Sex and it's meaning.
Ever insightful and eloquent, Frederica Mathewes-Green wrote an article in the latest Touchstone magazine titled Bodies of Evidence where she explores the meaning of sex.

Whether we attribute extra meaning to humans or not, we are at least animals, sharing this planet with many other kinds of creatures. . . .From that perspective, the “meaning” of sex is pretty obvious. It’s reproduction. . . .But there are some interesting ways that humans are different from other mammals, even from other primates. For us, sex feels good at any time in the fertility cycle. Other mammals mate only during fertile periods. . . .What’s more, researchers suspect that only among humans is the female capable of orgasm. . . .It looks like the “meaning of sex” for humans is something broader than simply reproduction. . . .You can see the same analogy with food. . . .We don’t eat solely for nutrition. Likewise, we don’t have sex solely for reproduction. . . . another way humans are unique. We’re one of the very, very few mammals able to have sex face-to-face. Seeing each other’s faces means something—not just during sex, but all the time. . . .Sex is, if nothing else, about making a connection with another person, and that seems to be something that humans have trouble with.

I recommend reading the whole article. She makes some great insights about sex and at the same time you'll see someone doing really great Natural Theology. At the end, she has a couple of sidebars, one of which is on "Old Married Sex". My favorite lines from there (she's writing about her and her cohorts views as young 60s radicals):

We made fun of old married people, the ones who got hitched, settled down, had kids, had mortgages, and thirty years later were having old-married-people sex with each other. It turns out that, even if you make fun of people like that, you still get old anyway. The alternative is not staying young forever; the alternative is being just as old, and not having formed any lasting relationship, and going to bed most nights by yourself. You’re not having old-married-people sex; you’re not having sex with anybody.

Movie Links
This originally was written after Episode II came out, which was when I read it the first time, but Jaquandor linked it recently and I re-read it. I find it to be an interesting and thoughtful apologia for why we should root for the Empire and not the Rebel Alliance.

Jaq also writes a review of two of Dad's favorite movies, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. Dad gave Before Sunrise to Kellsey and I a while ago, but we hadn't gotten around to it yet. After reading Jaq's post, I think we'll watch them as soon as we move to Austin (and are re-united with our DVD player and DVD collection). I wonder, those of you who've seen them (Mom, Dad, Mary?), do you like them for the same reasons as Jaq?

Art of Demotivation review in The Financial Times

"The Art of Demotivation is the most daring, funny, and subversive management book ever written."

Read more here.

I went to our now-local Starbucks coffee shop to pick up drinks for Kellsey, Robert and me for our weekly 8:30am coffee time. (Our reliable and well used french press has already taken up residence in Austin.) Sbux was full of folks on their morning commute to work and I thought of an update to a Nita-ism: "Busier than a one-armed barista." As it was, the barista had two fully functioning arms, and was barely keeping up.

Dumbgunowners.com. I think I will start a blog on this subject. This will be my first post.

King James Version and the Second Mile. When I was growing up, the KJV was the translation of choice. The RSV came out in 1952, when I was 6 years old, but it never took in our Baptist church. Among other things, the RSV translated "virgin" as "young woman" in Isaiah 7:14, although the translators conceded in a footnote that the Hebrew word could also mean "virgin". That wouldn't do. Besides, if the KJV was good enough for Paul and Silas, it was surely good enough for us. (Just kidding, we weren't that ignorant.)

Anyway, it was very confusing to a six-year old to hear our minister, Dr. C. Roy Angell, preach on the second-mile, as he often and even famously did, using the KJV text: "And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain."

I knew all about twains. There was a big station just a few blocks from the church. But I couldn't figure out just what was the point of these sermons.

The Roman Soldier in Your Life. Tom points out that in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus describes a standard of behavior that is impossible. And it's true. Jesus sums up what he has to say in Matthew 5:48: "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect."

Right, Jesus.

What do we do with this?

