Scott: Are any of my accents good?
Éa: Well, I don’t like them, so I don’t know.
My favorite thing is to make that piano reveberate [sic] like an explosive bāss violin.
— Sullivan, pronouncing “bass” like the fish, explaining what he loves about playing his new instrument
No, no, no, your ridicule is quite powerful. I appreciate it, actually.
— Scott, to Carla
Scott: Oh, Carla, you don’t get cranky.
Carla: No, but I do get honest.
Hey, Mom, I don’t know what would be worse: getting punched on the back of your head and falling on your face, or getting punched in the face and falling on the back of your head.
— Sullivan, breaking several minutes of in-car silence at 10 PM on a road trip to Pittsburgh
Carla: What were you dreaming about, Sully?
Sullivan: Different metals that are essential to life.
Carla: Oh! What metals are essential to life?
Sullivan: Well, I wasn’t really dreaming about the names. I was dreaming about their colors and crystal habits.
**Donna: ** Sullivan’s mom would volunteer [in the library] for a Tuesday, but would need to bring Sullivan’s sister. Is that okay?
Mardi: Yep! If she’s anything like Sullivan, she could probably help out too!
Donna: We are a go!
Carla: Are you a thinker or a feeler?
Scott: Well, the facile response would be: duh, I’m a thinker. But I tend to think I’m actually a feeler who is articulate. Just not about feelings.
Scott: So, Sullivan what laws of physics do you know?
Sullivan: Newton’s laws of physics!
Éa: Nudists know all physics?
He’s such a dick! No offense, Scott.
— Carla, c. 2005, while watching The Last of the Mohicans, presumably referring to Magua
Sullivan: Was there a time when doctors recommended smoking?
Carla: Maybe somebody recommended it at some point, I don’t know.
Scott: Certainly not since the ’50s.
Sullivan: The ’50s haven’t even come yet, people!
Scott: We’re talking about the 1950s, Sullivan.
Your bellybutton looks a bit like Moshulu’s butt.
— Sullivan, comparing Scott’s navel to our calico’s anus
Scott [after Carla suffers a seemingly neverending sneeze attack]: What is your body trying to get rid of?
Carla [sniffling]: My face.
You know what Miss Leigh calls a picture? “Pitcher.” Picture. Pitcher. She’s a very complicated woman.
— Éa, on a quirk of her teacher’s pronunciation
Dad! In heaven, I bet that don’t have any rifles.
— Sullivan, without prompting, while being towed along through Spring Creek Park on a snow saucer
I got home today. Well, I arrived at our friends’ house first for their annual pumpkin-carving party. And at first, I was disoriented and depressed in seeing my friends and my family. I think that was because I was looking for God in their eyes. I was hoping one of them would be the channel through which I would “find God” again.
But they weren’t.
What’s more, I found the opposite: People content without God. I do not want to live my friends’ life. With no lord other than his own desires, it appears my friend has given himself to a life of hobbies: water rockets, board games, aquaponics, a zip line, making music. That seems empty to me.
That somehow pointed to a possible way of finding God: seeking Him by ministering to the least of these. Seeing God in mission.
On my way home from Florida, I spoke over the phone with the following friends about my doubt:
- Josh,
- Mom,
- Dan,
- Travis,
- Mike, and
- Sam.
Among the many helpful things that were spoken, one evidence of God’s presence strikes me right now: Mike said, referring to his self-image problems and awkwardness prior to finding Jesus, “All I know is that I was blind, and now I see” (see John 9:25).
“Don’t worry about the parts of the Bible you don’t understand. Obey the parts you do.”
— a Red Letter Wake Up email newsletter
O Lord, by these things men live, And in all these is the life of my spirit; O restore me to health and let me live! Lo, for my own welfare I had great bitterness; It is You who has kept my soul from the pit of nothingness, For You have cast all my sins behind Your back. For Sheol cannot thank You, Death cannot praise You; Those who go down to the pit cannot hope for Your faithfulness. It is the living who give thanks to You, as I do today; A father tells his sons about Your faithfulness. The Lord will surely save me; So we will play my songs on stringed instruments All the days of our life at the house of the Lord.
— Hezekiah, in Isaiah 38:16-20
I was touched by John Piper tweeting verse seventeen while I was doing nothing on the PestWorld show floor. What Hezekiah says about death, I could say about doubt.
Brandon took me to Disney World Hollywood Studios this evening as a token of appreciation. The highlights for me were:
- the Tower of Terror, which as a virtual brush with death was probably good for my anxious heart
- Rock n Roll Coaster, a fast-start roller coaster that I was terrified of at the beginning but loved after it began, as usual.
- a beautiful voice message from Carla and the kids telling me they love me.
- an often goofy but somehow touching The Great Movie Ride. It may have been the glimpse of George Bailey being embraced by his children during a rapid-fire montage at the end of the ride.
Today I prayed for Todd, the young man at 535 Auto in Orlando who plugged my tire. The muscles controlling his right eye don’t work very well, rendering him virtually blind there since his birth. I handed him my business card and asked him to call me if anything happens.
Last night was another sleepless one. And this time, I mostly kept the doubt and rumination at bay. It was a residual anxiety—that I still feel a bit sometimes even now—zapping my heart and traveling southward toward my bowels that kept me awake.
Whether He is a figment or not, I would be foolish to abandon God when He has been so good to me over the past twenty-five years. He has “worked” for me, so to speak. Why would I shun such a felicitous lodestar in the name of intellectual coherence? That would be to elevate reason above God, or at least to put Reason above pragmatism. I’d rather stick with What works.
Oh what a lovely thought!
— [Rachel Lopez on Twitter](https://twitter.com/GreaterBombay/status/523899334207619073/photo/1(https://twitter.com/GreaterBombay/status/523899334207619073/photo/1%5D)
For perhaps the first time in my life, it feels like a metaphor like this might apply to me. Father, it is my prayer that my recent acute affliction of metaphysical doubt about You make me kintsukuroi.
I could either let the unanswerable theological questions win and spend the next five to ten years in likely miserable reorganization of my entire thought life, or I could settle for mystery.
This one shouldn’t be so hard. When did intellectual coherence become so important to me?
Q: How do you account for evil?
A: I don’t. I fight it.