The 37th Week

Hello Little Bugger! It is your dad here again. It feels like we have been waiting for many moons, but your big day is almost here! Your mama and I are a little anxious to see how this new adventure commences, but more so we are super excited to meet you! What's your name? What do you look like? What do you do? How do you feel in our arms? (How much do you sleep?) Soon enough we'll know!

It has been an active couple of months. You are thoroughly exploring and getting into everything that you can as you grow big and strong within your mama. I sit out here and watch your feet and knees and elbows move all about. It is a strange but fascinating sight!

For our part, we have been assembling your gear and attending classes and garnering bets on your birthday and putting on some entertaining photo shoots and making all sorts of preparations.  I think we are about as ready as we can be. At some point, we just need to jump off the end of the dock and see what happens! But for now, we bide our time by sleeping in and reading books and skiing and enjoying quiet evenings around the Christmas tree.

Your 37th week started on December 24. So close to your January 14th due date, we spent our first Christmas in Colorado. The three of us went to the 7 o'clock and 10 o''clock service - your mama really belted out Hark the Herald Angels Sing! I went for a sunrise run on South Table mountain the next morning and came across some reindeer grazing - boy do I have a story to tell you next Christmas! We visited a couple of gatherings later in the day, eating plenty of ham, potatoes, and cookies! Your mama hung your first ornament on the tree - which happens to be a noble ponderosa that takes up most of the middle of our living room.

Now we continue to wait. Today we went for a short hike around icy Echo Lake. The wind swirled the new snow all about as the sinking sun painted the clouds tangerine and salmon and lavender. Winter is the most beautiful and wild and wonderful off all seasons - hence your namesake.

In two days it will be January and the new year. When you are ready, we are here for you...waiting. But we will see you soon enough! Sweet dreams, Little Bugger.

Love, dad

Baptismal Waters

In Minnesota, we say that if you want to learn how to swim, then jump off the end of the dock. Mason Jennings sings about the life available to us if we make this choice, and the power of a loving relationship to provide the courage to do so.

At a little wooden cabin, up in northern Minnesota, we ran together down to the dock, and you jumped right off it. And from out in the water, you called me to join you. I said "Baby I cannot swim; if I jump, I'll surely drowned you." You said, "Life has no limit, if you're not afraid to get in it." Oh baby, I jumped to you, since then there's nothing I can't do. I'm never going to give you up. Dear God, if you ain't got love. If you ain't got love, what do you got if you ain't got love?

Here this morning, these words have taken on a whole new wonderful depth. I have long struggled to conceptualize "God," who or what we mean when we use this name, and if we mean anything real at all. Hearing anew the story of a leap of faith into the places that scare us suddenly strikes me as an incredibly sacred story. That which beckons us to live the life we know we ought to be living, that which holds us in a loving embrace as we come forward with all our fears and uncertainties, that which moves us to act despite these, and that which offers a life of purpose and abundance here and now - that is the unfolding and inspiring Light that I shall call God.  

As I have been challenged over the past week by decisions placed before me in my career, I have placed all my trust in living the authentic life that stays true to the Light, as best as I can discern. Through moments of uncertainty and difficulty, here I have found wisdom and solace. From out in the water, I see something renewed: maybe I have faith after all. 

--

You can listen to the song for free on Mason's website under the Boneclouds album.

20 Weeks

Hello Little Bugger. It's your dad. Your momma and I are so very excited to have you in our lives!

At the moment, we are twenty weeks through your mother's pregnancy. We have been thinking of you for much longer, though.  Your mom came back from Tanzania with safari decor for your baby room;  that was before the two of us were even married! I picked out your first winter hat a few years ago at a thrift shop in Denver. In Peru, your mom picked out the most cuddly sweater for you (alpaca wool will keep you nice and warm in Colorado and Minnesota). In Alaska, I found a onesie with bear paw prints (at a thrift store of course!). You see, you were never far from our hopes; we just needed to travel the world first to get you some clothes.

I vividly remember when we first found out about you. It was one of the happiest moments of my life! The whole world glowed with a new light.

Your mother is tough as nails. I do not need to get into all the grizzly details, but she has been sick many times in many interesting places. She does not complain. She just rubs her tummy: "I love you Little Bugger." Then she eats some more.

