Only in America . . .




Pursuing the American dream. Gotta give 'em kudos for that. But what about the cats?

Eats, Shoots, and Blogs

The book "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" prompted me to acknowledge that I am, in fact, a grammatical stickler. I am also an occassional blogger. This, to me, is a great paradox. It would seem that being an author of sorts and being a grammatical stickler would go together like hot cocoa and marshmallows. Not so, I have found. Why? Because I make mistakes. Stupid ones, ones I should know better than to make. And it seems I often miss them until I am myself surfing the web, which of course eventually leads to my blog, and of course when I arrive there I am compelled to read it to make sure nothing terribly new and interesting has occurred in the world since my last visit. (Note to self: self's blog hasn't announced any "terribly new and interesting" world occurrences in quite a while.) Nevertheless, I can never know for sure that my blog's as I last left it without reading it, so I make the visit and, voila, find that the byte bugs (or is it "bug bytes?") have apparently disrupted my perfect construction and demand immediate repair. It really is a disheartening thing for me to realize I'm not perfect.

On the other hand, if I were perfect, I'd have to be perfect all the time, and that's an even more discouraging thought. So, I thank God I'm imperfect and that He loves me anyway - even if my letters don't always line up right!

You know, it's like life. None of us has it all together. Our letters don't always line up like they're "supposed" to or like we want them to. Our commas and periods sometimes get lost when we really needed the break, or placed in the most inconvenient places. Sometimes the book ends just when we wanted it to go on forever, or we find a chapter needing to be put it out of its misery. Those are chapters and books of our lives. Imperfect as they are, though, they're ours, given to us and to no one else. No one has lived or ever will live our unique stories. And those stories, regardless of the mistakes we've made, the errant commas we've inserted, or the coloring outside the lines we've done, can be beautiful. It's through our failures and mistakes that Love can be revealed - the purest of all colors infusing the bleakest drawing and turning it into a radiant story. Jesus' love not only covers all sin, it colors every story - if we'll but let it.

I know it sounds pretty bizarre - most of us want to be perfect all the time - most of us want to be good enough to warrant justified love - but I think we should all take a moment to thank God that we're sinners - because without failure, we could never fully experience the overwhelming deepness of the love of Jesus.

Believe it or not, I didn't really come here to write about anything deep or esoteric today.

Really, all I came to say was that I just had a great vacation home (aside from a football-related bite through my lip - healed nicely, though, with the aid of Super Glue - don't ask - think Marsha), followed closely by my first visit to Seattle for a friend's wedding. Aside from having a large contingent of young vocals apparently objecting to the blessed union, the wedding was one of the most beautiful I've been to. Small - but not too small, simple, and romantic. The following day, Adrian, Tiffany, David and I visited Crystal Mountain (thanks to those of you who recommended it!) and spent a day on the slopes. More precisely, Adrian and I spent an afternoon and evening on the slopes. The others didn't have quite the affinity for hypothermia and, instead, spent considerable time sitting in the warmth of the lodge observing the occassional toboggan coming down the hill with another frozen body strapped to it. After the sun went down at 4:00, the resort's three night lifts lit up and the day's three to four inches of fresh powder sucked us into staying a few more delightful hours. It quit snowing about that time, too, and we couldn't have asked for better powder.

Sunday, we paid homage to the original Starbucks, wandered the fish market, went shopping, stumbled over a few homeless people - woah, is it just me, or does Seattle have the largest homeless population of any city in the world!? I had to have seen at least twice as many there as I've ever seen in San Francisco! Anyway, I wouldn't make Seattle my first choice for a tourist destination, but overall it wasn't a bad place at all - especially for people who enjoy shopping, people-watching, and street-wandering. Oh, and street musicians! They were out en masse and pretty fun to watch. I was tempted to buy a couple CD's, but decided I needed to spend the money on stuff more critical to my immediate survival: coffee, for instance. I'd heard Seattle had a coffee shop on every corner. That wasn't exactly the whole story. Not only was there a Starbucks, Seattle's Best, or some other home-grown coffee shop on every corner, there seemed to be three or four per block. I realized this as I was sipping a carmel macchiato and thinking a coffee refill would be nice. I looked up and there was a coffee shop. A few sips later, there was another, and another, and another. At least the people of Seattle will never go thirsty.

Speaking of thirsty, I read a book while I was in Seattle at the airport called "Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality," by Donald Miller. It had been recommended to me by several friends, so I finally took the advice and read it. ("What does this have to do with being thirsty?", you ask. Well, not much, really.) This book is great. There are a lot of things I don't agree with the author on, particularly his political and social views - I haven't protested any war efforts recently, or attended any anti-Bush demonstrations, but his humor, openness, and love for the Lord and people are compelling reasons to read the book if you get a chance. It's a really fun one, and challenging in its own way. Besides that, it's helpful for closed-minded, white male, Christian Republicans like me to get a glimpse into "the dark side" occassionally.