Tuesday night I was awakened from a sound slumber by a thunderclap over my house. It sounded like an explosion in the sky. I jolted out of my sleep, dazed and confused.

Wednesday night I decided was going to be a catch-up night for sleep. My plan was to settle in relatively early and sleep through the night. I specifically said that I wouldn’t be awakened by thunder.

Wednesday night I was awakened from a sound slumber by a thunderclap over my house. And then the dog got me up, claiming that she needed to…er…relieve herself outside. And then she realized that it was raining and wanted to get back inside so she could pee on the dry floor instead.

Sigh.

Thursday morning I was a bit groggy. As I staggered around, getting ready for work, I considered what had happened. I thought of various “spiritual” reasons. You know, learning humility and all that. And that may be true. But I came up with another possible reason.

Sometimes I’ll hide around a corner and wait for one of my children to walk nearby. Then I jump out and scare him. Invariably the child jumps and screams and then we laugh together.

I wonder if God was pranking me on Wednesday night.

It was pretty funny….

This is rough; both transitions and sound need work. But I thought I’d put this trailer for A Flower for Mara up for comment. Any thoughts?

“Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’” (Genesis 2:18)

I had an odd thought about this verse during worship yesterday.

So, Jesus is the second Adam, right?

And the Church is the Bride of Christ, right?

Then, maybe…just maybe…this verse is one way of interpreting all of history. It is not good for the Man to be alone, so the Father is making a helper fit for Him.

As an aid to my readers, some of whom I think I confused recently, I offer this helpful link:

Pwn

Apparently, when Crystal and I got married, her classmates had a pool, betting on how long we would stay married. The longest time was five years.

Today, Crystal and I celebrate our eleventh anniversary. So, in case any of Crystal’s old classmates are reading this, I have something to say:

Pwned!

(As an aside, when I heard about this pool, I really should have been offended. Instead, I was regretting that I couldn’t have bet on it myself. That cash would have been handy at certain times in our marriage.)

“In that regard, Bob Brown is what every police official and neighborhood association claims as the solution to the trouble in their streets. He is every bit the old-time beat cop, the retrograde image of walk-the-footpost, know-the-people policing. Get the cops out of the radio cars, runs the latest theory, and you begin to get them back into the neighborhoods. Get the out walking their real estate, and they’ll start to reconnect with the people, learn the neighborhood, prevent crime. Community-oriented policing has become the watchword of the nineties in law enforcement. Houston, New York, Washington, Detroit–everyone is nostalgic for foot patrols and grassroots policing and whatever the hell else kep the streets safe in 1950. That Bob Brown knows his post from one end to the other, that he can recite most of the players and their deeds by name, that he has fought for the same terrain for two decades–all of it seems the textbook model of what the visionaries in law enforcement are promoting. That there are already Bob Browns on the streets, that for all their will and desire and knowledge, they have lost their private wars in hardcore places like West Baltimore–that is somehow beside the point.”
–The Corner, David Simon and Ed Burns, p. 152

I had been planning on posting those Gamism/Narrativism definitions for about a week now. Seemed funny at the time, and I thought that I’d share.

But then, last night I had a small realization. Essentially, my mini-RPG Showdown is all about making the transition from “two people fighting” to “two brothers fighting” in play.

Interesting….

A couple of RPG theory definitions.

Gamism: two people fighting.

Narrativism: two brothers fighting.

“The U.S. government declared war on poverty, and poverty won.”—Ronald Reagan

Billy Dennis reports on an accident at Sheridan and Main, as well as a nearby shooting.

Pray for this little girl.

Yeah, you think that sounds weird. But it’s actually weirder. And very cool.

HT: Vincent Baker

I came across this on CNN.com:

Is America’s suburban dream collapsing into a nightmare?

Instead, they are looking for what Leinberger calls “walkable urbanism” — both small communities and big cities characterized by efficient mass transit systems and high density developments enabling residents to walk virtually everywhere for everything — from home to work to restaurants to movie theaters.

The so-called New Urbanism movement emerged in the mid-90s and has been steadily gaining momentum, especially with rising energy costs, environmental concerns and health problems associated with what Leinberger calls “drivable suburbanism” — a low-density built environment plan that emerged around the end of the World War II and has been the dominant design in the U.S. ever since.

Yep. We’ve been seeing some of this happening here in Peoria, too. And, generally, I happen to think that this is a positive trend. There’s something a little too sterile about suburban living, or at least the way that we’ve practiced it here in America.

However, this comes with its own price:

Yet Nelson also estimates that in 2025 there will be a surplus of 22 million large-lot homes that will not be left vacant in a suburban wasteland but instead occupied by lower classes who have been driven out of their once affordable inner-city apartments and houses.

The so-called McMansion, he said, will become the new multi-family home for the poor.

“What is going to happen is lower and lower-middle income families squeezed out of downtown and glamorous suburban locations are going to be pushed economically into these McMansions at the suburban fringe,” said Nelson. “There will probably be 10 people living in one house.”

In Shaun Yandell’s neighborhood, this has already started to happen. Houses once filled with single families are now rented out by low-income tenants. Yandell speculates that they’re coming from nearby Sacramento, where the downtown is undergoing substantial gentrification, or perhaps from some other area where prices have gotten too high. He isn’t really sure.