Already, you are a wild child. Your mother has carried you along by ski, bike and kayak. You have been rappelling in Mexico and camping in the Rockies. Next week you are heading up to Banff! In the meantime, I am studying my options for carrying you into the backcountry and taking you along for mountain bike rides. Of course, I have plenty of sleds ready to go. There will be no shortage of new adventures!

When it is time to rest after a adventurous outing, there is nothing like a good book! We have started with the classics: Calvin and Hobbes, John Muir, and Shel Silverstein. You seem to enjoy reading, as far as I can tell.

It took many sleepless nights to determine your name. We have many criteria! Unique but vaguely familiar. Meaningful but flexible. Wintry and adventurous but  subtle. A cool look. A fun sound. Two syllables followed by one.  What to do with your middle and last name. Capable of withstanding the test of time. Finally, we have a boy's name and a girl's name ready to go! (Don't worry - we tempered some of our crazier ambitions. We are sure that you will be shaking your head about us plenty as is!) You will be a surprise at birth.

In the meantime, your mother and I will continue to prepare for your arrival. We are working hard to create a wonderful world for you. This time and place you are about to enter is pretty darn nice. Though is not always easy, and there is always more work to do, living and loving is quite an amazing experience. We cannot wait to share it with you!

There is no need to rush. Things that matter in life take much time and energy to develop. Grow big and strong, Little Bugger! We are patiently waiting, and will be here to welcome you. Just let us know when you are ready to take the leap of faith!

All my love,
dad

Solo

Following Wexan, here is the second video from Alaska 2013.

Helmets

I have on my shiny orange kayak helmet right now. I love wearing helmets! Even as I sit here in front of a computer, putting my thoughts to the page.

Why? Because there are a lot of sharp pointy rocks out in the world! If I am wearing my helmet, it means I am charging ahead, regardless. You do not need to wear a helmet if you live a safe, conservative life and avoid all difficult terrain. But recently, I have been wearing my helmet, and loving it!

You see, I have been preparing for a run at a new position at work over the last few months, a so-called leadership position. At first, I was uncertain if I was even interested in the new terrain, and in any case, a bit hesitant to put myself out there. But I made a choice, spurred on by a mentor: come what may, go for it! Consequently, I have been intensely studying all the "book material" - the policies, regulations, knowledge, theory, skills and strategies - to have "good" answers for the interview. That comes naturally to me. More of a challenge, I have also put myself out there on the "social side" - connecting with new people, forging partnerships, presenting at meetings, small talk with the Vice-President, sharing my passions and visions with the wider world. This terrain is much scarier to me, sharp and pointy.

Here is the strange thing. The social side, the risky terrain, the areas of reservation: my efforts charging ahead in these areas have been exhilarating! Good thing for my helmet. It gave me courage to chance it, protected me from the rocks.

It is too easy to let our fears and perceptions define the boundaries of our possibility. My natural mode has always been to think and observe, to process in my own head, to only share myself within a tight circle. There are strengths to this mode, strengths I still rely on today: intellectual activities come easy, self-understanding is readily available, and I have never much gotten in trouble or hurt by others. But it is now becoming apparent that these natural ways of being can be hijacked by self-doubt, codified and institutionalized over the years into limiting thoughts, and turned into self-inflicted boxes defining our potential.

The core philosophy of my life is: becoming - grounded in our roots and growing toward the light. Here you find my most foundational spiritual assumption; if we all have this opportunity and realize enough to take it, then we as an interconnected whole evolve ever closer to goodness and truth, a just and joyous world, the Kingdom. This pursuit leads me to work at a community college, to be the best friend and family that I can, to struggle for ecological justice, to dance my way across a volcanic island. And it explains why I am so excited this morning!

I still do not know if I will be selected for this particular position that I am applying for, and in a way, it does not really matter. Far greater a reward the process has already granted. I have taken a new leap in my journey of becoming, and ascended beyond certain self-conceived limitations. Now, from this new vantage point, I see even higher mountains to climb!

Wexan

In July, I headed north to Alaska to meet up with my buddy Chad and find some adventure.

Planar Existence

In a discussion group, we reviewed a Venn diagram, with one circle demarcated as "spiritual" and the other "religious". In the middle ground, where the circles converged, we found "both". We had, by this point, already worked through our varying definitions of these topics, and now were attempting to conceptualize the relationship between these two, so defined.