If we are theologians, maybe we think up a period of history not the present, and assign that sort of talk to that period.

If we are a parish minister, maybe we just preach from some other text.

But maybe not.

I like what the editors of the NIV Study Bible say in their introductory note at Matthew 5:1. They say, in part:

"The SOM's call to moral and ethical living is so high that some have dismissed it as being completely unrealistic or have projected its fulfilliment to the future kingdom. There is no doubt, however, that Jesus (and Matthew) gave the Sermon as a standard for all Christians, realizing that its demands cannot be met in our own power. It is also true that Jesus occasionally used hyperbole . . . "

Hyperbole. I can deal with that. We don't, for example, gouge out our right eye and cut off our right hand, as "commanded" in 5:29 and 30. (That's a good thing too, given what there is to see on the internet.) But in this case, hyperbole is not a thing to be recognized as such and then dismissed. It is to be recognized for what it says about where we are on our journey and where we need to go. There are deep meanings in this hyperbole that are worth addressing.

What is hyperbolic about the second mile statement? It is surely not always impossible to go a second mile, carrying someone else's burden. What is hyperbolic about this statement is the person for whom the Jew is carrying the burden a second mile, the Roman Soldier. We probably cannot begin to appreciate how outrageous this must have been to the young Jew who was listening in the crowd. Of all the relationships that were the most dangerous, resented, and aggravating, it must have been the day to day relationship between the common Roman soldier and the common Jew.

I think Mel Gibson probably got it right about the Roman soldier.

Is there a Roman soldier in your life? I hope not.

But if we are to afford second-mile treatment to the Roman soldiers in our life, how about those relationships in our lives where it is not so full of danger, resentment, and aggravation. In many of these, second-mile behavior is completely attainable. In the relationships we have with our friends, our employers, people who serve us, our spouses, our parents, our children, it is not outrageous to command that we move beyond obligation to something like grace and even love. Let's not worry about doing the impossible while there plenty of possible things to do in response to Jesus' love-one-another injunction.

(Thanks for letting me try these thoughts out on you.)

Fruits and Vegetables. As one embraces middle age, one is rewarded by insights that surprise, ideas that one never had before, ideas that clarify. Suddenly the fog lifts, and there is truth. As I was putting a tomato back into the fridge after slicing off a piece for a Memorial Day sandwich, I realized that I was placing it into the vegetable drawer from which I had removed it to do the surgery.

The vegetable drawer.

It popped into my head that the tomato is not a vegetable, it is a fruit. I had always known that intellectually, but never in my heart. We have a fruit drawer in the fridge and have had one since the beginning of our marriage. "Carol! Do you realize that we have been putting our tomatoes in the vegetable drawer when a tomato is a fruit? We have a fruit drawer."

Carol immediately grasped this epiphany-like insight. And she said what daughters always say when they are confronted with an uncomfortable truth about their behavior. "Well, my mother always put the tomatoes in the vegetable drawer."

"And we always treat tomatoes like vegetables, " she continued, defensively.

How do you treat a tomato like a vegetable?

You put it in the vegetable drawer.

"If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles." The note to Matthew 5:41 in my NIV Study Bible says that the word for "forces" means "pressed into service" and that the same verb is used in Matthew 27:32, where the Roman soldiers press Simon into service to carry Jesus' cross. This idea reminds me of what Jesus says in Matthew 11:28-30:

"Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest upon your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

Is there some connection between not simply doing what you have to do, but doing that obligatory thing beyond its obligation, and finding rest? Going the second mile sounds a lot like extra work to me, not rest. But not so, according to the physics of the Kingdom of Heaven.

I read where, during Jesus time, people would mark with stakes from their doorstep or the village limit the beginning and the end of a mile. That way, if one is "pressed into service", he and the soldier know just how far the civilian need carry the soldier's burden. The Roman soldier's own command structure forbade his forcing anyone further. So there would be no second mile mile-marker. The second mile was endless, infinite. Or, at least, the second mile was whatever the relationship seemed to require. It was a complete journey. Like forgiving "seven times seventy". The injunction to forgive doesn't mean we stop forgiving at 490 times, it means we stop forgiving when there is nothing further to forgive.

