Baseball Summer

I'm indulging in my favorite sport, baseball, this summer more than I have in years.

My fantasy baseball team, the Arizona Run Devils, is #1 in my league of fellow high school teachers. I'm over 200 points ahead of the 2nd-place team thanks to awesome seasons from real-life baseball players Chase Utley and Justin Morneau. For those of you who don't know, in fantasy baseball, team members draft real players and get points for the statistics they earn in real baseball games.

Finally, I found this statistic in a recent column by Gennaro Filice:

The Cubs swept the Dodgers this week, evening the all-time series at 1,010-1,010.

The National League, in which the Cubs & Dodgers play, was founded in 1876.

I love this game.

Clues to the Tree of Life

I'm expanding my Podcast reach.

Recently I went through the offerings at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I listened to a podcast about the Assyrian collection. I want to tell the rest of what I learned in story form below:

In the halls of the Met's Near-Eastern Galleries, you can see the seeds of the Bible parading across the walls. Lovely, powerful beings march across the walls. Each one has four wings, and their power is symbolized in the enormous leg and arm muscles so carefully wrought by an artist long ago.

It's funny. When I think of an angel, usually I think of a tall, male figure. Now that I think if of it, he has blond hair and white garments. His figure isn't particularly striking--effeminate, perhaps. In my imagination, the power comes from his wings.

That's not how the writers of Genesis and Judges pictured angels when these books were written long ago.

They saw men very much like the one at right. They have long, braided beards, dark hair, and brightly painted, fringed clothes. They look like they could have stepped out of an advertisement for Gold's Gym. These men were known as Genii, from which we get the magical term of "Genie."

(The term, Genie, comes from the Arabic term, Jinn, which also refers to angelic beings, albeit beings with a different set of powers that those of our Western angels.)

I hadn't really thought about the cultural implications to what I believed an Angel to be. Yet it is clear from the relief that I'm seeing things quite differently from the way they were at the time the Bible was written.

Genesis 3 closes with an extraordinary image: an angel holding a flaming sword, guarding the entrance to the Garden of Eden and barring Adam and Eve from the Tree of Life.

Of course Revelation ends with the same image of a Tree of Life. But this is one where the angel is not barring the way, but instead it is showing John the way into heaven--quite a twist, and what I would describe as quite the happy ending.

In Revelation 22, the Tree of Life is more of a species of tree than a single tree, since apparently these trees line the River of the Water of Life (verses 1-2). What kind of tree could it be?

It "bears twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations" (2). Those are some good hints. Fruit falls every month. Its leaves provide healing. When I think of fruit, I think of apples or peaches--but they fall once a year, they can't possible produce in every season (at least not during winter). Have cherry leaves been used as a medicine?

Later rabbinic traditions held that the tree of life was so tall that it took 500 years to climb to the top.

Let's review the clues: the Tree of Life is tall, it never goes out of season, it produces fruit, its leaves are for the healing of the nations.

The ultimate visual clue--if one connects the origins of the Biblical tree of life with Abraham's cultural origins in Mesopotamia--can be found on another relief. This pictures another Genii--this one with the head of a hawk rather than a prince. His wings are behind him. He has the powerful arms and legs from the original picture. Like the original, he carries a bag full of incense.

Look at his right hand. In it is the seed of the Tree of Life.

It is too long to be an apple, too narrow to be a pear, too large to be a grape or a cherry.

It is...

...a pinecone.

That's right, the people of the ancient Near East saw the pine as a tree of life. It is evergreen, almost magical. It certainly isn't what I would have expected from previous readings of Genesis or Revelation.

Is it what you expected?

After I post this blog, I'm going to walk up my driveway to get the mail. As many of you know, it is lined with pine trees that my grandpa planted over 50 years ago.

Today, as I'm walking, I think I might better imagine what John saw in Revelation 22: "Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing...down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life."

Walking through those pines today, I'll feel closer to heaven--closer to Eternity which has been promised me.

A Fitting George W. Bush Memorial

Some folks out at the University of California at Davis have come up with a great way to honor George W. Bush when he leaves office in a few months. The propose renaming San Francisco's Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant, the place where the fecal matter of San Franciscans is treated before being dumped into the Pacific Ocean, the George W. Bush Sewage Plant. (The seal is presented here.)

As I understand it, it would take a whole lot of fecal matter to make that place stink as bad as Bush's presidency!

A Wee Bit o' Bracknell

We have refinanced the house, and we're in the middle of some pretty big changes at the Ole Dittes Manse. We have all new windows now, and the family room will soon have four fewer doors and one new floor.

This is in advance of Jenny and me finally moving into my grandparents' bedroom and giving the big bedroom to Owen and Jo-Jo (who are currently crammed into the study at night).

I'll post pictures once the family room is finished--this should be within the next three weeks. We still need paint, and floors, and some electrical, and siding...do you understand how crazy things seem right now?