My first point: we have a human aptitude and need to make sense of our experience and reality through the construction of models, metaphors, theories, theologies, systems, and the like.

In my view, this activity plays a positive role in that it 1) creates a sense of purpose, direction, and meaning to our lives, which tends to content us; and 2) leads to the evolution of our great knowledge and cultural traditions, from the sciences to the arts to family dinner.

With all my respect and appreciation for these outcomes, I nevertheless felt a bit discontent as I stared at that Venn diagram. Yes, certainly we can - for example - differentiate between our conception of spirituality and our conception of religion. We can create an internal coherence of these terms, a rational understanding that fits together the pieces, however defined. Moreover, as the type of person that enjoys the activity of simply thinking, it is great recreation to build grand mansions of thought, constructing rock solid rational systems and analytical regimes and problematizations to bring coherence to the relationships between our models and metaphors and theologies. What fun!

The fact of the matter is that my critique here is in fact not a critique, but simply the activity in itself. And, in my view, that is the second point: it is significant to always be mindful that our human conceptions are just that.

On the Venn diagram, we distinguish between two conceptions, and can well do so, while achieving a certain purpose, by differentiating along a horizontal axis. Within the bounds of that plane, we can further distinguish along a vertical axis as well: neither spiritual or religious, in this case. But I could not help but wonder: What is the third dimension, the dimension emerging from the flat plane of paper, the dimension undefined?

This brings us to the third point, which may well be a non-point: I don't know.

A common response here is belief. However, from the safe terrain of the flat land, it is clear that belief does not exceed a planar existence, because it is dependent on a construction (namely, that there is a reason to believe or something to believe in - humanistic or supernatural). That does not make "belief" good or bad, it just leaves me feeling discontent.

Another response here is to shrug off this whole enterprise as irrelevant. Why does any of this matter? That may do just fine for some, but the fact that we have the capacity to come to this point means that turning back is a difficult thing (for me) to do. I have no defense other than to say I am compelled to explore.

A third response is to "live for the moment," which often means to do what feels good, with a focus on ourselves and our limited reign of influence. If this rabbit hole keeps going down, we may as well enjoy the ride.

A fourth response is to focus our energies on not knowing, or trying to not know. This is an activity that I find insightful, but perhaps I have not attained a high enough level of awareness, because I can't escape the fact that I know that I cannot know.

Frustration: nothing here on this page - as fancy as it may sound - exceeds the planar existence. It is all practical in itself and important, yet limited. I could go on and on, round and round.

At times like these, I like to look at the depths of blue in the sky and the infinite contours of the clouds. I feel peace.

...
Post Script:  Therein, I suppose, is my commentary on the relationship between spirituality and religion.

Another Day at Work

For our spring semester community service project, I organized a restoration project at Bear Creek Lake Park, on the west side of town.

Holy Saturday: A Time for Transformation

I grow weary of forcing a reasonable understanding. Let's be simple and honest: time, culture, and the desires of heart and mind have ceaselessly reconstructed an ancient narrative of Jesus' life, death and resurrection. Anything we do today is all the same. And I personally cannot entertain the circular logic that this descriptive fact is explained by divine will, because you could use such an explanation to explain absolutely anything whatsoever.

The Biblical account, so far as it goes, embodies a long history of the human search for meaning and direction, and we can ply these stories and their constructive histories in search of wisdom for our moment, as our human roots do run deep into the past. But I grow tired of reverse engineering our current moment and evolution, enslaved to the to the stories and traditions enshrined long ago.

Thus: I listen to the ancient story of Holy Week and Easter; I consider deeply the timeless themes of life, death, and resurrection; and I reimagine the meaning and direction for here and now. And if an ancient account or tradition loses relevance as we evolve through the ongoing unfolding of Creation, it is as it should be, and it is time to move on.

Thus: the meaning and direction that I find in the story of Holy Week is that Jesus taught an incredibly life affirming and new way of relating to one another, drawn from an intense spiritual life that reimagined and challenged the theological views of the times. This evolution threatened the way certain things were, and some with political power were none to happy about this development. It seems, then, they found a solution to their problem, and Jesus died the way he died because he lived the way he lived. Yet, so powerful was Jesus' social and spiritual evolution that it lived on, not in the physical resurrection of Jesus' body, but in the spiritual resurrection of a community that choose to spread the Good News of Jesus, despite the despair and fear they surely felt after seeing the brutal execution of their mentor and friend.

