|
| This week my family visited a working farm, and now we are considering raising chickens in our back yard. Seriously. We are thinking small- maybe between 6-12 hens. I've spend the past hour researching this online, and it is amazing how many people do this in their homes.
Biggest challenges: building a coop and choosing the best breed (for eggs, not meat).
Do any of you have any experience with this? | | |
| Last night, thanks to tickets from Joyosity (THANK YOU!), I got to take my son, Noah, to his very first baseball game. I love Fenway - I love the crowds and the cheers and the vendors walking the aisles selling Hot Dogs. I love walking along the Boston Garden to Yawkey Way to listen to the musicians and smell the bratwurst. I love it even more when the weather is perfect, like last night. It makes me wonder why anyone would want to live anywhere else.
But last night was the best time I have ever had- there is something so iconic and sublime about bringing your son to his first MLB ball game, at Fenway no less. For his birthday I got him a fitted Red Sox hat to wear at the game, and as soon as we arrived at the park I bought him his first Fenway Frank.
The fans around us were really decent, despite all Noah's fidgeting and constant questions. I think they recognized the sanctity of a boy's first game, and enjoyed the privilege of witnessing such a special moment. We got there early to walk around Yawkey Way with the fans and entertainers. Once inside, I missed about a third of the plays because I was trying to explain for the 8th time what a "walk" is. (Dice-K gave us lots of practice on that one). In the Fourth inning people in the bleachers started batting beach balls and inflatable sharks (we were playing the Mariners) around, and Noah got to hit both. In the fifth inning the fans started the wave, and it made it around the park four or five times, which Noah thought was magical. He said his favorite part was watching guys slide into base.
Noah saw a great game - the lead changed hands several times. We had to leave early because it was a school night- but the game was tied, so Noah insisted we listen to the rest on the car radio as we drove home. But within two pitches, I heard his new Red Sox lunchbox that he had been hugging drop to the floor. He was asleep. When we arrived home and I was carrying him inside, he woke up and asked who won. The Red Sox did- Manny hit another homer.
After brushing his teeth and changing him into his pajamas, he crawled into bed - hugging a baseball. This morning when he woke up he asked if it was all just a dream.
Fatherhood doesn't get any better than that.
| | |
| Today my son Noah joined me in a surprise worthy of his namesake- we had a flood of our very own. An underground spring overflowed and burst through the bottom of my basement, filling it with 10 inches of water. My office is down there, so some of my books and audio/computer equipment is submerged. All the furniture down there is probably destroyed. It was a bummer - but then I heard on the radio an interview with a soldier back from Iraq describing the horrors of war, followed by tragic shootings at Virginia Tech. Puts my incidental problems in perspective. So sad. | | |
| Most of you know that I spend way too many hours working at Panera, which has enabled me to observe the details of Panera culture.
One of the sadder parts of that culture are all the old men who hang out here every day. Some read the paper, some talk to themselves bitterly (outloud), some just sit and stare blankly. I see them try hard to initiate conversation with store employees or other customers, but lack the skills to make social connections, so everyone just shuts them out. One guy gives me the same lecture every month, unaware he has ever met me before. Today one of them yelled at me because he thought I wasn't standing close enough to the person in front of me in line. Perhaps their loneliness makes them hurt so much as to become repellently self-centered, or perhaps they never learned how to make social connections earlier in life. Our culture seems to encourage us to be increasingly self-centered and isolated - which we call independence.
What strikes me as strange is that I see several of these men every day, but no women like that. The old women come in pairs, or more often, in groups. The largest group arrives every morning after attending morning Mass at the local Roman Catholic church, and all sit together by pushing several tables together.
There are few things I find more frightening than ending up as a disconnected old man. Retirement as our culture currently conceives of it seems like a curse. Is playing golf or fishing by yourself everyday really any better than sitting in a coffee shop? It might be pleasantly distracting and even prayerful for a short time, but God has made us to relate, to create and to give life. As long as God gives strength- I want to spend it to accomplish something meaningful, even if that is just reflecting God's joy in His creation by enjoying others and encouraging them.
If I were to outlive everyone in my family, or (more likely) outlive Michelle and my kids disowned me, I hope that I would have lived my life investing in people so that was still able to give and receive life in relationship.
If not, I would move to North Korea, or Darfur, or some similar place where ministry is desperately needed but can literally be life-threatening. There I could serve God and others with a full heart as long as He chooses to let me live, and my days would have purpose.
Mark 8:35 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.
My heart is heavy for these guys. There but for the grace of God go I.
********
On a related note- for her birthday my mom asked me to get a colonoscopy (for me- not her). Zoiks!
| | |
|