Meanwhile, I'm still doing the transplanting work outside that I detailed in an earlier blog. I found three pine seedlings (barely two inches tall), which I dug up and moved into some gaps in the row of pines at the end of the orchard. I also found two apple seedlings under the old apple tree, and I hope to transplant those this weekend.

Better yet, some of the planting I did last fall has come up! Last May, my mom got Jenny and me 20 bluebell bulbs for our anniversary. The Newboldians who read this blog have fond memories of the Bluebell Forest that grew near the college. It was a 12-acre wood, and in late May and early June it was carpeted with thousands of bluebells.

Now the Bracknell Wood had a 100-year head start, but we're catching up. Last fall, Jo-Jo and I planted the bulbs in the woods next to our wedding site. This year about 12 flowers have come up.

(Admittedly the photo looks awkward, but if you look carefully, you can see the platform of our wedding chapel in the background of the pictured bluebell.)

In many ways this restoration will cost us well over $30,000. Yet in many more ways, it will be priceless. This place is a timeless place for Ditteses (and now Georges, too). Every tree I plant, every bulb I push into the ground is something I know that I will see in ten years and more--something that will probably outlive me and pass on as a gift to generations to come.

We cleaned out the attic (ahead of adding a new layer of insulation), and I found an old steamer trunk. It was empty of any artifacts, save for a bag full of very, very old women's shoes.

At first I was disappointed. Then I looked at the bottom. A torn sticker there had the words "G. Dittes." The sticker bears the name, not of my Grandpa, but of my great grandfather, Gotthold Dittes. Images appeared in my mind of his flight from Germany at age 18, the long trip across the Atlantic from Hamburg to New York; a photo of him at Niagara Falls, where he stopped on his way to see family in Minnesota (eventually he returned to New York to work and raise a family).

Did this steamer trunk make the trip? It's probably impossible to figure that out. All I know is that it won't be going back into the attic. Once the bedroom is finished (and I have restored the trunk), it will be my night stand: a great reminder of grandfathers, my love for travel and adventure, and the timelessness that makes me love this place so very, very much.

God's Favored Creatures

"God has an inordinate fondness for beetles." Biologist J.B.S. Haldane

I'm reading science again. Earlier this year I read two books on physics. This led to my sermon on Einstein--and I'm proud to say it's one of the most influential sermons I have ever preached. In the 2 1/2 months since I gave it, nearly every lay speaker at my church has referenced it somewhere in their talk. What a compliment!

Now I'm into astrobiology: The Living Cosmos by Chris Impey, where he goes into the development of life on planet Earth and speculates on the possibilities of life across the galaxy. There is plenty of evolutionary biology to be found here--something I appreciate, since my knowledge of evolutionary theory is pretty weak. Of course, there is plenty of our Creator to be found, too, if one has the spirit to seek...and find.

Impey conveys biology in a way that I had never understood it before. Instead of the two-kingdom approach of plants and animals, he presents life in a much broader array. I always saw the Animal Kingdom as a progressive chain of animals with bacteria at the bottom and humans at the top. The Plant Kingdom had a similar, somewhat hierarchical order.

Impey presents at Phylogenetic Tree of Life. This is based on genetic differences. The three branches of the PTL are Bacteria, Archaea (primitive microbes first discovered in the 1970s), and Eucarya.

In the Eucarya strain, humans seem insignificant. We are one of 5,400 species of mammals. This compares with 8,200 reptile species, 10,000 bird species, 29,000 fishes, 290,000 plants, and 1,200,000 species of invertebrates, of which 950,000 are insects.

It's a bug's world, apparently. As I noted above, you could take the total number of vertebrate species, multiply that number by five and you STILL wouldn't total the number of species of beetles.

This gives me a unique view of God. Maybe He does have a fondness for beetles. Instead of the human-centric view that I have of Him--that he created me in His image, that he set mankind above all fauna, that he sent his son to die for human beings--maybe I should consider a more beetle-centric view.

Consider this: we exist to feed beetles. The crops we plant, the dung we create, our very bodies themselves once they have left this mortal coil--all go to feed beetles. I don't know of any humans that eat beetles--or who use them to get food. No, it seems more and more that beetles are the top of the food chain.

God created man...for beetles? I need to check back with Genesis 1.

The organization of life in genetic branches also makes for some fascinating comparisons. Remember that in the new biology, humans are linked with plans, invertebrates and other complex organisms.

It is well known that humans share 99% of DNA with monkeys, but did you now that we have 85% in common with dogs and 67% in common with moths? If you could examine the DNA of the banana you had for breakfast, you would find that it holds 50% in common with you, as does yeast.

That seems crazy. I am, after all, 'fearfully and wonderfully made,' according to Psalm 8. Not as much as I thought, however, since I'm only twice as fearfully and 100% more wonderfully made than a grapefruit--in terms of my unique DNA.

Insult to injury: Impey reports that the E coli bacteria, which has 4,500 genes in its genetic code, has 1/6th the number of genes that I have. That's not a broad leap.