We put our burden down, then, when we reach with that "other", whose burden we assumed under obligation but then carried further out of a sort of love, the end of the journey. Perhaps by then it is no longer a burden. The rest Jesus promises does not begin at the end of the journey, but some time during the journey. Probably it begins to develop at the beginning of the second mile, when the relationship with the one to whom we are obligated starts to be transformed by our service.

The Mapes

Here's an article on Milton Mapes from this month's issue of No Depression:

NO DEPRESSION MAGAZINE | May-June 2005
MILTON MAPES: A Little Bug Music
by Scott Brodeur

There is a shadowy cloak to the music of Milton Mapes. It’s the kind of dark, seductive veil that invites guesses about the people behind it, especially after you listen to The Blacklight Trap (undertow), the group’s cryptic and captivations third release, which happens to be named for a device that attracts and captures insects.

But be forewarned: trying to read into this band’s music can be as alluring and as precarious for the curious as, say, approaching that bug-zapper.

For instance, the band is named for singer Greg Vanderpool’s grandfather, who is exactly 51 years his senior. So you figure Milton Mapes was an inspuirational musician, someone who introduced Greg and his family to the joy and splendor of music.

Good guess. Wrong, thought, Zap.

“No, my grandfather’s not a musicians. He’s not musical at all,” say Vanderpool, the band’s songwriter and chief architect, chuckling at the mere thought. “During the period for a band where every word said is a potential band name, his name came up. We were all kind of laughing about it. Then it stuck. Nothing else ever topped it. He likes it. And I still get a kick out of seeing his name all over the place. Not too long ago, we were opening a show for Willie Nelson, and there were posters all over with Willie Nelson and my grandfather’s name side by side. The was just great.”

Describing the band musically can be like a game of pint-the-antecedent-on-the-artist. Most often, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Pedro The Lion, Uncle Tupelo, and Sun Kil Moon come up. But there have also been comparisons to Bruce Springsteen, Counting Crows, Richard Buckner, and Damien Jurardo. “I’m pretty much fans of a lot of these people we’ve been compared to,” says Vanderpool. “And sometime, if a name comes up enough and I don’t know them, I can check out their stuff. This happened with Mark Kozelek [Red House Painters, Sun Kil Moon]. I check it out and really like it. I don’t hear us sounding too much alike, but maybe we have the same set of influences or something.”

Ah, influences. That means even though grandpappy Milton Mapes, the World War II Marines veteran, wasn’t’ musical, the Vanderpool home was still brimming with good tunes, exposing Greg to an eclectic but sturdy foundation of sounds to build on.

Hope. Zap.

“I didn’t grow up in a real musical household,” Vanderpool says, “Christmas music was big in my house. That was the time of year when we listened to a lot of music. Church music was big, too. So it was traditional hymns and Christmas songs.

“My dad used to listen to the Kingston Trio and the Everly Brothers and stuff like that, some country & western tunes. He also used to sing that song ‘Tom Dooley’ to me all the time. It’s kin of funny. Here I was, 3 years old, and my dad was singing to me about some guy getting hanged. I guess the darkness was already seeping in.”

OK, now we’re getting places. There is plenty of darkness on The Blacklight Trap. There’s the deadly tale of substance abuse on the title track, told in both the second and third person from a brother’s point of view. There’s the wounded lover refusing to let anyone get too close in “Waiting for Love to Fail.” There’s the bloody carnage of war on “”Underneath The River Runs.” Any there is the apocalyptic allusion to Rudyard Kipling’s poem “L’Envoi,” which Vanderpool expands and set to music under the title, “When The Earth’s Last Picture is Painted.”