Here I find a deep Easter message powerful today: that this wonderful existence unfolds through tensions between light and dark; that we can be in tune with this sacred song; that there is always hope, no matter how despairing it may seem; and that we are all a part of the creative evolution, which may call us to do difficult things.

To me, this is the continuing journey that Jesus tread, that he - and others - so brilliantly and courageously direct the rest of us toward. As for "God": who, what, how or why God is I am quite hesitant to define. But the moment that calls all of us forth, the intense creative power that we experience all around us, the inspiring evolution toward better forms and relationships that unfolds undeterred, is something truly amazing to behold. Call it what you will.

That is the sacred story that I reimagine at this time of year. Whether it is Biblically accurate, dogmatically correct, academically cliche, historically true or scientifically relevant, I do not know, nor am I that concerned. That its construction considers all before me, and that its guiding principal is resonance with the life affirming creative spirit deep within me - I feel compelled to exclaim: life will overcome!

Journey of the Universe

Here I am, on the 16L bus, heading to work down Colfax Avenue - and I am ecstatic. At this moment, it feels like watching Bob Ross paint on PBS. For most of the episode, you enjoy the colors and forms taking shape, you enjoy the artistry and the unfolding image, but you are not entirely sure what you are looking at. Then suddenly, with a determined yet subtle stroke of his painting knife, it emerges, there before you. 

In my readings and thoughts and constructions and experiences, a spiritual-ecological-theological evolution has been accelerating over the last year or two, a process with roots deep in my entire journey. But today, the morning sun enlightens a new form, and my experience of this time and place looks and feels anew. Cosmos, becoming Cosmogenesis. Matter versus Spirit, becoming co-creative expressions of the same universal process. The world is beautiful. This morning is exciting. 

I have my contingent vocation, my calling in a smaller sense, the thoughts and activity of my life directed toward temporal and specific objectives that I value, the work I do to earn a living to support what I value and want to do in my life, in my time. But there too is a universal vocation, something greater, something on a larger scale, something more abstract and difficult to fully comprehend, something independent from any day to day concerns, separate from any individual time frame. As the universe emerges through expansion and attraction - the spiritual and the physical dancing in co-emergence - as its being and essence unfolds through the interplay and interaction and dialectic and evolution of its contingent realities and divine energies, so too does our universal vocation breathe and exhale in the smallest locality of our individual being in this individual moment, inextricably interconnected to the potential of the Whole that extends long before us, and will continue long after us. This is the voice, the calling, that is amplified today, the Cosmogenesis that is especially revealed by where the unfolding universe, Creation, has brought me to in this moment, this morning...here on the 16L.

Everything glows. And now, for the  moment at least, I see it. Where the Whole Earth, the Emerging Universe, the Sacred Spirit carries me from here, I do not know, but wherever I go, there I will be. And I get the sense that it is my universal vocation, my Work, to see the Story, anew. 

Loss

As a child, life's rhythmic simplicity
Was all that I needed:
Laughs and smiles that were true,
Autumn trees that shimmered,
And summer breezes that trickled through.
The beauty of each day,
Made my face glow;
Life's greatest failure:
The loss of what we know.

