clover Road is a neighbor of mine with two children contemporary in age to my own. It was a big step in rooting myself more deeply in a company whose culture and bottom line seem to only be getting better.
The most significant thing to happen to me today was the time Sullivan, Éa & I spent at the Historic Harvest Festival at Millbrook Marsh. I got the chance enact what I had resolved at the Arboretum’s ForestFest: Dig in to festivals with time, money, and participation because let’s face it: I love them. We rode bikes to the marsh, put a bandage on the abrasion Sullivan got from his bike pedals during a bike path spill, pet the giant bunnies, ate hot dogs, saw taxidermy, ponies, bonsai trees, falcons, arrowheads, a cider press, the Harts, Bill Sharp, and Charlotte, Etta & Marin, poke light holes in aluminum foil. Oh, and Sullivan got third place in his heat of the donut-on-a-string contest, and I got third place in the adult bracket of the pie eating contest.
The most significant thing to happen to me today was that (at my insistence — the only sign of real kick I’ve put into Carla’s campaign in recent weeks) we did our last day of canvassing for Carla’s campaign for College Township Council. It happened to be at a time when the Nittany Lions and the Illini were tied, 17-17, at the end of the Penn State football game. So we didn’t knock; we just left flyers in doors. And we got to meet the triceratops that lives at Michelle’s house behind the Peters’ house.
Just after sunset yesterday, I yelled for Scott to come see this neat swarm of tiny ants that I found in the driveway. We noticed one example of the stark difference in our kids’ personalities when Sullivan stood looking from a safe distance while Éa lay right on the blacktop inches from the mess of ants and poked at them with her fingers.
When I followed Éa in her boldness and looked up close myself, I noticed that these little ants weren’t after some food item as we had first assumed, but were actually fighting each other. I described what I had seen to the others, saying, “They’re fighting! It’s an all-out war! They’re in piles on top of each other and some are carrying away the dead.” Scott explained to the kids that this must be two distinct any colonies fighting for territory or something.
Then our kids displayed another fine example of their polar opposite personalities. Sullivan folded his hands and looked up to the sky with his happy bright blue eyes reflecting the clouds and prayed, “Dear God, please help these ants stop fighting each other.” Meanwhile, Ea moved even closer to the ants, with her brown eyes wide open and a big smile on her face, put her forehead right into the swarm and said with joy, ”Bonk heads!”