I don't have time to go into his astronomical observations, but they are fascinating, too. I'm not finished with the book, and I have a feeling that the refresher courses I have had in biology and chemistry are setting me up for some pretty remarkable physical conclusions.

I'll keep you posted, as always.

Reading The Road, Waking to the Light

A father, a son. They walk together through a barren, grey, postapocalyptic landscape, pushing a shopping cart and rifling abandoned houses for food.

They are the "good guys" the father tells the son. They push south, hoping to find others like them--trying to avoid the gangs that roam the countryside plundering the only edible things that remain: other humans. There are signs of horror, but no hints as to what could have caused all this--no hope that there is a single other place on earth that might have been spared. The only hope is in the "good guys," which may be the father and son only.

Before Cormac McCarthy's book, No Country for Old Men, became an Oscar-winning movie, his book, The Road, was a postmodern gospel. The father and the son: the father always watching always protecting, the son's humanity reaching out to the pitiful humans they do run across, reminding his father that there is hope in "the good guys."

I bought this book a month ago. Jenny picked it up, and she didn't go to bed until she was done. It was powerful. "You have to read it," she urged, but I was still trying to wrap up Moby Dick. I didn't get a chance to read it until two weeks ago.

It took awhile to sink in. I read it over several nights, and couldn't really get into it.

Then, last weekend, we were in Huntsville, Alabama, for a short weekend away. I had a dream. I was in a car, racing through a postapocalyptic landscape, dodging debris on the freeway. I was in the back of a convertible, barking at the driver.

We saw a shadow next to the road, and the driver pulled over. I had a terrible feeling. "No! No! No!" I screamed. "Keep moving."

It was too late. The shadow pulled something up to its chest. I saw a bright flash. My head hurt. I felt something rattle around, and then my eyes flew open. This is what it is like to be shot, I thought.

I didn't get back to sleep for a long time. I lay awake, and as I lay there, I thought about The Road and its peculiar vision that had rattled my unconscious in the same way the shotgun blast had done. I thought about my own sons, and I thought about the good guys--about hope.

The Things I Have to Teach

There are only four weeks left with my German 2 class. Tomorrow is Culture Day: our weekly examination of German history.

We have really enjoyed Culture Days this semester. We began the year with Napoleon and the destruction of the First Reich in 1806. March found us in World War I, and I worked hard to show the German side of things--and the horrors that all nations went through in that great war.

Of course April has been World War II month. The kids have been really interested as we have charted the rise of Hitler and the devastation of the end of the war. I was helped by three movies that I watched with the class: Europa, Europa, Downfall, and As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me.

Now I find myself in a dilemma. It's time for the Cold War. When one is studying German history, that means introducing East Germany. But there is no East Germany, just as there is no Soviet Union.

I find East Germany incredibly difficult to explain to these kids. It loomed so large: our opponents in the Olympics (back then they were the steroid-laced cheaters, now it's the USA), our mortal enemies. The Berlin Wall seemed 100 feet high in my imagination.

Now it doesn't exist. It fell years before these kids were even born.

What is an East Germany?

I have tried film. I rented The Lives of Others, an oscar-winning German film that follows a Stasi spy who ends up protecting a couple under surveillance. It's a great film, but it isn't appropriate for kids--a little too drawn-out, methinks.

I think I'm going to play a spy game. I'll show a video about Checkpoint Charlie. Then we will play a game: three kids will want to escape to the West, three kids will be "normal" East Germans who support the Socialist State to varying degrees, three kids will be Stasi agents. At the end of the game we will see who has figured out each other.

Do you have any other ideas? I'm teaching a foreign language, so this should be second nature. But I could teach the planet, Venus, about as easily as East Germany!

Sowing and Uprooting

There is a haunted house just down Boiling Springs Road from where I live.

At least that's what the kids on Highland Drive call it.

It's an abandoned home. Built just 20 years ago (by my former choir teacher, Mr. Schimp), it is now abandoned, sold to the state of Tennessee. Two years from now a four-lane highway will run through that spot.

Right now it is an empty place--nearly haunted. Last fall two trees on the property fell, one of them crushing the garage. The back door is open. You can walk in at any time and tour the home. The paint looks great and the wood floors are shiny. It is a house built with a lot of love--and lived in passionately until about four years ago.

I was walking on the property a month ago, and I noticed daffodils everywhere. What a shame, I thought. A year from now bulldozers will come and cover them with asphalt.

Last Saturday I decided to do something about it. I took a plastic bag and a spade with me on my afternoon walk. Owen rode his bike. In broad daylight, I walked up to a clump of daffodils. With four thrusts of my spade, I uprooted the whole lot and deposited about 90 daffodil bulbs in my sack. I have to admit that I felt somewhat guilty for "stealing," considering that these daffodils belonged to the state highway department and its giant bulldozers.

As I walked home, I wondered what to do with all these daffodils. I stopped by the pump house and planted six bulbs along its block walls. That still left me with almost 90 bulbs.