This is a bleak but powerful landscape painted by Vanderpool and band, which includes Roberto Sanchez on drums, Britton Beisenherz on bass and piano, Cliff Brown Jr. on organ, keys, guitars and background vocals, and Jim Fredley on guitars, mandolin, and background vocals. Vanderpool’s vulnerable vocals are set amidst layers of acoustic guitar, raunchy electric guitar, swirling keys and thunderous drums.

Dark, dark stuff, it would seem. Well, not really, say Vanderpool. Zap.

“I don’t consider myself a morose person or anything,” he counters. “This album is a little darker than our others. But it’s not dark without a light at the end of the tunnel. The Blacklight Trap is a metaphor for society or for anything that is feeding us a lie. As a species, we’re inherently flawed. But we’re also capable of doing good. Right now, I’d say we’re set to self-destruct without some intervention from somewhere. But you look at the glass as half empty or half full. Sure, much of the album paints a dark picture. But the other message on here, the more spiritual message, is that not all hope is lost.

Living the Good Life

Why move to Austin? Because we're all fashion models here and you should want to associate with us.


Morgan and Jim celebrating Bob Schneider's new shirt designs.

Coming soon, my debut, living strong, as a shorts model. Thank you kettlebells.

toothache

I was chewing some ice back in that hot summer of 2000 and chewed a bit too hard.
I spent a few days having a root canal. Then I moved to Dallas before the permanent crown was ready, so I had a dentist in Dallas put the porcelin crown on.

A few years passed. I married and settled down in the UT student housing. Halloween came, and I sat on the couch to chew some Now and Laters and soon was chewing Now and Laters and loose porcelin crown.

So then I went to my man, Dr. Sonier, and he set me up with the gold bling.

I've been sporting the precious metal for about 2.5 years now, but now it's hurting again. I think the tooth beneath the shine has reabcessed.

The good doctor called in some antibiotics and pain meds for me this morning. I'll go in to see him on Tuesday.

I might be going from solid gold to toothless.

Like so many before me....

And I still don't have Tom's address for the mix CD.

Jackson's Junction. Here's a neat site that has video clips of politicians, journalists, and other celebrities saying very interesting and, sometimes, outrageous things.

Reflections on the last day of school.

In my masters program last year, reflections were big. We had to reflect on our course work; we had to reflect on our student teaching; we had to reflect on what kind of teacher we wanted to become; we had to reflect on what we still wanted to learn and know. As you might imagine, I came to rather loathe this prescribed reflection. It became as meaningful an activity as those role plays we had to do back in girl scouts. I'll reflect on what I want to, when I want to, and maybe not ever, thank you very much. I process things as they happen and want to move forward; please don't make me pause to think about what has transpired when I'm ready for the next thing.

But here I am on the last day of school, and I suppose I can't help but reflect on these last 10 months of English teaching. I am so excited that school will be out this afternoon, but it really doesn't feel as if anything will be over. I think that's because life is not over for the 100 students I had this year--they will, I hope, go right on living through the summer and into the next year and into the future. And I probably won't see many of them again. And so the questions begin: did they learn anything this year? Will they remember anything good from our class? What if they failed--will they make it next year? What if I was too easy on them, and they fail next year when a real teacher gets a hold of them?

I feel as if God blanketed me in protection this year. I did not have any problem students, though my students certainly had their share of problems. More significantly, I did not have any problem parents. Maybe that is because I was teaching standard-level students, and their parents are just generally less involved. But probably it was because God was protecting me in my first year of teaching, and he provided such great support from my fellow teachers and encouraging feed back from my superiors. He provided a community of friends outside of school and a wonderful home to return to at night.

At the start of the school year and during several sleepless nights, I meditated on the following challenging and encouraging verses from Isaiah 58; I return to them now at the end:

6 "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
9 Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
"If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.
11 The LORD will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.
12 Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.
13 "If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
and from doing as you please on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight
and the LORD's holy day honorable,
and if you honor it by not going your own way
and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,
14 then you will find your joy in the LORD,
and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land
and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob."
The mouth of the LORD has spoken.

