I am now 7 months into fatherhood.  Life is strange that way…you spend your life thinking there is a certain order to the world and that things only happen in that order, and whaam…the mango smoothy(cause i like them) hits the fan and you have a family with a new member on the way in a town you never thought you’d be in, with a future that…well…it seems like nobody is going to turn the fan off for a long time.  Certainly there is a bit if fecal matter in the mango smoothy…cause really the best mango smoothy’s come from places where mangos grow outside the door like developing countries where the paranoia of shit isn’t the same as it is here.  But, who thinks about the shit when there is all that mangoey goodness…with the added benefit of beefing up your immune system.  Make sense? Good. 

On the other hand, there is shit in the world…and it makes it hard to be excited about bringing another vulnerable soul into it, but that story is an old one.  What father or mother hasn’t had a moment of hesitation to bring another person into the world knowing they eventually have to make the kinds of choices that make humans human or less than.  I don’t wish on anyone the choice, subconcious or not, to be selfish or selfless; kind or rude; loving or hateful; happy or sad.  I honestly have a hard time trusting anyone to make those choices in this world, even my own offspring.  I am, hopefully, relentlessly teaching my son to make good choices in life…and apart from me I believe he is going to be a powerful influence of good in the world(cause of his mom’s amazing and interesting parenting).  But seeing the society of hate, violence, greed and idolatry that he has to navigate I wouldn’t hope that the majority would be so fortunate as to have the back bone necessary to ”make it.”  And seeing his goodness, which is a force in itself, makes me want to declare war on all those who seek to twist and deceive.   I can’t end this little strange post here so I’ll end with a nice story of Orion’s goodness.

I think Orion is as excited about being a big brother as I am about being the father of a new human.  The other night he asked if he could look at the three or four baby outfits my mother bought as soon as she heard the news. He laid them all out like a nesting mother, carefully pressing out the wrinkles with his hands.  After a while he thoughtfully folded them back up. And as he folded the last one he began sobbing.  He sobs when he gets so excited that he doesn’t know what emotion to feel.  It was a beautiful thing to see and it reminded me of how profound this experience is.

I thought I had a job, but now it has been confirmed that I definitely do not have a job.  Very frustrating.

But at least I am getting good experience writing and rewriting cover letters and resumes.  We’ll see how this turns into a blessing in disguise…cause it always does.

We decided this week to take a trip to Florence, OR for Sabbath.  We slept in a little too late for church.  So we leisurely got out of bed and had a little church service of our own.  A little reading from Orion’s Children Bible and the morning reading from the Psalter.  The day was then ours.  I wanted to go the beach.

On our last trip we discovered a beautiful secluded beach called Hobbit Beach.  The trail to the beach explains the name.  Its about a half mile journey through large trees and low lying shrubs that somehow seem as old as the trees that dwarf them.  Their needles are small but they make the trail feel like a cave that travelers have had to continually dig out of the underbrush for hundreds of years.  The trail descends to the beach that you can only hear faintly through the thick vegetation.  You only know you are close when, still in the woods you are walking in soft sand.  Then you are there and the ocean roars in the eternal rock concert of waves beating the shore into submission.

The wind was blowing, so the sand was constantly shifting and beating against our legs and getting into our stuff.  After some skim boarding and running away from waves we decided to build a little wind shelter.  The night before I haphazardly made a pizza before sundown which didn’t quite cook all the way.  So we brought a large tupperware of not-quite-done pizza, some chips and some good Oregon brew.

The day was beautiful.  Here is a bit of a song I wrote a while ago expressing the eternal metaphor of the ocean and the Creator.

you are the ocean tide

I am the stone you cover

like a faithful lover

every night and every morn’in

you return to break me down again

only you know these grains of sand

I know some of you had hopes of me becoming a full fledged farmer, overalls and all.  Well I live in an apartment now so this is what I can muster.  A few carrots, some radishes, spinach, kale, some sort of broccoli that I am not really sure is broccoli, and garlic.   Its pretty late in the year to be starting a garden so we’ll see what actually comes out of the ground and produces fruit.  But it was fun to play in the dirt for a while.  Orion and the neighbor kids helped me.  Ilyana the Chilean girl next door was a big help and she let me try and speak Spanish to her.

My new boss is a wonderful and flexible woman who has allowed me to basically pick any schedule i desire to fit my schedule with Orion.  I couldn’t have asked for more.  If I want to work full time I am merely to say so and it will likely happen.  All this is beyond my expectations and yet very necessary since our bank account is quickly deteriorating.  Praise be to God.

As I have said before my life has been a seemingly endless set of tasks and goals that are simply placed before me by our Creator.  I don’t spend a lot of time thinking consciously about them.  They simply just work out…and once I am in the middle of it I have moments where I am overwhelmed with thanksgiving for having a new adventure of which I am in the middle of that seems fun, challenging and life changing.