I walked up to the wedding site. I planted daffodils there four years ago. This year there were bunches instead of single flowers. Near the wedding site, however, I found thorns getting a head start on the other plants growing in the woods. I put down the spade and found a pickaxe.

For the next three hours I dug up thorn bushes. I built a fire. Every time I found a thorn, I dug it up. I threw the thorns on the fire (I just love the crackling sounds that thorns make when they are being burned). Into each hole I placed a daffodil bulb and covered it with dirt.

This went on the rest of the afternoon. It was getting harder and harder to find thorns. Meanwhile the woods were filling with green daffodil stems (the flowers had already wilted).

As the number of thorns dropped, I thought of the prayer of St. Francis

Where there is hatred, let me so love
Where there is injury, pardon

It thrilled me. This is what life is about, I thought, whether you own property adjacent to a 'haunted house' or not. We are here to rescue the Daffodil Bulbs of this world from the bulldozer, and we are meant to sow them wherever we dig up thorns.

I went back to the haunted house the next day and got a new batch of bulbs. I haven't sown them yet. Hard as it may be to believe, there are still thorns in my woods--there is still work to do. It should keep my weekends busy for the rest of the spring.

Youth Legislature

I'm blogging from the Tennessee State Capitol, where I'm sponsoring a group of students from my high school in a weekend youth in government conference.

This is not for the faint of heart: three days of grueling meetings, featuring debate and lawmaking. It's fun, though, seeing students grow over the course of the weekend. My students have proposed the following bills:

• Eliminate voting fraud by requiring state-issued photo IDs in order for people to vote
• Provide funding to provide a heart defibrilator to all marked police cars, which are usually the first-responders to accidents (this was our club's highest-ranked bill this weekend, and I'm proud to say that it passed the House by a 77-8 vote)
• Provide a tax rebate to Tennesseans who buy hybrid vehicles or train/bus passes
• Ban abortions for all teens--even if they have parental consent
• Decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana
• Allow the use of cell phones in schools in the case of an emergency

The state of Tennessee allows students to use legislative facilities--even the Supreme Court chambers--to engage in mock debate and lawmaking. I have four students running for office, including one who wants to be governor next year.

It will be a long weekend, but in view of the long-term benefits of a program like this, it's worth my time, I feel. When I was in academy, I loved statewide and regional events (in my case they were music festivals, where I got to practice my choral skills). I would have totally loved a conference like this one, where research, debate, and critical thinking are honed.

Ellie School Update

Ellie darted through the raindrops and slid into the car next to me.

I have learned not to ask, "How was your day?" It's a question kids hate to hear, and they seldom have an answer prepared. I waited for her to get settled as I pulled out into traffic.

She sighed and smiled. "That cafeteria just outdid themselves today at lunch," she said.

Inside I leapt for joy. A painful, exhilarating, worrying and necessary change was beginning to work itself out before my eyes.

The back story: a year ago, Ellie began to unravel. She got stressed out. She couldn't sleep. Her grades dipped slightly into the B range (with one insulting C). She began to seek confrontation with me, and she would go into emotional outbursts when we did cross words on things like why she had to do her homework and silly stuff like that. Shortly after the school year ended, a severe outburst at Camp Meeting time led us to seek outside help.

The counseling found that underneath the surface, she had had a tough time at school. She didn't feel respected by her 4th-grade teacher, and she had struggled to do well in her class. At least one family pulled its child out of Highland Elementary because of this poor first-year teacher. I kept Ellie there because I hoped that her experienced 5th-grade teacher would be better.

Before 4th grade, I felt that Ellie was "teacher proof." She has a strong desire to please authority figures, and she had used her blazing intelligence and perceptive personality to win over every teacher she had had since she was 4. In 4th grade she ran into a wall.

The problem continued this year. There weren't confrontations with me anymore, because we had worked that out over the summer. But Ellie hated school. She loved her friends, but she made it clear that she had learned to "tune out" the teacher and pastor when they lectured her and her friends. Over Spring Break all she could talk about was starting 6th grade at the public middle school just down the street from where I teach.

The day after Spring Break, Jenny called me at school. Ellie had refused to return to Highland, claiming she was sick. She had spent the day at the clinic with Jenny. On my way out the door, I picked up an Out-of-Zone Form. On the way home, I was given the following impression: take the morning off work; register Ellie at a new school. It was March 10, the worst time of year to switch schools.

The next morning we registered Ellie at Jack Anderson Elementary, about 10 minutes' drive from my house. On Wednesday she went to school for the first time--a huge school with over 800 students, yet one of the best elementary schools in my district.

It wasn't easy for her. "I hate it there," she would say in the early days. "All of the kids are snobs." On her third day, she experienced catastrophe. She had brought a sack lunch to school, and she sat down at a table at lunch. When the other kids got through the cafeteria line, the all sat somewhere else. Your typical 5th-grader would rather sit on an electric chair than sit alone at lunch.

