Season's Greetings

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere . Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting these greetings, you are accepting the aforementioned terms as stated. This greeting is not subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for herself/himself/others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wishor.

For everyone who isn't a loon, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Respect

The longer I teach Sunday school, the more my respect for pastors, youth pastors, et al grows. I teach one out of every three months and sometimes it feels like a real burden. How pastors continually find new meaning and new ways of presenting God's message is a remarkable thing. I know they get plenty of guidence from God, but still, it's an impressive bit of work. Some Sundays when I teach, people seem to be really into the lesson and are actively participating. Other mornings, they just sit there like bumps on a log. On those mornings you can almost here the crickets chirping. I know God directed me to be a teacher because of how things fell into place for it to happen. As time goes on though, I think it was more for my benefit than anything else, cause quite frankly, I don't think I'm a very good teacher. For tomorrow I prepared a lesson on David and his courage and it's ultimate source--God. I'm hoping people will take to it and there will be lively discussion. Sitting in from of twenty or more people waiting for a single answer to a simple question because no one feels like talking sucks. Sometimes I think the biggest thing God wants me to learn from all of this is patience.

To steal an idea from Brad, the Christmas season allows for the singing of some of my favorite hymns at church. I like the standard holiday fair--Joy to the World, Silent Night, etc--but my two favorite Christmas/Advent songs are One Small Child and O Come, O Come Emanuel. The music and the words for both songs strike a chord for me.

The silence is broken

Work the last month or so has been absolutely ridiculous. Our development deadline was this past Friday and I've been working frantically to get everything done by then. Happily, I was able to and can now take the next three weeks and get caught up on the smaller trivial items that could wait.

Now that I finally have some time to update the blog, there is much to be discussed. Most importantly is Caedon.




Is that the orneriest look you've ever seen or what? He is doing really well. He rolled over for the first time yesterday. I would have been more excited if it hadn't been in his crib at 5:30 in the morning. Once he rolled, he refused to go back to sleep. Daddy was less than thrilled. He's five months old today and seems like he's growing bigger every day. It's amazing how fast things have gone since he was born. He's playing with toys and eating baby food from a jar instead of just taking a bottle. The only problem he's had is that the transition to semi-solid foods has made him a little constipated. I won't get into graphic details, but let me just say that using a thermometer to help "movements" move is one of the less appealing duties of fatherhood.



You're eyes do not deceive you. That is soon-to-be-father Shaun holding Caedon. Kinser was up in our neck of the woods this weekend visiting Amy's family. Happily, he had Saturday night free and him, Nick and me were able to spend the evening together playing Halo and reminiscing about college. That was the first time in a long time that I have really missed MVNC. It has been far too long since we all got together.

I was watching ESPN last night and heard that Prince is slated to perform during the Superbowl halftime show. Are they kidding? About the last thing that comes to my mind when I think about football is Prince. It seems like they're still gun shy about getting any kind of decent halftime performer since the whole Janet Jackson nipple incident. Not that Janet and Justin Timberlake make for a decent performance. What they really need to do is book a traveling midget circus to perform acrobatic tricks to wow and amaze the crowd.