A Wandering Aramean

Sweet Ride!

I decided that this was the year to celebrate National Bike Month.  Want to join me?  This week is National Bike-to-Work week, and if you can't quite pull it off for the whole week (say, because it's already halfway through the week and you had no idea...), Friday is National Bike to Work Day!  So join me!  I'll be biking to work... or biking somewhere, anyway. :)

So in honor of National Bike Month, I went out and bought myself a sweet new ride.  Check it out...

It's an Electra Amsterdam and I purchased it on Thursday after many months and many too many hours on the computer agonizing over all the different bikes out there that might possibly serve my purposes.

My extensive search brought me to three finalists: the Breezer Citizen, the Electra Townie, and the Electra Amsterdam.  I wasn't able to find a bike shop in our area that had a Breezer I could ride, and although the place I bought my bike from could've ordered it I just couldn't see buying a bike without knowing how it felt.  But I rode the two they did  have, the Townie and the Amsterdam, and the Amsterdam just felt good.  Comfortable.  Smooth.  Easy. 

As perhaps you can glean from the name, the Amsterdam is patterned after a typical European city bike, the one you apparently see everywhere in the Netherlands in particular, decked out with spray paint and tied with massive chains.  I was looking for something similar to what I'd seen in Japan (yes - kicking self for not buying there):  a basic, functional transportation bike.  Fenders a must, as I didn't fancy a racing stripe up my back.  Chainguard, also a must.  Not so easy to find in the U.S. these days, as it turns out (though if you have an old Schwinn in the shed, you'll be well set).  I intend to ride it for the same purposes as those do who live in places not so car-addicted as North America - for those in-between trips where walking is becoming a bit of a trek but a car is kind of overkill.  So a walk to the neighbor's on the other side of the block, say five minutes?  Probably no need.  But riding into town, say, or anything more than a 20-30 minute walk?  Bike it!  I don't know what my maximum range will be, and I expect that that will change over time, but I don't intend to bike to see either of our families.  Two to three hour drives are what the car is for (you know, since there's no train). :)

So I've taken it out a couple times and am getting a good feel for it.  I love it; don't want to get off of it (which, in all the research I did, was generally the bottom line).  As a test, I took it for a ride last night when it finally stopped raining, still in my church clothes.  That's right, a bike ride wearing beige pants immediately after a full day of rain.  The bike performed admirably.  The rear fender prevented a racing stripe up the back; the front fender plus mud flap - yes, mud flap! - kept me from getting splashed from the front; and the full chain case (chain guards - psshhhh! - wimpy) protected my nice white-ish pants from any nasty black-ish grease.  And I drove through big, deep puddles, albeit not at full speed.  This is what a bike is supposed to be:  fun to ride, practical for daily transportation.

(A couple of my other favorite features, by the way:  a standard "trrrring" bell, three-speed internal hub [meaning all the gears are inside and protected and I don't have to worry about them; also not too many speeds for me to figure out], and a coat/skirt guard [that's the thing over the back wheel - to keep my flowy skirts from getting caught in the spokes]).

Now I'm just waiting on the kiddie accessories so I can really get out there and ride.  I ordered this seat for Asparagus (sorry, having trouble inserting a photo - if you don't want to follow the link, it's a front-mounted kid seat).  I'm hoping that the knee clearance will be sufficient; that's the only real issue I read about.  It's supposed to give the kid a more fun ride than in the trailer and affect your center of gravity (and thus your balance) better than rear-mounted seats.  I also ordered her a little helmet.  It's yellow, and I'm kind of wishing that I'd gotten her the pink one now... oh, well.  As soon as they arrive, I'll be ready to roll!

By the way - if you're looking for a bike similar to this, and looking to buy new, check out The Six-Miler's article on what's available in this genre this year.  There are a fair number of options out there now, and this is the only site I found that collects all that info in one place.  (I actually found the site pretty late in the game, so it didn't have the chance to influence me as much as it might've.)  If you're a little more bicycle-savvy than I am, consensus on message boards for avid cyclists was that a 30-year-old Schwinn would do the same job for a fraction of the price - but you might have to do some rebuilding, etc.  Rebuilding is beyond me, thus I bought new.  I don't even know how to grease a chain.  Or if I need to.  I think I do.