This week it got better. She made a friend, Andrea, the girl who was the "newbie" before Ellie arrived. She also started to figure out the whole lunch thing. With Andrea sitting with her, she had an ally with whom social conquest was possible. Which boys can you laugh at? Which girls should you just ignore?

Ellie always talked about the cafeteria--always. The food was rotten. The pizza had sausage. Yuck. Ick. The usual. I realized--this is how she tells me about her day!

As Ellie described her quest in detail, it was pretty clear she was making the right moves. She knew not to act needy; she didn't overreact to some of the girls' tricks. She brought home her papers. They had solid, A-B grades.

Then on Thursday, she complimented the cafeteria food--the potato wedges, the grapes, the biscuits. "They outdid themselves," she said.

I'm sure you did, I thought to myself. I'm sure you did.

Signs of the Times

Most of the news these days is full of economic stuff. The American dollar has fallen terribly in recent months. Fortunately, this hasn't resulted in too much inflation, even thought it seems like ever $200 billion bailout of an investment bank (a la Bear Stearns) would seem to devalue the dollar further.

Here on Highland Drive, we have been pretty lucky. This area of Tennessee has pretty stable job status--and development is going full force near my school in Gallatin. A new shopping mall opened there just last month. But I do see the problems, both in my job and on my street.

I'll share them with you here.

A week ago an SUV pulled up in my driveway. It was my neighbor from two doors down, Kevin. He said they were moving Wednesday, and he asked if I wanted to take their dog, a Bassett Hound. Otherwise they would take it to the pound.

Kevin's step sons came over a lot. They were sweet boys--neglected, possibly abused, but nice kids. Sometimes I broke up fights and prevented them from terrorizing Owen or one of the other neighbor boys. Other times they came and we played Bionicles or rode bikes on trails in the woods.

A few weeks ago, Taylor (one of the boys) had told us they were moving. The payments on the house were too high, he said. I didn't believe them. The house is a small one--no way did it cost more than $110,000 when it was purchased five or six years ago. Yet Kevin, the guy in the SUV, was ready to move out.

The house is empty now, with the yard still looking like it was just used by little boys. There is no for sale sign in front. I am left to assume foreclosure.

Frankly, I would get rid of my SUV before I lost my home--but then, SUVs aren't easy to sell either. I know that from personal experience! Either way, Economic Crisis has come to one family on Highland Drive. Who knows where it will strike next.

At school I have seen the signs. I think of my student M.B., who had to move out of her home in January. It's tough moving around when you're a public school student, because you hope to stay in school, which means living within the school district. M.B. moved in with her friend, G.H.

Weeks later, G.H. was also looking for a new place to live! Needless to say, school hasn't been high on her priority list throughout all this, and she is failing. At least one other student of mine has been on the move in the short time since Christmas.

It's tough, and I live in a country run by George W. Bush, so it isn't going to get better anytime soon. I think it's important to know what's going on and to help where I can.

A friend just lost his job at a trucking company. He tells me that 45,000 small trucking firms have gone out of business in the past year. He's looking for work. He is the first person I want to help with this.

More importantly, I need to look around Highland Drive. There is suffering here, too. I hope to help.

Last Blast of Winter

While Megan is "whinging" about the 40-degree Indian Summer temperatures in Melbourne, Australia, I wanted to post some pictures from last weekend, when Tennessee received what I hoped would be our last blast of winter.

We awoke Saturday morning to three inches of snow--our largest snowfall of the winter. I had planned to take the boys to a Christian kids' conference, but I walked out to Highland Drive, then Highway 109, only to find that both were still covered with snow!

Later in the morning we went out to enjoy the snow.Owen decided to try out his biking skills on the snow-covered driveway. It's pretty clear (above) how that turned out. Maybe his knobby tires weren't knobby enough.

Jenny and Jo-Jo worked on a snowman, giving him arms, legs, and a baby-carrot nose. Owen named the snowman "Mr. Michael." By 3 p.m. the snow was melting. As we ate dessert, we saw the snowman teeter over and collapse on his side. By Wednesday night all that was left of him was a snowball--the last snowball in Tennessee, I figured.

I spent the day working on the church website. It isn't quite ready yet, but it was a fun way to spend a day indoors.

My Summer with the Whales

I haven't yet gotten to share with you my Christmas present--one of the greatest gifts I've ever been given.

Julie was here for Christmas. I gave her a framed map that had pictures of our road trip along the Santa Fe Trail last summer. She gave me a T-shirt from Hard Rock Cafe London.

(That place has special memories for us. The year I was at Newbold, she and Mom came over at Christmas Break. The first night they were there, Mom slept off jet lag while Julie and I took a walk, ending up at the HRC, where we had to yell above the music to catch up on four months apart.)

I had told Julie that the money probably wouldn't be there for a road trip this summer. Julie had a great idea to alternate East and West road trips. Later that night she told me, "I've been talking with Don about this summer." OK. "If you would be willing to plan the trip, we will rent an RV and pay for gas. All you would need to cover is food and admissions."

I have to plan a trip? Really?

