• A bunch of post-funeral thoughts

    I’ve just gotten back from a whirlwind trip to my hometown for Grandma McLane’s funeral… I’ve got so many observations to record.

    • Grandma McLane died with 3 kids, 12 grandkids and 13 (+2 in the chute) great grandkids.
    • In 29 years, I only ever beat her once in a game of 500 rummy. Against me, I think she was something like 250-1. I think the last time we played she let me win!
    • I think everyone agreed that this was the way to go from this life. Favorite place on the planet, no pain or suffering, just a simple quick passing.
    • A whole new level of respect for my wife. Having Megan and Paul to myself was pretty hard.
    • I can do it. I’m not as incapable as I let on… I really do more than play a dad… I can actually do it.
    • 5 hours in the car with toddlers will either make you yell a lot or buy a lot of candy. I chose the later.
    • When a little boy dances and grabs his crotch… he’s not immitating Jay Z, the boy has to pee and he’s ready to do it where he’s at… including on the slide at the park.
    • Little boy pee on your arms seems a lot less gross when you’ve barely made it to the john.
    • You should be prepared to bribe a child at any time with candy.
    • 6 year old boys will wrestle, jump on, and ask questions about anything that is moving or may soon move.
    • Sirius Satelite radio was a great investment for me. It just makes road trips better.
    • There are lots of parts about the catholic funeral service that I seemed lost in. It makes me wonder how many visitors feel lost at one of our services.
    • My kids did an amazing job sitting through a very unfamiliar service at the church. Again, bribery worked well.
    • Everyone got along too well. It was pretty weird… you put 40 people in a room who never talk about anything to the point that they are complete strangers… and they manage to talk about nothing but get along fine.
    • It was really great to have that many members of the family together.
    • I may be approaching 30, but in my older cousins eyes I will never have more than "little punk kid" status. And that’s fine.
    • I met my brother’s wife for the first time. She was exactly as described to me. Very cool, quiet, and quite nice. She get’s a hero award today for jumping in to help me with the kids.
    • My nephew Ryan is a blast to be around. I’ll post a picture later, but he and Paul could be brothers.
    • There is nothing quite like returning home. Pulling into the driveway, unloading the kids, and climbing the stairs into the house is one of the best feelings on earth.
    • It’s equally good to have a church family that loves and cares for you in many tangible and intangible ways.
    • It’s a whole ‘nother list… but we never thought we’d feel so at home anywhere as we feel in Romeo.

    Goodnight.

  • John 8

    This morning finds me in my hometown, Mishawaka Indiana. If you’ve heard of Mishawaka it’s only because of two things. Either you are from Northern Indiana or you are a Hummer afficianado.

    I was reading John 8:48-58 this morning. Something jumped out at me that has never jumped out at me before. The Jews walked up to Jesus and were like… "So who are you… aren’t you some Samaritan and demon-possessed?" Hehehe… and you thought people had a bad attitude towards you? How would you like it if people came up to you and were like… Aren’t you demon-possessed and someone I can look down on?

    What humility Christ shows in his response. Lord, I pray I’m that humble when people humiliate me.

  • Off to the Bend

    The house is buzzing this morning as we get everything ready to head to South Bend for the funeral. The odd thing about funerals is that they have a way of bringing family together. I am looking forward to that aspect.

    In other news, Light Force still rocks. We had our monthly concert of prayer & pizza night. It was well attended… especially since about 10 of our core students were mysteriously AWOL.

    Still more news, clearing the schedule. I am about 75% sure everyone knows that I’m unavailable for the next few days. I didn’t realize just how many meetings I had scheduled until I had to start letting people know.

    Yep, something else. Stock picking time. I haven’t been doing great lately, but I haven’t lost a lot of money. That said, it’s time to make my quarterly investments. I’ve got to decide if I want to add a new company or deapen my investments in one of my current compaines. I’m leaning towards investing in a long-term Blue Chip stock. But I have to do some research first.