The Story of Stuff

This is one of many things that I've been meaning to blog about for a long, long time.  Now, if I were a technologically-savvy blogger, you could just click on the photo to the left and it would take you directly to the website I'm going to talk about.  But I'm not.  So instead, click HERE to check it out.  (And if I didn't have a toddler, I'd look it up and learn how right now...but you don't mind waiting a few years for that, do you?)

Anyway!  This fascinating video discusses how things go from raw material to finished product, how the finished product ends up on the shelves of our stores, and how savvy marketers have convinced us to buy, and buy, and buy, and buy... and waste, and waste, and waste, and waste.  Be warned that it is a twenty-minute video, but it is WELL worth a watch. 

A lot of the stuff I already knew; I learned just this fall from the trivia game at BW3 that planned obsolescence is something that just emerged in the 1950s - can you believe that prior to that companies made things in order to last as long as possible?  Is it at all bizarre or just plain sick that I find that concept almost inconceivable?  I mean, how have companies stayed in business for the last ten millennia??? (Okay, I admit it, I have no idea who was in business ten millenia ago.  But somebody was selling camel saddles, right?)  So anyway, planned obsolescence I knew about.  But have you ever heard of perceived obsolescence?  That means that these same savvy marketers convince us that we need something new not because the junk that they sold us earlier has broken, but because it is just not cool anymore - so last season, as they say. 

Oh my gosh, we're so screwed up.

Seriously.  Have you heard of the bread riots in Egypt and all the other craziness that's been going on in the developing world with rising food prices?  There are thousands of people in our world who are putting their children to bed with empty bellies and I STILL walk through Babies 'R' Us and wish that I had that new Pack 'n' Play with the pretty cherry blossoms on it despite the fact that I loved the toile design I bought, oh, a year and a half ago?  And it's still perfectly good?  Sometimes I make myself want to gag.

And aside from the old "starving children in Africa" argument, why do we want to give these companies our money so badly?  I mean, American business is great and all, but what weakness is it that compels us to strive for more-bigger-better when it is so clearly not in the best interest of ourselves or our families - or our countries, for that matter?  Why not get rid of the mortgage instead, or send the money to some humanitarian organization, or save for our kids' college, or even put a few more plants in the ground?  They'll last a lot longer than that hot new handbag.

Here's the link again.  If you don't have time to watch it now, bookmark it and write yourself a note to come back to it later; you'll be glad you did.  And when you do watch it, what's your reaction?  Does it make you want to change anything about your life?  I was thinking about all the things I buy new that I could buy used, at garage sales or Goodwill or wherever.  I'll probably be working through these ideas for quite some time, and I'm curious what you wise ones think.

I'm a Sucker

Every day, I get an email newsletter from this website called Everyday Cheapskate.  It has all sorts of good advice in it about getting out of debt, living for less, and generally being financially responsible.

The article today (find it here) talked about how supermarkets get you to buy more than you'd planned on buying.  One of their tricks is to move everything in the store around once or twice a year so we have to hunt to find it.  Have you had this happen, where you think you're losing your mind because you can't find the doggone soap that you were SURE was here last time?  Aggrevating, I know.  But as you wandered the aisles looking for that soap, did you pick up anything you hadn't planned on getting?  That's the trick.  And I knew they did this, thanks to getting the inside scoop on resets from my mom.

One of the most frustrating things I've encountered since coming back from Japan has been a complete inability on my part to stay even remotely within my grocery budget on a regular basis.  What's been so confusing about this is that while groceries were far more expensive in Japan, my grocery bill is considerably higher here, as much as double what it was there!  Not what I'd planned on when coming home, and really not sustainable. 

There are a couple things that I think have made the difference.  I was doing better at planning menus and then just got what we needed for the menus in Japan.  M comes home for lunch here rather than going out, which means that I have to buy more lunch food.  Packages are a lot bigger here, which means that I often have to buy more than I need (and often waste half of it, which really digusts me).  And Asparagus is getting bigger and eating more; she had two and a half hot dogs at lunch the other day!

But here's the reason our grocery bill is high that struck me when I was reading this article.  I AM A SUCKER.  A sucker!  A sucker for the supermarkets' marketing gimmicks!  And I was essentially immune to this in Japan.  Here, I'll walk down the aisle with my list and then say, ooooh! maybe Asparagus would like this kind of cracker.  Oh yeah, and M wanted some potato chips; they're on sale so I'll get a couple bags.  Hmm, that new yogurt looks interesting and I don't have any snacks for myself yet and it IS healthy, so maybe I'll grab that.  The problem is that I LIKE pretty much everything sold in an American supermarket, so when I see it I'm tempted to toss it in my cart - it's just one more little thing, after all. 