That was an incredible gift before oil soared above $100 a barrel. I live to plan awesome road trips--as many of you know. Within seconds I had a plan for an epic journey.

Last summer we followed the greatest of American mammals--the bison--across the prairie. This summer we will focus on The Whale.

The journey will officially begin at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC. When I was a kid, I loved the huge blue whale that hung in a gallery in the Museum of Natural History (I understand it recently fell and shattered). If they don't have another whaling exhibit, we will go to the Museum of American History for the whale hunting display.

From DC, we will cross through Delaware, race up the Jersey Shore and across Long Island, ferry across the Sound into Connecticut, and make New Bedford, Massachusetts our destination. During our stay in New Bedford, I'm hoping to take the kids into Boston for a day and go out on a whale-watching boat trip from Portsmouth.

From the landing of the Mayflower to the discovery of petroleum in Pennsylvania in 1858, oil came from whales. Whaling vessels from the Massachusetts ports of New Bedford and Nantucket sailed around the world and hunted whales--particularly the mighty sperm whale. The greatest of American novels, Moby Dick, was set within this important industry.

Whaling is central to the American character, and I can't wait to learn more about it. It is a dream come true--a pretty great Christmas gift indeed.

In advance, I'm reading everything I can get my hands on. The books I have read (or am trying to read as in the case of the 624-page Melville opus) are:

• Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. The definitive book on the whaling industry--and the American spirit. Captain Ahab is the Ur-American in so many ways.
• Leviathan: the History of Whaling in America, by Eric Jay Dolan. A solid and comprehensive look at whaling from the 1600s to 1910.
• In the Heart of the Sea: the Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, by Nathaniel Philbrick. The tragedy that inspired Melville, a whaling ship is rammed by an enraged sperm whale and 39 crew must survive 93 days in the South Pacific.
• The Whalers. A Time-Life book that has great illustrations and really takes one back in time.
• The Perfect Storm. I've been wanting to read this one for a long time. It's the tragic story of a Gloucester fishing crew, but it's so much more--a vivid description of life at sea amidst one of the worst storms of the past 90 years.
• The Man Who Talks to Whales by Jim Nollman. After covering history and literature, why not some psychology? Is it possible to read too much?
• Whale Nation by Heathcote Williams
• Assorted books for kids.

Do you have any suggestions? I'm thinking of the recent novel Ahab's Wife, which is based on the Moby Dick anti-hero. There is room on my shelf for a few more before we leave in June.

Among the Believers

Sometimes my dad will stop by and tell me about a church where he has preached. While he is no longer a serving Adventist minister, he often fills in for pastors around the KY-TN Conference.

"I preached to the believers in X-town today," he will often say.

On Saturday evening Jenny got a call from our District Superintendent, asking if one of us would fill in for a pastor with the flu. Jenny was already committed to meet a patient after church, so I was the natural choice. The church, I was told, was in Tucker's Crossroads.

Tucker's Crossroads is the kind of place that used to be common in Tennessee. There is a general store, a Methodist church, eight to ten houses, and then farm after farm after farm. The church was one of those quaint, whitewashed structures one often sees on drives through the Tennessee countryside (the sign said it had been built in 1879). Seventeen people were waiting for me when I arrived.

I had a hymn picked out. I noticed that the pianist had to look around to find the "new" 30-year-old hymnal, and I assumed that they were much more comfortable singing out of the older, 60-year-old hymnals. Ellie read the scripture, we had two opening songs, and then I was up.

I preached on John 2, building on a blog post I made about two years ago. I don't get a lot of comments on my spiritual blog posts, but it's nice to have a place to write my thoughts, and it's a great source to draw from when I am asked to speak, whether it's about John or Einstein or anything.

The basic gist of the original post was that Jesus' first miracle--turning water into wine--was echoed in his final miracle, turning wine into blood. As I spoke, it occurred to me that these three liquids so wonderfully describe the three parts of the Bible.

The water is the law given to Moses, which stresses cleansing and by which we are freed from sin through the act of baptism.

The wine is Jesus own ministry among us. It is sweet--almost intoxicating when you really think about it.

The blood is the saving grace he provided with his sacrifice and confirmed with the Resurrection. After blood there is no more fluid, only spirit.

Anyway, it was a privilege to share that message with "the believers" in Tuckers' Crossroads. It was the first time I had spoken for a Divine Service in exactly ten years (my last sermon was given in Globe, Arizona). After church, Ellie and I explored the back roads and somehow found our way back to Lebanon.

Imagine an All-Out Revelation

I don't usually watch American Idol until the last six weeks. I'm a lame-O. I watch Biggest Loser instead.

Have I mentioned that I'm down to 200 pounds, a loss of 20 pounds since January 2?

Checking in on Randal Goodgame's blog over at the Rabbit Room (the site of my favorite Christian singer, Andrew Peterson), though, made me want to take another look at one performance from last week: David Archuleta's rendition of "Imagine."