    Is that it? Nope. As I am sitting here listening to CNBC this morning, I am beginning to think it would be fun to release Youth Ministry Exchange’s numbers quarterly. Check out the YMX Press Center

  • Goodbye Alice

    I just learned that my grandmother, Alice, has passed away. She died where she would have wanted to at the family cottage in Southwestern Michigan. I’m not 100% certain on her age but she was in her 90s.

    We’ll be headed home to South Bend for a few days, leaving Thursday morning. While it’s always hard to lose someone close it will be a good chance to reconnect with family.

  • Finished DaVinci Code

    While I’m proud of myself for actually finishing the DaVinci Code… it left me quite disappointed.

    No one could walk away from the book thinking it holds truth. At least no one who actually thought about what they were reading as they read it. As the label correctly distinguishes it, it is clearly fiction. The story is fantastic, but it’s anti-climactic finish leaves the reader with neither the option of a cliff hanger nor a surprise. The book seems to peak somewhere in the chapter 60 range and then grinds to a halt 40 chapters later.

    Chapters 55 & 56 are the full blown diatribe against biblical Christianity. Brown’s assertion is that Christianity was created by a power starved Constantine, Jesus possessed gnostic-like god qualities and it’s fine for people to believe whatever they need to get by in life. In fact, this is a well-worn humanist argument and nothing new. It’s relativism’s view of religion.  However, his assertion that the 4 gospels of the New Testament were chosen among the 60 reviewed is just a conspiracy theory. According to church history, there wasn’t any serious argument brought forth for the Gnostic’s… any controversy at all was over the handful of books in our NT whose authorship is veiled. (Hebrews for example.) If you aren’t sure why the others weren’t included… just head over to the nearest Borders and flip through the gnostic texts. It will immediately leap out at you why they were not included.

    The conspiracy about a smear campaign against Mary Magdeline and the "secret lineage of Jesus’ bloodline" is a fun conspiracy. And entirely implausible and fictional altogether.

    Why is the book so popular? Well, it’s pretty simple. Brown takes every conceivable cliche` and wraps them together with all the stuff that most people half-remember from high school Western Civ class. So he simply ties together oodles of names with secret sex cults, church conspiracy theories, murder mystery, a distrust of anything Christian, character double-crossing, riddles, knights of the round table, exotic locations, America’s fascination with Harvard, and the deep desire of American to figure out mysteries. Of course it’s popular!

    For those who think this book contains truth: Is the DaVinci Code the revelation of "the holy grail" to the world? If the powers that are described in the DaVinci Code are real… do you really think that they would have allowed Dan Brown to publish this story? Or is the secret behind the church merely being revealed to 46 million of the books buyers? Is some albino monk going to come kill us all?

    Glad I finally read it. It is worth reading. It’s fun, and it’s obviously fictitious!

  • It’s Official Now

    Dsc05535I think I’ve forgotten to mention this here. But it is official, Dave is coming here for the summer. He’ll be here roughly from June 29th-August 30th. He really is quite mature… I promise!

  • Relaxing…

    I don’t really have much on the agenda today. After the mission trip last week I have to admit that I’m pretty whipped. If the rain stops and it warms up a bit I have a couple of outside plans. But other than that, today will likely be a "rest" day.

    Megan and Paul seem to have forgotten already that I was gone last week. But it seems that they broke the rules and grew while I was gone. Megan is now reporting that she’d like a bike for her birthday. And Paul is using a bunch of new words. That’s just not fair!

  • Fantasy Baseball Sucker

    Fantasy Baseball Sucker

    I have to admit that I don’t even like Major League Baseball very much. But I am a sucker and I joined a fantasy baseball league this year. Double-sucker that I am I even upgraded my Yahoo! account to have the live stattracker thing. The only thing I like about MLB is that it doesn’t interfere too much with the college football season.

  • DaVinci Code as Non-Fiction

    Da_vinci_code_1Let me first say that I’ve not finished reading the DaVinci Code. I’m about 50% complete as of now.