A Winter Stream of Memory

As I recall, the long night of the solstice brought us on a wintry drive across the plains. Around 3AM, Jenean and I bajaed across row upon row of snow drift on Interstate 90 as we headed north for the holiday. Christmas was very pleasant with a crisp chill in the air and sparkly snow on the ground. As always, we loved spending time with our family and friends back home. On the return west, we spent a day exploring the snow-dusted pinnacles of the Badlands and racing the sunset in search of bison roaming the Black Hills. Around this time, it started to snow more consistently in the high country of Colorado, so I took to skiing most every weekend. I have toured the Front Range backcountry with Kris and Todd, and also made an outing to Rocky Mountain NP with Jenean. I have enjoyed skiing a new mountain at Eldora, and Jenean and I had a great day in deep powder at Wolf Creek. I have also been on the Nordic skis a fair amount, with good days in Pagosa, Steamboat, and on South Table in Golden. With new snow moving in along the foothills, a blazing red sunrise greeted me to the east on an early morning tour last week. Sledding has been good, but limited so far. Jenean and I dragged our sleds into James Peak Wilderness for some camping. On a cold day in January, Savvy the Gerbil passed away, and we hiked up South Table that evening to bury her body. Savvy and Saucy introduced me to a joyful part of life I had been missing, and this can never be taken away. We also had some moments of disequilibrium mid-winter as we waited to hear if Jenean would land an assistant professor position at St. Scholastica. We were excited by the possibility of returning to Duluth, of moving on to something new, of putting down some roots and buying a house. But at the same time, we were not quite sure if the timing was right, if we wanted to leave our community we have developed in Colorado, if we wanted to move away from the mountains. As it were, the position did not present itself - I was disappointed but also a little relieved. The world is wide and beautiful, and people that we love are spread all about, so I imagine that such tension, now introduced, will always be with us as we decide where to live. My job has progressed swimmingly this winter. I finally produced a video on financial literacy - featuring time travel, a dragon, and some cameos by my colleagues - that I had been working on (and off) for over a year. I moved to a new office and have a window facing the foothills, with some interesting landscape/construction directly outside. This has proven an entertaining distraction at times, such as the sub-contractor this week who insists on hooting and hollering most of the morning. All in all, I find my work exciting and very meaningful, and I am in a great environment. What else? Jenean and I saw a great show at Winter on the Rocks (Red Rocks), featuring one of our current favorites, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. I have been rather busy serving on various church committees - of all things. I am sponsor for a number of new church members and I am dutifully working on a number of projects for the Whole Earth Ministry (environmental stuff), including a weekend retreat Jenean and I will lead in the fall. I have been writing a fair amount, though not publishing much on the blog, as I have a number of incomplete strains of thought in need of more time. I have been reading a fair amount, too - Beyond Environmentalism; The Great Work; The River of Doubt; Hiking in Wrangell St. Elias National Park; Falling in Love with Mystery; One Jesus, Many Christs; and probably some others. Lately I have especially enjoyed coming home from work and spending the majority of my evening preparing dinner, eating with Jenean, then doing dishes and wiping down the sinks. It is relaxing to get down to life's more simple tasks after spending a busy day advising students and working on the computer. There was a grand celebration at our place for Jenean's Birthday XXX. I wore an x-ray. We received pedometers at work as part of the Health and Wellness theme, and I am closing in on 17,000 steps today. I woke up this morning at 5:30 to go for a nice trail run on the mesa. It is no longer pitch dark and starry when I head out for my morning workout, though that will change again this weekend. We visited Rick and Mariah in Steamboat this weekend and spent some time soaking in the Strawberry Park Hot Springs, idyllically set in a wooded alpine amphitheater. I have taken to sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and eggplant this winter, though I still eat a bowl of cereal most every night before bed. Speaking of which, it is about that time. There is rumor of a large upslope Front Range snow storm this weekend, so we will see what comes about. I suppose winter officially ends in about two weeks, but the ski season is shaping up to last through at least mid-May. Let it snow.

Pagosa X Games

An interview with ski athlete, Jenean O'Brien, at the Pagosa X Games.

Build Financial Literacy

In one of the more entertaining initiatives of my job, I created this video to teach students about financial literacy.

Christmas Photojournal

We left work Friday afternoon and drove through the night. The interstate was very rough and icy around Des Moines, but we made it north, greeted by a winter sunrise. 

Jenean seems to be going through a phase. Here she sings her favorite country song while dancing in the back of her brother's F-150. 

Merry Christmas from Minnesota! 

Pulling sled around the house in Foley with our nieces. 

The weather was nice and crisp for the whole trip. 

Playing Farkle with some aunts and uncles. I made a poor showing. 

For a Christmas gift, we took Madison, Megan, Kayla, and Kennedy to the trampoline park. We also took Lisa, Steve, Eric and Naomi to Great River Bowl. 

It was nice to make the trip up to Duluth this year in order to visit Luke and Cheryl. We went ice skating, watched Scooby Doo, met up with Joe, and checked out a Thai restaurant.

A nice wintry coast along Duluth. 

We stayed at the Motel 6 in Wall on our return so that we could explore Badlands National Park on the last day of the year. We did some hiking and saw some bighorn sheep. 

We finished the year with a bison hunt in Wind Cave National Park.

One of many winter sunsets during the trip.