I was SO not a sucker for this in Japan.  I didn't even know what 80% of the stuff on the shelves was, so I was certainly not tempted to buy it.  And the stuff I recognized?  I just wasn't tempted to stock up on fish flakes or dried seaweed or fermented soybeans.  Personal taste; cultural taste; no negative judgment intended or implied; I was simply not the one that the Japanese supermarket was marketing to, so I escaped unscathed. 

**Sigh.**  So there's the missing link.  How do I make myself into less of a sucker?  Does anyone have any tricks?

*************

And in something entirely unrelated.... I've been amazed at the thought life of little Asparagus, which I've just recently realized is not at all limited to the here-and-now.  When she's sitting in the car looking out the window, she's actually thinking about things other than the trees and strip malls outside.  Sunday afternoon, we went over to some friends' house for lunch.  Said friends have a large, very friendly, somewhat rambunctious Golden Retriever. 

Asparagus freaked out.

It's already been established that as far as she's concerned, Animals Are Scary.  She got used to the dog a little bit over lunch, but never did want to be within several meters of it.

Fast forward to that evening.  M puts Asper to bed and all is quiet... for about forty-five minutes.  Then she starts snuffling, and groaning, and humming, and generally making all the noises that a not-sleeping baby makes.  Forty-five minutes after that I decided that enough was enough and went in to see what was going on (she wasn't crying, by the way, just nosing around).  As soon as I walked in, she jumped up, wanting to be held.  So I picked her up and walked her over to the rocker, but she would not sit still.  She kept jumping up and looking around... and signing "dog, dog, dog!"  I turned the lights on, showed her that there was no doggie here, and that we didn't have a doggie at our house.  She took a good look around, leaning out to peer behind her crib and around the chair, and seemed to relax.  After that, she went to sleep straightaway.

So as far as we can tell, she had a dream that there was a dog in her room and just could NOT go back to sleep from worrying about it!  It's amazing what goes on in that little mind.  And I'm so thankful that we've been using sign language with her.  I know we still miss a lot as far as she's concerned, but these little clues are such a huge help.

Ahhhh... springtime!!!

Somebody looooooves this chair.  I'd scrubbed it off and set it outside to dry, and she stood by the door and cried until I let her go out and sit in it.  Spoiled?  Oh, yes.

Things I Love about Spring (and you should, too)

1. The scent of dew as it settles on the soil in the evening, and hovers over it in the morning.
2. Being able to sit outside first thing and just drink in the morning.
3. The buds bursting on the trees.
4. Crocuses.
5. Daffodils.
6. Tulips.
7. Hellebores.  (Yes, each of these deserves their own number.)
8. The birds.  Robins fighting over ladies and territory, geese swimming in the pond, red-winged blackbirds in the trees, killdeer frantically luring "predators" away from their nests...  Asparagus would make this her number-one pick, as she spends much of her time these days tapping thumb and forefinger together ("birdie") every time she sees a bird, and waving bye-bye when they fly away. :)
9. Going for a long early-morning walk without a coat, or even a sweater.
10. Getting outside and digging in the dirt!  After an entire winter of inertia, yesterday I hauled 400 lbs. of compost to the backyard, dug it into the garden, and planted my spinach, lettuce, and peas.  I also went to my Moms' Group, bought a cute new shirt, washed some sheets, and cooked an actual dinner.  Tomorrow, Pinky, we're taking over the world....

Your turn!  I tag Ben (because even though you're busy, I know you have time for at least one post every four months!) (I know, you have another blog too), Sammy, and Heidi.

And a funny story...  Every morning that M takes his motorcycle to work, Asper and I go outside to see him off.  She's usually very serious throughout; the motorcycle kind of freaks her out and you know, Daddy puts on a really weird hat, too.  Yesterday after Moms' Group, as I was driving the babysitters home, I was commenting to one of them how nice it was so pretty outside that we could stay out and play for a while after seeing him off.  And get this - Asparagus, from the backseat, begins waving vigorously and says "da-da! da-da! mmmm-mmmm-mmmm!" (mmmm-mmmm-mmmm being her word for motorcycle).  I was floored!  She not only understood our conversation, she decided that she had a contribution to make to it!  WOW.  Communication is incredible.