Considering the kid is only 17, it's pretty amazing. I really feel that his presentation is sublime, and some of his twists really bring out these lyrics that are so familiar. It's a revelation. Enjoy.

World Turned Upside Down

It's been a crazy week--a simply crazy week, and I fear this school year is about to spin out of control. I hope not.

We had a snow day this week (yes there was snow, too, which made it doubly good). We have had one snow day, tornado day or holiday for each of the past six weeks now! That means that I am fully engaged with the four-day-workweek trend at my high school.

Even more bizarre, my principal has really been going through it. The school came down hard on a boy earlier this week who tried to steal a meal from the cafeteria--a meal that would have cost an honest man 40 cents.

The kid's mom went to the media, claiming poverty, claiming injustice, claiming that her son had "never been in trouble before." (He's not in my class, so I can't assess how seriously he takes his education.)

Somehow the blogs get involved with the boy's defense. People from all around the country are calling to criticize the principal (who cannot publicly talk about the boy's discipline record). People are even mailing in 40 cents to give the kid--and others. I guess these kind people will stop every kid who steals a Twinkie and tell them, "It's OK," I'll cover it for you.

When I checked, almost $300 had been donated, and the kid had walked away yesterday with over $200 in gifts--given by my principal himself.

Public schools have a hard job, and it's never right. Too strict. Not strict enough. Teachers are too close to students (and sexually abuse them); they are too distant and remote and out of touch. If this kind of thing happened in a private school, no one would blink an eye (or it would be hushed up).

Oh well.

Who Wrote the Book of John?

The theme for Lent this year has been sanctuary. I have found it just about everywhere I look in my Bible study, and I have found my Lenten readings of the Book of John to be infused with temple imagery.

In a previous post, I noted how God "tabernacled among us." As I moved into John 2, the tabernacle/temple was there again, where Jesus cleanses the temple of money lenders.

Why does the author John place this story at the beginning of Christ's ministry when the other three gospels place it in the middle of Passion Week? Is he more concerned with poetry than with accuracy--as one might be led to believe from chapter 1? What is this author really trying to say?

The Book of John was written well after the synoptic gospels were written--as many as 30 years by some estimates. The 4th-century church historian, Eusebius, states that the author had read the other three by then, and he offered his gospel to enhance and elaborate upon the themes of the synoptics.

If Eusebius is right--and I think most readers would agree that John has a more carefully developed theology and more rational development to its insights--then the author placed this story here for a purpose, not necessarily for a straight retelling of the Jesus story. Figuring out the reason the story is here, then, will help us to understand more about what the author of John really got from his time with Jesus.

The incident retold in John takes place just before the passover. Jerusalem's tourist industry is working all out, and the most lucrative place to sell to pilgrims has to be the vast temple courts. No doubt priests have been bribed for these prime spots, and now pilgrims must cope with the din of trading to make their prayers.

Into this fray, Jesus charges with righteous indignation, turning over tables, opening pigeon coops, and shouting, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!" (v 16, NIV). The author approves of this, tying it to a text beloved by Jewish nationalists, "Zeal for your house will consume me" (Psalm 69.9).

It's almost as if he is saying, "You see? This is the one. This Jesus knows what it's all about." But it is important to note that this isn't the political blindness of disciples related by Mark and Matthew. The author has had time to think about this. That's why he adds verses 17-22.

The Jews want a sign (so far Jesus is known for a miracle that brought wine to a wedding). Jesus says he can "destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days."

In this chapter he has cleansed the temple; now he says he can destroy it and raise it up. The Jews react with typical blindness. They are literalists--like Nicodemus in the following chapter, they cannot imagine things they cannot see, and they are woefully unprepared to discern when the Spirit will be unleashed by Jesus following his Ascension.

The temple is Jesus' spirit, which will rest for three days before being resurrected. The temple becomes our spirit, too, as Paul relates later in the New Testament. In many ways, the destruction and rebuilding of the Temple is repeated in John 3 (in a far more memorable and understandable way) through the image of death and rebirth.

I think that's what the author of John wants us to gain from Chapter 2. It's about the Temple, but it's more than that. It's really about us--about me. Jesus cleansed the temple of a rabble of sellers and possessions--he offers cleansing to the desires and trivialities that distract my spirit when it seeks communion. He promises to tear down the temple and rebuild it--just as he offers to tear apart the house of cards in which I take pride and replace it with a life of worship, built on a solid foundation.

From the beginning of John, God is looking for a place to tabernacle. It is clear, beginning with chapters 2 and 3, that believers are the very buildings in which He hopes to dwell. The Temple in Jerusalem was a beautiful place, no doubt loved by the Jews and protected by them against a radical like Jesus, whom they mistakenly feared would tear the place down.

Jesus had different temples in mind--as different methods of destruction. His Spirit was waiting--like the pillar of fire in the Exodus--to tabernacle with the Kingdom of Heaven he had come to create.

Now to the question I pose in my title. Who wrote the Book of John? As most know, he only identifies himself as "the one Jesus loved."

