Take no prisoners

I don't suppose it's appropriate to disclose the details of recent conversations in a blog. I want to, but I can't. So without the details, imagine that a certain girl is talking to a certain guy. Said guy admits to having an account on match.com. This weirds girl out.

The end.

I have a certain concern, in this digital age, that romance is dying a silent death. Back in the days when my grandparents were hooking up - 65 years ago - it was simple. I heard the two of them tell their story again around the dinner table a few nights ago, and was struck by the beauty of it all.

They were 28 and 24 when they got married in 1941. She saw him when she was in 8th grade, and said, "That's the man I'm going to marry." Years later, that's what happened. But it was a matter of proximity, and communication, that allowed them to end up where they did - it was a slow process over that ten year period. When he was away at college, she was home. When she was away, he was back working on the ranch. When she wrote him from her junior college to invite him to their dance, he wrote back and said, "No, thanks, but have a good time." (He explains that he didn't have any dress shoes, and didn't want to embarrass her. She, however, thinks he just didn't want to go.)

Their first date was to the Wheeler County Fair (somewhere in Iowa, or Nebraska, or something) where Grandma recalls she was entertained by Grandpa's unfruitful attempts to beat the strongman test where you hit the thing to try to ring the bell at the top...you know the one. Rigged, I'd say. Anyway, that was the beginning of what turned into an awesome adventure of life together. They've been to every continent, taught at colleges, lived in South America, been poor, been rich, raised two kids, six grandkids, and 4 great grandkids. And the quote I'll never forget from Grandpa on reflecting over it all: "We've been very fortunate...it couldn't have been better."

So now there's match.com. How sad. I don't want a story that starts with blind emailing, profile views, carefully planned words and timing. I'd rather have the guy with the wrong shoes who takes me to the fair so I can watch him show off. Something about all that controlled communication disturbs me...like we've forgotten how to just live and enjoy the people that come our way. I think there's such a thing as trying too hard.

Nothing against the Guy to which I referred. He's a good guy who should be with someone real, and I just worry that it'll never happen with ones anticipation being linked to an inbox.

Even so, I liked You've Got Mail.

Prodigy?

On Sunday, my 11 year old niece will perform her first solo French horn concerto with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, on one of their local "orKIDStra" concerts. I just thought that was interesting.

11.

And she sounds amazing. And I don't throw that word around lightly - especially with horn players. I mean, the potential for sounding like a sick cow is astronomical. And she's beating those odds with her crazy little ambusher.

Can't wait to see this concert...

Rachmaninoff, S No. 3 in A minor Op 44

(April 22, 2006)

To think, some people will spend their entire lives homesick - either in wishing they were somewhere else, or in wondering if there could be something better than where they are. Homesick for the past, for some previous "glory" - or for the deep sadness that we all experience to find resolution in something greater - something so completely other that it concludes and answers all our doubts. Doubts of reality and truth, hope, redemption, eternity.

And would any of us end it, when faced with the option? When we really open to the possibility of releasing the pain we've known since the beginning, and how many of us would choose to go beyond it into a freedom so wide and fierce, that we are completely unfamiliar with? I think the human condition is to harbor our pain - lick our wounds, smell our filth, sink in our quicksand. Change implies struggle, and struggle, more pain. We are content that pain is a destination, when in fact it was meant to make us move - make us take another step, find a new place.

When the flesh feels pain, we don't hold still - we pull the hand back from the fire, snatch ourselves out as quickly as possible because we know pain to be a signal; an alarm to tell us we MUST move - staying despite the pain means greater longer issues - or death. So how have we come to reprogram our souls that pain produces perseverance? That without it we won't grow? These, perhaps, are true in one sense, but surly misleading in the way we have interpreted them to mean that all should suffer. No, I think the Christian life is meant to be filled to overflowing with the full measure of Christ - so where, pray, is the pain in that? Only in the journey to that total infilling, I think. It certainly costs our very selves to make room enough to hold Jesus - and it is a process. I think the pain that produces righteousness is in the burning off of the dross cluttering our hearts so that more of Him can come in. When he pushes up against some packed corner, we can feel it, and we must do something - we must heed the alarm, and change. And the pain will go. Living there insinuates an unwillingness to let God complete the transformation we invited him to do upon accepting Jesus as Lord.

So the brokenhearted were meant to find peace. But it comes on the other side of much pressing - a choice that hinges on Hope, trust. The point is that none of us are protected, hidden from pain. There will be no end, because we will either spend our lives standing still in it, or moving through it. And in the moving, we come closer to where we find rest - total, complete, eternal rest in the hope of Heaven with Christ Jesus. There is no other way, no hope besides Him. And, I think, the quicker the response to the pain we encounter, the broader the place of rest and peace will enjoy on its release. Are you seeing it? He is the only way. There is no other - and in agreeing with Him, we change our destiny - from a life of pain to a life of change. The focus becomes not the awful state we find ourselves to be in, but the road we're walking, with purpose. We were meant to live for so much more. This is the gospel, the very message of Hope. You can be free.