Whew! Or We Have a Lot to Catch Up On, Don't We?

So a week and a half ago, after the mom's group I go to some Thursdays, I drove off with grand plans:  drop off the sitters, grab some lunch, and head over to a friend's house for a few minutes of grown-up conversation.  All went well until the "grab some lunch" stage, when I realized that my purse was nowhere that it should have been.  Ulp.  I knew right away what had happened - I'd set it on the roof while getting Asper into her carseat, and that was that.  After driving the route I'd taken several times, cancelling all my cards, and having a new picture taken for my replacement driver's license, M got a call from a very kind gentleman who had picked it up outside the high school.  Whew!  Crisis averted.

But it turns out that when you cancel all your cards, anything you have set to automatic pay has to be updated.  Like this blog.  So when I went to update last week, I couldn't access it because I hadn't paid!  Bad me.  I finally got the replacement card in the mail and all is now well.

But so much has happened since that last post!  Easter!  A family visit!  A trip to Louisville!  What? you say, a trip to where??  Yes, I cracked this weekend in the face of more winter weather, but we'll get to that later.  First things first!

Awwwww.....

Yes, she's holding a drink mixer.  I thought it would distract her enough to keep her from running at the camera for a couple of photos, but no, now we just have a drink mixer in all the cute Easter photos.  Pshhh.  Cute though, eh?  The barrettes even stayed in through church!

The daredevil.

Asparagus just learned now to climb up on her little rocking chair at home a couple weeks ago, and this one at Grandma and Grandpa's is just as much fun!  She even managed to avoid conking her head on the hard floor.  A chair, however, is clearly not for sitting.  That would be its Most Boring Function.  Rocking madly while standing up on it?  Now THAT'S a good time!

All mine!  All mine!  All mine!

The Easter egg hunt was pretty funny.  She likes putting things into containers, so putting the eggs in the basket was fun.  Each of the eggs had one little candy in it, too, and that meant that shaking the eggs was really fun - what a great noise they made!  Midway through the hunt, however, mid-shake, one of the eggs popped open, revealing - what else? - candy!!!  I couldn't believe how quickly she learned to crack open those eggs herself once she figured out what was inside.

**********

The day before Easter, my grandma got to spend a day in her own house.  (She's been in a nursing home/rehab facility since she fell in November.)  I think it was a lot of fun for everyone.

Asparagus had a good time playing with her second cousins...  (I don't know if they always had as good a time with her - she kept taking off with the ball!)

...and some nice cuddles with her great-grandma.

**********

And finally, Louisville!  Well, as some of you know, we woke up to snow here on Friday.  And that. was. it.  Enough!  Enough of this stupid ridiculous winter!  How far south to we have to go to get some semblance of spring?

Louisville it was.  The weather was in the fifties - not balmy, but nice than here - and it was wonderful beyond words to see forsythia in bloom, and daffodils, and green grass...  The trees and bushes were covered by that light mist of green that appears when the buds are just beginning to burst. 

I didn't really want to come home.

We went to the Louisville Zoo, which was nice, though it was too cold for a lot of the animals to be out yet.

Yay, sunshine!  Can you see the daffodils waaaayyyyy in the background?

The slide was one of the best parts!

The gorilla statues?  Not so much.  These things are freaky!!!

We also checked out The Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby.

What?

I WANNA PLAY IN THE SANDBOX!!!

We concluded our trip with an attempted walking tour of Old Louisville, which unfortunately ended in rain.

Do you see the little munchkin in side hamming it up for the camera?

It was quite a drive for a weekend trip, but it was actually more manageable than I'd expected and we had a lot of fun.  Watch out, camping season!  Here we come!

Visitors and Such

The conference was awesome!  I'm working on a post about it, but it's going to take more concentration than I had tonight while watching Biggest Loser (I'm getting more and more irritated with this season, by the way.  Stupid, stupid boys on this show!  It makes me ill.  Pretty soon they'll be all that's left and I'll have to stop watching.).  Anyway, the conference update will cone soon!  Soon!

*******

This time last year....

and....

...This past weekend!

Our friends Steve and Mariko came for a visit this weekend along with their little girl.  It's amazing what a difference a year makes!  We had fun watching the girls (sort of) play together and really enjoyed just catching up and hanging out.  We headed down to Saugatuck and took in the Annual St. Patrick's Day parade, which lasted all of seven minutes but was pretty entertaining nonetheless.  It was so good to see them again, and we can't wait for next time!