The author is based in Jerusalem. Most of the book chronicles interactions Jesus had over a series of visits to the Jewish capital (the synoptics imply that Jesus only visited Jerusalem in the week prior to his death). Bethany also features in this book, with Jesus' visits to Mary, Martha and Lazarus.

The author is immersed in temple. He uses temple connections to get a front-row view of Christ's trial for himself and Peter. He fills his gospel with hidden allusions to temple, as I have demonstrated above.

Could this be a fisherman from Galilee as the son of Zebedee was? I think it is unlikely. One theologian I read, Ben Witherington III, speculated that the author was Lazarus, who may have later went to Ephesus, where he shared his story with an editor, John the Revelator.

Personally, I would vote for Barnabas, who was Jesus' disciple, a Cypriot Jew, and traditionally held to be the owner of the Upper Room, from which so much detail can be found in chapters 13-17. Furthermore, his role in Christianity's incorporation of gentiles, shows that he must have been effective at explaining Christ's mission to infant Christians.

Let me know what you think!

Cuba's Future--as bad as America's

David Letterman had the funniest line a comedian has delivered in the last six years, commenting on possible successors to Fidel Castro, now that he has stepped down as leader there.

Juniors and Jefferson

Every Friday, I assemble my students in Socratic Circles, where they discuss a given work of art amongst themselves while I observe and credit kids for talking.

My 4th-block class just loves this part of the week. They're very opinionated 11th-graders, and I'm happy to say that they even back up their opinions from time to time.

Last week I gave them a selection of quotes by Thomas Jefferson, America's founding father. We watched a video ahead of the discussion. The video discussed the many contradictions of Jefferson's life: how he initially supported royalists in France, despite the atrocious conditions of the poor; how he owned slaves at the same time that he wrote in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator to the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Justin V. had a strong opinion. "This guy owned slaves and wrote the Declaration of Independence?" he asked, before stating, "Jefferson is the second-biggest hypocrite in history, next to Adolf Hilter, who killed 6 million Jews even though he, himself, was Jewish."

Another boy pointed out that Hitler had killed himself last of all. "Then Jefferson is Number One," Justin huffed.

Justin S. had problems with another famous Jefferson quote. "'I cannot live without books.' What does that even mean?" he asked disgustedly. (Needless to say, this is a group of talkers, not readers.

"He's a nerd," answered Dorae, rattling her manicured nails on the floor of my room.

Am I a great teacher or what? My students now think that Thomas Jefferson was a "nerd" and a "hypocrite." That's not necessarily where I would have steered the discussion, but I'm proud to see them thinking, nonetheless.

Prepared to be a Sanctuary

In my studies during this special season, it has been amazing the number of times the Tabernacle has come up.

During the Exodus through Sinai—and for a few hundred years afterwards in Shiloh—the Tabernacle was God’s dwelling place among Israel.

It held the most sacred objects of the Exodus: the Ten Commandments and, for a time, a bowl of manna and Aaron’s flower-bedecked rod. Rising above its most holy place—at least during the Exodus—was a pillar of fire, demonstrating God’s mercy over His chosen people.

But my studies center on the New Testament these days. Aside from references to the Sanctuary in Hebrews, I hadn’t found the other 26 books to be full of the Holy of Holies…until these last few weeks.

One of the greatest resources I have found for my spiritual development has been the podcasts of Asbury Theological Seminary. For about 12 year now, I’ve been working on my “working man’s MA in theology,” reading a vast array of books on history and doing everything but learn Greek & Hebrew. Podcasts keep me up to date on the latest theological ideas, and I highly recommend these if you use iTunes.

The first place I found the sanctuary was in the beginning of the Book of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God…. The Word became Flesh and made his dwelling among us” (verses 1 & 14).

This chapter is full of the language of the Old Testament. If you really think about it, it could be a condensed version of the Old Testament, beginning with Genesis “In the beginning” and ending with Daniel, “You shall see the heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

To top it off, Asbury OT professor, Sandi Richter, proposed a better translation for verse 14. “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us,” she said.

Wow. I have never heard of the verb, tabernacled, but it has quickly become one of my favorite words. I have never imagined Christ’s incarnate ministry as an act of tabernacling, but now I can’t stop praising him for it.

If “the Word tabernacles among us,” it brings to mind so many images from the Old Testament. A pillar of cloud protects and cools us by day—even as a pillar of fire lights our darkest nights. His law dwells within our hearts—just as Jeremiah had foreseen. The air smells of incense, and evidence of miracles—God’s feeding, His anointing—is all around.

Look at that last paragraph. I used the present tense, “tabernacles,” instead of the past tense “dwelt.” I guess that’s because I have read to the end of the book of John—and on into the next book, Acts, where Christ’s Spirit is unleashed so that He tabernacles among us to this very day.

The Tabernacle permeates the New Testament. That isn’t the only place it can be found. There is an even greater revelation that I don’t have space to describe here. I’m still studying, and I hope to have this most wonderful new truth ready for you to read later in the Lenten season.