This last weekend, the last weekend before Andrea started law school(we are now into our second day), we decided that a day of rest was going to be essential in the coming months.  In the same way that I pray more when I need something I don’t like that we invoke discipline only at our time of need. But we are in need so what else should we do? So, saturday night after sunset Andrea prepared our store bought challah and some potato leak soup.  Our only true knowledge of Sabbath comes from Andrea’s brief experience with a Jewish community and my knowledge almost completely acquired from Fiddler on the Roof, which I only saw recently for the first time(excellent!).  After about 30 seconds of trying to figure out how to incorporate scripture into our evening we decided to read the Daily Office for that day.  It turns out I had the wrong year and wrong collect….but the readings seemed to speak to us nonetheless.  We opened our meal with Psalm 146 and finished the readings following the meal.  Orion closed us out with Psalm 147.   We did have a brief mishap when I had mixed up my chapters and verses and told Andrea to read the wrong passage from Revelation…a mistake that I won’t make again.  Orion, should he have been listening closer, was nearly plagued with some awfully strange and horrifying nightmares.  We prayed and Sabbath was on.

The following day we went to St. Mary’s Episcopal Church a short bike ride from our house.  We arrived too early so grabbed a needed cup of coffee across the street.  Entering the church made me miss the grandiose(by NW US standards) and historical nave of St. Paul’s in Bellingham.   Architecture seemed to lose touch with the divine for a decade or so in the 70′s and 80′s.   Nonetheless we were glad to see they had a very nice sunday school teacher.  The liturgy was a nice familiarity. (A quick aside: Last week we went to a Serbian Orthodox Church next to our friend’s coffee shop. It was a beautiful service with amazing singing and beautiful icons, smells, and people.  Yet somehow we felt like it wasn’t a community we could find a place in. Perhaps we’ll go back soon.  If only to strike up a 1 sided intellectual conversation with the U of O Russian Lit professor, Yulia, who goes there. We also went to better understand the tradition our good friend Dale has told us so much about.)  St. Mary’s has been going through transition and so the new Father is very young.  The sermon was delivered by what looked like a nervous yet intelligent parishioner.  What might have made us fall in love with this particular community was their incorporation of the children into the service and sacraments.  I have never seen Orion so attentive.

Following the service we met the pastor who we quickly found out was engaged to marry a 2L(second year law student) with a 7 year old daughter.  This was a strange and uncanny commonality.  I took it as a sign or just a small offering of comfort from God.  Needless to say, we enjoyed being at this church.

We came home knowing we were in the thick of rest…a beautiful feeling.  Orion and I played a very even sided and long game of chess(I won) and Andrea read a book not having anything to do with law school on the couch.  My childhood best friend’s parents live close to here and had invited us to a bbq that afternoon at their house about a 40 minute drive from here.  We debated whether driving was ok or not.  We decided it was as long as we were very intentional about it.  It was well worth it.

We finished the day with Psalm 146 again because we loved it so much the first time.  Our first family Sabbath was a wonderful experience.  But two days into law school it  is apparent that Sabbath is only going to be more imp0rtant and easier to forget about.

God has it that my future may involve a big move soon, along with some other big changes.  This is no anouncement of anything, other than its what is on my mind…moving to Boston that is.

I mean really what would I do there?  I have worked for a grassroots int’l NGO for 3 years now.  Boston has lots of NGO’s but they are all the suit and tye type, with million dollar budgets, and lobbyists.   I don’t want to wear a tye or report to my boss, who reports to a boss, who reports to a boss.   But I am certainly not feeling that my life in int’l development is over. But competing with the Harvard, MIT,  Cambridge, BU graduates doesn’t sound too appealing.   I am not one to sell myself.

I know, should I end up in Boston, I will be trying to be a goodrole model for an oddly independent 8 year old and  a good partner to an ambitious law student.   That alone sounds like a full time job to me.   Maybe I could write music and a book while I wait for them to get home.   That sounds nice too, but I don’t think I’ll make more than like a dollar doing that.

I’ve been trying to think of independent business ideas, to make some cash without being tied to any thing.

Boston is not for sure by any means.  But I am taking advice should anyone have any.

I have had a couple conversations with people about the recent election that went something like this.

me: “well how do you think the election went.”

other: “i am not too excited about it.  I think that people just voted based on race.”

me: (in my head or out loud) “of course they did…so did I”

Why are we so arrogant to think that race is no longer an issue in this country.  Perhaps its time the “minority” had someone in office who could actually understand the racism that still exists and how discrimination is still a fundamental part of the “American” system.  My “issue” if i had to have one is AIDS.  We may not think it but it is a race issue. HIV in America is on the rise among young black men.  And AIDS is a socio economic issue.  And AIDS is a race issue. And AIDS is a inequality issue. And AIDS is a political issue.   So yes I might just have voted on race alone.  Perhaps more people should have.  And I have HOPE in all the ways that Obama made cliche, because they are true.  I still don’t place my hope in the government. But I do place it in a culture that maybe one day will wake up and say, “what the fuck are we doing? Love looks completely different than this.”  And this I believe was one of those baby steps towards being awake to a world the Creator made to be good.