Net-Based To-Do Lists. Yesterday's "Personal Technology" column in the WSJ addresses the subject. I have already signed up for Backpack, just to see how it works.

I mean, really, I should figure out how I can spend more time on the Internet.

The column also refers to a number of personal organizer websites and blogs, even a couple that deal with David Allen's GTD. The sites that the column identifies are:

Lifehacker

43 Folders

To-Done!

So Now I'm Back (from outer space)
Two weeks is a long time to go without reading Kith&Kin! But now I'm back from InterVarsity Chapter Camp, and a weekend at the beach with the McClintocks and am all caught up on my K&K reading. (And Interact, too!) (Oh, and National Mustard & Crawford House, too.)

Now there are only 3.5 weeks left before we move to Austin, TX. What a strange thought.

Changing the subject, here's an article about a computer security professional switching to Mac.

In the coming weeks I'm going to keep a diary of an experiment my company began at 6 p.m. April 29, 2005 - an experiment predicated on the hypothesis that the WinTel platform represents the greatest violation of the basic tenets of information security and has become a national economic security risk. I do not say this lightly, and I have never been a Microsoft basher, either. I never criticize a company without a fair bit of explanation, justification and supportive evidence.

He and his company also have a blog ("Security Awareness for Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless," what a great name) where, among other things they'll be documenting their Switching journey.

And speaking of way cool Mac functionality, I figured out today how to use the new Tiger Safari browser to aggregate RSS feeds. It's as straightforward as clicking the "RSS" button that appears whenever I visit a site with such a feed, then bookmarking the RSS page that appears. Now I have a Toolbar Bookmark that constantly updates whenever one of my beloved sites updates. Below are pictures that demonstrate the ease of this. (Yes, I know that I could have used Bloglines, or 3rd party program to aggregate these, but that always seemed clunky to me. I really apprecate the elegance that the Mac powers-that-be built into the system. I'm sure that the other browsers won't be far behind.)


The blue "rss" is the button that appears when there's a feed.


This is what the feed looks like. Note that Safari has built in the controls to adjust how much detail you see in the feed.


Gather them all up in a bookmarks folder. Note that the parenthesis indicate the number of new posts.


Drop the folder in the toolbar and, voila, you can quickly check if Sean's updated Interact!

More "Second Mile" Thoughts.

As a rule, to the obligor the marginal cost of the second mile is far less than the cost of the first mile.

As a rule, the benefit to the obligor of the second mile exceeds the marginal cost and, probably, the cost of the entire distance. The combined benefit of the second mile to the obligor and the obligee is exponential.

Matthew 5:41.

Matthew 5:5.

Question Authority. Instapundit pointed me to this article in Wired about the people who survived the World Trade Center disaster.

I especially liked this statement:

This is the real source of homeland security: not authoritarian schemes of surveillance and punishment, but multichannel networks of advice, information, and mutual aid.

Sounds downright Christian.

Good Times

Today, I've bene married 3 years(EST).

I would recommend this way of doing things to whomever should ask.

Jud and I were sitting in the hot tub here at the complex on Saturday evening heckling the Morgan and Eugenie, who were in the pool. We offered them some Tecate, also.

Some goon bystanding thought we were pitiful. Little did he know, we had those ladies spoken for. It's a good way to be.

Is my face red

Some of you may recall my post last month where I confessed my inability to locate the OK Corral in Dodge City, KS.

Well, it turns out that I was in the wrong state. There's a reason that movie is called Tombstone as in Tombstone, AZ.

I did see a pretty wicked wolf, though, walking along a fence in the middle of [nowhere] Kansas.

Allow me also to confess that I paid a dollar to go see Abba - The Movie on Monday night at the Alamo Drafthouse. I paid $2.75 for a root beer float at the aforementioned event.