I'm back from a blogging hiatus. The iMac was in the shop. (Yes, even Macs can have faults. My logic board needed replacing.)
Jordan's weekend camping trip with my father and me was called off due to cellulitis stemming from an insect or spider bite on my son's thigh. Enough to make one afraid. Bed rest. Two days. Meds. Time will tell. Please pray. Thank you. I'll try and update you in 24 hours or so.
Some eight to ten years ago I read Godric by Frederick Buechner. And I hung upon every word.
Then maybe two or even three years ago I was rummaging through a garage sale in Austin and ran across a 1958 Knopf First Edition printing of Buechner's third novel, The Return of Ansel Gibbs. Even though the dust jacket printing was sun-faded, the hardback book itself was in good condition. I think it could possibly sell for fifty or sixty bucks, but I picked it up for fifty cents.
I think at the time I wrote to my friend, musician Eric Peters — a huge Buechner fan, check out Eric's music too — that I was starting to read the book, but I only cracked the first several pages and moved on to something else.
Finally I took the time this last week to go back and read …Ansel Gibbs and again I found myself hanging on Mr. Buechner's words. No time for a review. But it was a good read. I'd like to re-read Godric over the Christmas break, godwilling.
I did realize, after the fact, that my reading Gibbs coincided with Robert Gates' confirmation hearings.
(Gibbs is about a presidential cabinet nominee's decision to/not to pursue the post)
Tonight Amy and I fashioned a Leif Ericson costume for Jordan who will 'become' this famous Icelandic explorer for a day tomorrow at school. Leif is thought by some to be he first European to sail to the New World, no offense, St. Brendan. Jordan's costume looks really good and was essentially free — it was cobbled together from a coarse cloth pirates' shirt, a brown faux-suede tunic we cut and wrapped with a leather belt, wash-in red hair dye, birkenstocks with added cloth strips criss-crossed up the calf to mimic a roman-influenced sandal, a silver cross on a necklace (Norway's King Olaf insisted he take on Christianity; Leif settled for polytheism, just in case) ... we're still looking for his old plastic sword.
Monday I had a lunch with a friend who is a pastor at a large church in town. He spoke some very healing words and I've come again and again to realize how much we need others in our lives speaking truth into our daily rhythms. I am sad to say I haven't had that for months. So it felt like living water.
Then today I had lunch with a friend who I'm just getting to know, it seems. And we spoke some very simple words to each other that again brought healing to me. Plus, we ate at Radicke's Bluebonnet Café, a place I suggested that I hadn't been to in six or seven years. Good roadhouse comfort food. Chicken Fried Steak. That sort of fare.
This afternoon I got to use my Spanish to speak to Claudia, who speaks about as much English as I do Spanish. I classify myself as "Functional enough to get out of danger" — but it reminded my that I love Spanish and languages in general. Weird, huh. I love semiotics and contexts and puns and cognates and inferences and plays-upon-words.
Like Ansel Gibbs, I'm less a man of action than a man of words. Then again I'm 37 and a father of four and no one's given me permission to call myself a man. What happened to bildungs román? Rite of Passage? Calling out into manhood? Gauntlets?
I have a lot of work to do these next few weeks, so I shouldn't have even blogged this long. I need to be a man of action. MIssional, even. Yes, Bishop Newbigin, there is a Stanta Claus.
Thanks Mark. Thanks Joseph. Thanks Frederick.
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