If all goes according to plans, Becky and I leave for a long-anticipated trip to Brazil seven weeks from today. We’ll see some sights and we will see some friends! In preparation for good conversations with our friends, we are brushing up on our Brazilian Portuguese using an online course we really like. Professora Virginia is a Brazilian who has lived in New York City for a dozen years. She knows both American and Brazilian cultures and is a gifted teacher.

The other day I was working through a lesson Virginia titled “Don’t Be Rude! How to be polite in Brazilian Portuguese.”  The main takeaway is to avoid stand-alone imperatives, “Help me with this.” And instead to use the “futuro do pretérito,” or conditional verb tense, along with a “por favor.” “Would you help me with this, please?”  Yes, it’s always a good idea to be polite, especially if you are a stranger in a strange land. Continue reading →

Some of you may be familiar with Dunbar’s Number and the ideas it represents. Though there is hardly consensus that British anthropologist Robin Dunbar has the thing right, there is an intuitive sense that his broad strokes paint a picture of a reality we recognize. Dunbar’s number (150) suggests there are certain human capacities that limit the number of people in a series of relational circles, 150 being the most “meaningful” contacts any one of us might have. According to Dunbar, “the tightest (relational) circle has just five people – loved ones. That’s followed by successive layers of 15 (good friends), 50 (friends), 150 (meaningful contacts), 500 (acquaintances) and 1500 (people you can recognise). People migrate in and out of these layers, but the idea is that space has to be carved out for any new entrants.”

I have been thinking about Dunbar’s number on my slow morning runs through our neighborhood. The run itself has been especially delightful in recent days as the weather has cooled and the sun arrives just a bit later each morning, sometimes coloring the clouds in yellow, orange, and pink. Continue reading →

Becky and I are just back from two weeks helping our son and his family move from western Missouri where he was stationed as an Air Force chaplain to his new assignment east of Pensacola, Florida.  We spent the first week in Missouri preparing for the move and the second week on the move and the first days of settling into a new house. For Becky and me, 2700 miles, nine states and six different hotels. The trip from Missouri to Florida was less ambitious as we crossed southern Missouri, Arkansas, a corner of Tennessee, across Mississippi, another corner of Alabama, and into Florida. 900 miles in three and a half days. Four drivers, four vehicles, and six children, ages 4 to 14. My passengers were 10-year-old Gideon and almost-6-year-old Micah. They were great travelers.

When you are almost 6 years old or already 10 – or if you’re 4 or 14 years old – 300 miles or more can make for a long day. But each travel day held the promise of a hotel pool waiting at journey’s end for those tired pilgrims. We did not hold out the pool as a reward or in any way threaten to forbid its use as a consequence of some bad behavior. Neither reward nor punishment, just the reality of what was at the end of the day, though I did find myself encouraging the almost-6-year-old, especially, by measuring the remainder of the afternoon’s drive in terms of hours or minutes to the hotel pool. Continue reading →

Proverbs 17:6

    Grandchildren are the crown of the aged.

If all goes well, Becky and I will be in Missouri as you read this. In Missouri on the way to Florida.  We are helpiing our son and daughter-in-law as they move their family from one Air Force base to the next. Our job will be to distract the kids as the parents do the literal and figurative heavy lifting.  We plan to be back home at the end of the month, and you’ll hear from me then.

It’s a good sign when you think about Sunday’s sermon the entire following week. Even when you preached the sermon. It was my privilege to preach last Sunday’s sermon at Ossian Presbyterian Church. In the course of the sermon, and it made sense in the context of the sermon, I quoted the first question from Lord’s Day 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism. For those of you not familiar with the catechism, it dates from 1563 and the now German city of Heidelberg. It has been used throughout the various branches of Reformed Christianity, but is especially identified with the Dutch Reformed churches of which it is one of the three standards of faith, or Forms of Unity, along with the Canons of Dort and the Belgic Confession.

Enough of the history lesson. In the sermon I made the point that creeds, confessions, and catechisms help us make sense of our world and our lives in it. Lived experience is not ultimate truth for those who know the creeds of the church. Rather, the creeds explain the meaning of those experiences.

Here is the first question and answer from the Heidelberg Catechism (1963 translation):

Q. What is your only comfort, in life and in death?
A. That I belong—body and soul, in life and in death—not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who at the cost of his own blood has fully paid for all my sins and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil; that he protects me so well that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that everything must fit his purpose for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him. Continue reading →