everybody has aids!

so i just finished all families are psychotic. everyone has AIDS. the son, the mom, the lover and the son's wife...all of them. i kept being reminded of the satirical song "everybody has AIDS" from the movie Team America:

Everyone has AIDS!
AIDS AIDS AIDS!
AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS!
Everyone has AIDS!

And so this is the end of our story
And everyone is dead from AIDS
It took from me my best friend
My only true pal
My only bright star (he died of AIDS)

Well I'm gonna march on Washington
Lead the fight and charge the brigades
There's a hero inside of all of us
I'll make them see everyone has AIDS

My father (AIDS!)
My sister (AIDS!)
My uncle and my cousin and her best friend (AIDS AIDS AIDS!)
The gays and the straights
And the white and the spades

Everyone has AIDS!
My grandma and my dog 'ol blue (AIDS AIDS AIDS)
The pope has got it and so do you (AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS)
C'mon everybody we got quilting to do (AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS)
We gotta break down these baricades, everyone has
AIDS! x 20

that is a totally inappropriate song.

everywhere...like, such as

had to....

our fathers are our models for god

i talked to my dad on tuesday. it's amazing to me the level of dysfunction that existed under the guise (or perhaps in the disguise) of normalcy in our family. i am only beginning to grasp that now. how many lies we lived. and it has been with an increasing sense of shame and horror that i have watched as my father turned from this guy into this guy over the past year. i cried for the first time in over a year after i talked to him. my insides were twisted and i felt sick. i spent the next three days nearly immobilized with a deep sadness. and as my luck would have it, i also had the flu. but you know the interesting thing is that in the middle of all of this shit i am getting a clearer and more distinct picture of what being loved by jesus is all about.
i really shouldn't drop a line like that and leave it hanging. it seems so cheap doesn't it? it's almost a non sequiter. but i started this blog precisely so i could work these things out, and do it in a public fashion because there is nothing for me to hide anymore. i don't pretend to understand paul (wink wink) when he says he is the worst of sinners, i get it. that's all i used to get. in fact, that was where my understanding of the gospel ended. i do bad things=bad dude=not loved by god. perfectly rational. just not the gospel.
i can remember a good friend who used to look me in the eye and tell me he loved me. it was all i could do to keep from laughing/crying/punching him on his tongue. why? i didn't believe it. my line was this: "just around the corner is my next screw up. it happens to have your name on it. when that collision happens, and i've screwed you over you won't love me anymore. end of story."
like i said, totally rational. in fact, i think people tell themselves that same line in differing variations every day, all day long. but the more people came into my life that looked into my eyes and saw how very screwed up i was, and more they continued to tell me that they loved me, the more i began to understand that grace was something much bigger than i had ever thought it was. and that the cross had something of infinite importance to say about my worth. and that my sin was not the most lasting or true thing about me.
i get angry when people toss grace around like a bean bag. a thing to be thought lightly of. i get angry when people bandy words like "brokenness" around as if there is something romantic about sinning against other people. the reality of sinfulness in this world is that it comes with a body count. sin is not neutral. and the grace that conquers it has been hard won for us.

you might wonder why i posted this clip. the fact is i think tyler durden is right. our father's do model god. so when our father's fail what happens to god?


is the failure of my father a model for god's failure in my life? or...is it somehow illuminating the way jesus really loves me? i'm not going to (nor am i trying to) solve this issue in a blog post with a pithy saying and a video clip. i think it is enough at the moment for me to hold both of these things, tight fisted, in a kind of tension.

there are things i know to be true. not just true in some syllogistic way, but true in a deeper sense. felt truth, experienced truth, having lived and seen something work itself out true. i wouldn't have put grace in the title of this blog if i didn't think that it was the central issue threading through all our lives. by grace you are saved.

what i'm reading

last night my wife banished me to border's in order to find something to read. now, i'm the sort of guy who has trouble ordering from a menu at a restaurant because i can't make up my mind. so imagine my trouble at a place like borders with books stacked, quite literally, to the ceiling. i was given one rule: it must be fiction. anyone who knows my family and sees the title to the right probably will think i bought a secret biography of the Perkins clan. its not true but it could be.
coupland is the author credited with coining the phrase "generation x". apart from that however he is quite an accomplished writer. if you can imagine a 21st century jack kerouac, then you have a pretty good idea what d. coupland is all about. he's not quite as transient as kerouac, but he has seemed to have inherited some similar personality traits.
he also has a god fascination which i enjoy. i'll let you know what i think of it when i'm finished.

grace

here is grace. my daughter: evangeline grace. eva for short. and at this particular moment she is captivated by blues clues, the way only a two year old can be.
eva was a surprise to us, and our lives have changed in dramatic ways because of her arrival to our family.
my wife and i were married in march of 04, we found out that we were pregnant with Eva in September of that same year. at the time Lindsay was teaching at Kirk Day School, and i was working part-time at Starbucks and going full time to seminary. we also bought a house. a one-bedroom house. in fact we closed on that house the same week we found out that we would be adding another person to our family. Eva was born in May, Lindsay quit teaching and i lasted one more semester at Covenant before i left for full time work at Starbucks. for the next year i was assistant manager at the starbucks in kirkwood. (yeah, that guy worked two blocks away from the starbucks store.)
it was a difficult year to say the least. i was never happy with my job. and two months after i started my dad walked out on my mom. never to return. we also were expecting our second child. we found out early with our first pregnancy whether it was going to be a boy or a girl. we waited on this one. six months after my dad walked out, and six months after i first began to wrestle with the deeper issues of father-son relationships, we had a boy.

first off...

here are my orange clogs. crocs, to be exact. i purchased them as an homage to mario batali after i got a job an italian joint here in saint louis. since that time my crocs and i have been inseparable.
this is my second go 'round with a blog. i hope this time i will be more consistent with my posts.
i'll post a picture of grace in my next post.
all for now.