DaddyRoBlog

True Confession

Last night I sat at a bar for a couple hours, nursing a drink.

I realized it is the first time I’ve ever done that.

It’s not that I haven’t been in bars before, but that I don’t think I’ve actually sat at the bar, where the hormones of the men and women gathered there flow like the alcohol they are drinking, and where the air is opaque with smoke.  I don’t consider myself a particularly sheltered soul, so the realization was rather startling.

I sat there with a person who had a very difficult week; who had seen a good friend die, and who indeed had pulled a blanket over his head so that the dead man’s wife and kids who were also present (it was their wedding anniversary) wouldn’t see what had just happened. 

What I was drinking was water, but after hearing his story, I was sorely tempted to switch to whiskey instead.

Before and After

Yep, I finally got my hair cut.

Monarch Migration

Looking back, I see it was September 15 when I saw hundreds of Monarch butterflies in the fields off of Horsepen Run, so I decided to check it out today.  Despite the drought the fields are still full of blooms, and quite a few monarchs feeding on them.  I also saw lots of other butterflies as well--swallowtails, red admirals, cabbages, sulfurs, a wood nymph, and so on. 

Judging by the large number of  caterpillars and chrysalises I'm still finding in my yard, there are  lots of adult Monarchs yet to come.  So if you like butterflies and you live in this area,  it will probably be worth taking a walk to check it out for at least the next several days (and maybe as much as the next couple weeks).

Some Thoughts on Work

Today feels like Friday.  Maybe that's because I've alreay worked closed to 50 hours this week.

In this area--and indeed most of the world, that is not unusual.  Alot of people leave the house before dawn and don't get home until after dark.

Is that a bad thing?  Not necessarily.  Clearly, if working long days leads one to neglect the highest priority relationships in his life, that is problematic (and, of course, I see our relationship with God as our highest priority relationship of all).  If one works long days just to make more money to buy more things but isn't doing their part in making the world a better place to be, I'd see that as problematic.

But if one  works 40 hours a week and uses the rest of the time simply for leisure pursuits, basically keeping themselves entertained, well, I see that as problematic too.  One can work a 40 hour week (0r less) and still neglect their soul, their family, and their responsibility to the world because they spend all their spare time bowling.

I think one can thoroughly enjoy his work, the people he works with, feel like his life is offered in the service of something (and Someone) greater than himself, and  still have time to pray and ponder, for  family and friends, to walk through the garden, to read a good book.  In my mind, at least, that is better than sitting around watching TV.

Visitors in the Night

We wondered why the cats were so worked up tonight and then we happened to see these guys out on our upper deck.

I opened the kitchen door to get a better picture--the light of the flash was reflecting off the glass door--and this is what happened.

I always wanted a pet raccoon!

Comment of the Day

We went back to our normal Sunday schedule today with three services.  It felt great to get back in the swing of things.

After our last service, a woman shook my hand and said, "You always preach a good sermon and give me something to ponder.  But if I were your mother, I'd tell you to cut  your hair!"

I guess it is getting a little long.  My next wedding is in a couple weeks.  I promise it will be cut by then!

Hanging Around

Here is a Monarch caterpillar about to make a chrysalis.  Yesterday morning on a quick walk through the garden I counted almost 60 caterpillars dining happily away on the milkweed plants growing just for them.

Seeing Monarchs is evocative of my youth.  I raised my first Monarch's from egg to butterfly in fourth grade, and it was a thrill.  All these years later, that same thrill is still there.

Ch Ch Ch Changes

I feel like a bomb has gone off in my life.  I don’t think I’ve ever had so much work to do with so little staff to help.

As it turns out, this is probably a good thing, and there is actually a mercy in it.  Being busy helps fill the empty spaces left in my life when my oldest daughter left for college.  It keeps my mind from thinking too much about how much I miss her.

It is an interesting transition, to be sure.    I knew my oldest daughter going to college would be a big deal.  But I didn’t understand just how big a deal it is until I began to live through it.  I think this is one of those life passages that require a person to rethink who they are and what he wants his life to look like.

If one has invested significantly in the life of his children, there can’t help but be a void created in their absence.  As part of the parent’s orientation at my daughter’s college, they had a psychologist talk to us about this.  He talked about finding a constructive way to manage that void.  If we don’t take measures to fill it, then we become the parents from hell—“helicopter parents” who are overinvested in their kids because they can’t let them go.

So… life, which is busy to begin with, is busier than ever.   That, I think, is a good thing, and I’m grateful.

For Christine

"When you are young, before you accumulate responsibilities, you are freer than most people to choose among all the voices and to answer the one that speaks most powerfully to who you are and to what your really want to do with your life.  But the danger is that there are so many voices and they  all in their ways sound promising.  The danger is that you will not listen to the voice that speaks…inside you or to the voice that speaks from outside but specifically to you out of the specific events of your life, but that instead you listen to the great blaring, boring, banal voice of our mass culture, which threatens to deafen us all by blasting forth that the only thing that really matters about your work  is how much it will get you in the way of salary and status, and that if it is gladness you are after, you can save that for weekends."

Frederick Buechner on vocation in The Calling of Voices