(Emphasis mine.)

So, yeah, what about them poor folk that used to live in the urban cores? Where are they going to live?

We’re seeing some of that here, too. My neighborhood is poised to be a part of the ongoing urban renewal in Peoria, which means that real estate prices in University East are pretty high, compared to what they were just a few years ago. This is going to make it more difficult for working-class families to be able to live here.

Sure, this is really just a mirror development of the previous migration of the poor to the urban cores. However, there’s at least one significant difference. The urban centers actually had generally well-built buildings. For example, my home started its existence as a single-family dwelling, was divided up into three separate apartments, and then was returned to being a single-family dwelling by the time that we bought it. It’s a solidly constructed house.

The McMansions of the suburbs, though, are not so well built. The quality of materials and construction simply isn’t as good as the older homes. As the working class moves into the suburbs, are they also going to be trapped in rapidly decaying buildings?

And where will they work? If you live in town, at least you can use mass transit or hoof it yourself. If you’re out in the ‘burbs, your options are limited. After all, the suburbs only work as long as those who live there have automobiles.

Now, I say this as one who really enjoys the thought of living in the proposed Renaissance Park area. My idea of a good night is hanging out at One World Eats or Water Street Wines, Cafe and Coffee on the riverfront, both of which are the results of the sort of urban renewal that we’re talking about. Personally, I like the idea of living in a bustling urban area, filled with arts and music and coffee houses and restaurants, all within walking distance of my house. That sounds fantastic!

And yet, I have to raise the question: who are we displacing? Are we forcing the working poor into another migration, simply because we want to have our beautiful urban centers?

Or is there another way?

These are real questions. I don’t have answers. But I think that the time is rapidly approaching where we need to begin thinking about how to answer them.

Last night, I made a decision. I was taking the night off. I wasn’t going to worry about the urban poor, or the war in Iraq, or people destroying their lives with drugs. I wasn’t going to think about political corruption or abuse of power or tyranny. It was Sunday, and I was going to take a Sabbath from it all.

So, we broke out Caylus, which we haven’t played in nearly a year. We also mixed up rum and cokes and played music without any social commentary. We eventually put on Crystal’s fun music playlist, which let us do the head-banging part from “Bohemian Rhapsody”, because that’s high culture right there. We also discussed the humor value implicit in this verse; indeed, I laughed so hard that I was crying.

Yeah, it was a good night, even though Gabrielle totally schooled us at Caylus. (Next time! Next time!) I’m finding that there’s a certain discipline in learning to set down issues and walk away from them for a bit. They’ll be there when you get back.

But if we have faith in a good God, we can also believe that He will take care of them, even when we’re not.

“A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it.”–Aldous Huxley

Recently, I read the book Our America by LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman. This book drew from the two recording projects that these two boys were involved with:

Ghetto Life 101

Remorse

You have to register on the site to listen to these pieces, but it’s free! (They are also available here and here.)

Ghetto Life 101 was just a trip around the projects, which was harsh enough, but Remorse was about the murder of Eric Morse, a five-year old boy who was dropped from a 14-story building in the projects by two older boys because he tattled on them. Now, when I say “older”, I mean “ages 10 and 11″.

And the book had pictures, too, taken by a friend of these two boys. So they roamed their neighborhood with camera and recorders, asking people about their lives and about how the murder affected them.

Troubling material.

It was all the more troubling because of the constant presence of the false gospel of success. “You’ll get out of here,” people said. “You’re smart and good-looking. You’ll go to college and be better than this.” Your knowledge will save you. Your intelligence will save you. I would think that, in a place as bleak as these tenements, this false gospel would have expired. I guess not.

But, as I read between the lines of this book, seeing what was said and what was assumed, I discovered something profound.

LeAlan Jones never met his father.

Lloyd Newman’s father is a drunkard.

The father of one of the murderers was locked up at the time, imprisoned for domestic abuse.

The theme that knit together these heartbreaking stories of pain was a deep father-hunger.

In his book Ten Things You Can’t Say In America, Larry Elder makes the case that what is destroying the black community in America is illegitimacy. I remember my mother citing some study that showed that things began to go wrong when the illegitimacy rate hit 25% in the black community. She would then go on to point out that the illegitimacy rate among whites had hit 25%. And that was 15 years ago.

As Isaiah said:

Woe to the wicked! It shall be ill with him, for what his hands have dealt out shall be done to him. My people–infants are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, your guides mislead you and they have swallowed up the course of your paths.

(Isaiah 3:11-12)

And yet…

The Spirit of God is at work in our nation. Over the last several years, I’ve seen a growing emphasis by Christians on masculinity and fatherhood. It’s a messy process, to be sure. There’s a lot of work to do and, let’s face it, men aren’t always civil and polite. And yet, that is exactly what we need: men who are willing to be men, acting with courage, forcefulness, and fortitude in order to take up their place as servant-leaders in the home.

It doesn’t look like much. Mostly changing diapers, insisting (once again!) that your son get to bed on time and not talk back to his mother, and trying to teach your children to listen to what God has to say about life while they mostly ignore you.

Yeah, it doesn’t look like much.

But it is changing the world. Because, if you look around, it is this very thing that so many lack.

Happy Father’s Day, eveyone.