    This book is a page-turner and it is a great story… but I find it hard to believe that there are really people willing to argue that Dan Brown’s book has some sort of great secret in it. I think Time Magazine actually did a good job at looking at some of the backgrounds to Opus Dei and also a great look inside their "secret headquarters." [Read article]

    Also interesting and found on the Opus Dei website is this response to the DaVinci Code:


    In fact, The Da Vinci Code gets Opus Dei’s nature 180
    degrees backwards. Monastic orders are for people who have a vocation
    to seek holiness by withdrawing from the secular world; Opus Dei is for
    people who have a vocation to live their Christian faith in the middle
    of secular society.     [Read article]

  • My favorite story

    Last night I was asked to fill in for the HS guy here at Inner City Impact. It wasn’t hard to come up with a quick talk that related to coming to Christ. I got to tell one of my favorite stories ever, "Getting in a fight with Steve Moor." It’s a great story about doing something wrong, getting out of trouble, and restoring a relationship.

    I’ve told the story so many times that about 2 years ago I e-mailed Steve’s dad and asked him about his recollections of that day. Turns out, he thought about it enough to write this column for the South Bend Tribune back in September 2004.

    MOOR OR LESS
    By BILL MOOR
    Tribune Columnist

    I was
    driving my third-grade daughter and first-grade son home from school
    that snowy afternoon when I caught my fourth-grade son in midshove.

    He and his buddy, Adam — or former buddy — were having a bit of an altercation right there in Leeper Park.

    A push here. A swing there.

    With both of them in their snow gear, they didn’t look as if they were doing much damage, but I pulled over anyway.

    I
    grabbed both of them by the arms and yelled at them to knock it off. I
    don’t think I said anything noteworthy, but the froth from my mouth
    apparently got their attention.
    I’m sure I was the last person they expected to land right in the middle of their little feud.
    They
    both look embarrassed. They both walked home — heads down. As the
    years passed, they went their own ways, no longer close buddies but not
    adversaries, either.

    When I drive by Leeper Park, I occasionally
    remember that little scene — just one of those hundreds of mental
    snapshots I keep from my kids’ formative years.

    Adam McLane, my son Steve’s buddy back then, remembers it, too. But what he remembers most was the following day — a Saturday afternoon.

    I took Steve and Adam to the movie "Rocky IV."

    You
    know the movie. It’s when Rocky outboxes the Soviet wunderkind and then
    says to the Russian crowd: "If youz can change and I can change, then
    wez all can change."
    An end to the Cold War almost immediately.

    I
    don’t think that the theme — spoken so eloquently by the Rockster —
    was why I took them to see that movie. Quite frankly, I didn’t even
    remember seeing it with them until Adam recently e-mailed me.

    He is
    now an associate pastor of student ministries at a Baptist church in
    Romeo, Mich., with a wife and two children. He says he retells that
    little episode often to his church groups.

    "That simple little lesson taught me an awful lot about forgiveness and grace and life."
    Maybe
    that’s what I wanted out of getting them together after their tiff. Or,
    who knows, maybe I just wanted to show them how punchy a person could
    get if he went through life banging ribs and butting heads like Rocky.

    Adam
    did want to know if I could explain what was going through my mind back
    then and if I thought Steve also learned a lesson that day.

    I wasn’t
    sure how to respond. I did tell him that it was probably my way of
    showing that I believed in both of them — that I wasn’t taking sides
    — and that if they quarreled again, they would be letting me down as
    well as themselves.

    I’m sure I also didn’t want them to dwell on their bad blood — that the sooner people make up, the quicker feelings heal.

    After the movie, I didn’t know if it helped or not. Just a few days ago, Adam told me it did.
    So
    I called my son, Steve, and asked if he remembered the episode. He said
    that every time he sees a Rocky movie, he does. And even if he didn’t
    say so back then, he says he did learn some lesson, too.

    Hmmm.

    When
    I think back to those parenting days, I tend to remember the mistakes I
    made — of being too strict … or being too pushy … or being too
    flippant.

    I think we all do that as parents.

    We measure ourselves against Ward Cleaver of "Leave it to Beaver" or Jim Anderson of
    "Father Knows Best," and we come up wanting.

    It is easy for us to remember the times when we think we could have done better as parents.

    But then we occasionally are reminded that maybe we did a few things right, too. Steve even mentions now that I wasn’t such a bad guy back then after all.

    I told him if he continued to get mushy like that, I’d send Adam down to finish their fight.