******

Do you remember last week, that one day when it was a little bit warm outside?  Well, we went outside to play and dig in the dirt a little and Asparagus ATE RABBIT POOP.  It's all over the yard, these tempting little pellets, and, well, I guess she just couldn't resist.  GROSS!!  And here I was so excited because she's so much better at eating solids than she was in the fall, so I figured she wouldn't be gagging on any more leaves.  Leaves.  Pshhhh!  Leaves are SO last fall. 

A Quick Little Update

Not much time to post right now - I'm getting ready to take off tomorrow evening for the Farm to School: Healthy Kids, Thriving Farms Converence in Traverse City on Wednesday! I'm pretty excited about it.  The conference has been put together by the group of people who worked with local farmers and their local schools to totally change their school lunches.  Their efforts have also included school fundraisers (anyone else interested in supporting the kids in your neighborhood without an automatic five-pound weight gain for said support?) and community gardens within the school.  This kind of partnership benefits everyone:  the farmer, who almost invariably gets a significantly better price for his or her produce by selling it locally rather than to the national chains; the students, who get better-tasting and healthier food; and the community as a whole - agriculture is the second-largest industry in our state, right behind automotive, which means that supporting our local farmers is a great way to boost our economy.

A few more fun facts, taken verbatim from the conference's promo page:

• Students at one Benzie County school ate five times as many apples when their school switched to local varieties grown for juicy eating rather than long-distance traveling.
• Twice as many kids showed up for school breakfast after the same school began providing healthier choices, including fresh local foods.
• Kids at Antrim, Benzie, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska, and Leelanau County schools met farmers, learned fun food facts, and recommended local asparagus to their families after cafeteria taste tests!

I hope to give you a full update when we get back!  I'll be choosing from sessions like Farm to School Fundraising, Farm to School Curriculum, Learning Gardens, Seasonal and Simple (for school cooks), Knife Skills, Marketing the Menu, and Buying and Selling for the Cafeteria.  Whatever shall I choose???   

Sick

Wow, thanks for all the food suggestions!  I've taken note and had started to try some of them... until... the endless appetite abruptly collapsed, and suddenly little Asper would eat pretty much NOTHING.  Then we found out why.

SICK.  Our first baby throw-up, in the car, on the way home from purchasing M's much-longed-for motorcycle.  And I will give you no details, because I'm sure you can imagine all you need to imagine and more.  Wow.  Gross.  Then M got it, and while I managed to avoid the ahem-ahem-yuckiness, I did have the extreme fatigue and grapefruit-size-rock-in-my-belly nausea.  A barrel of monkeys it's been at our house!  We were all in bed by 8:00 p.m. last night and that seems to have done the trick.  But if all the little one wants to eat for breakfast right now is seven Cheerios, that is FINE WITH ME.  Because she knows what her tummy feels like, and I do not.  And I do not want a repeat of the car episode.  Yagggh.

*****

Hey, did you see that they're flooding the Grand Canyon?

Photo from washingtonpost.com (AP photo/Matt York)

It's apparently intended to mimic the types of seasonal floods the canyon experienced before a big dam was built there in 1963.  They're hoping that this flood will help maintain the canyon's historic ecosystem, which developed in tandem with seasonal flooding.  Isn't it amazing how little we really know about our world sometimes?  We mess with our environment for good reason - a hydroelectric dam in this case, providing clean, renewable energy - and find that our actions had consequences we'd never even thought of.

*****

**UPDATED**  I've just added an Amazon.com link to the left sidebar!  I'm pretty excited about this; I thought it would be harder to do than it was.  This will be a place for me to highlight books that we're reading, and maybe even some seasonal mp3 playlists one of these days (it's amazing how many projects I can have going at once).  And in a nice little bonus for me, anyway, if any of you click through my site to purchase anything on Amazon, I get a small cut of the proceeds at no cost to you.  So keep me in mind the next time you're shopping. :)

Bottomless Pit

I think it's a growth spurt.  It has to be a growth spurt, right?  And it will end soon?  Because I am getting worn out just trying to provide food every time it is requested!

This isn't the first time we've experienced this; I think I'd just forgotten... When Asparagus was around four months old, we started supplementing her diet with a little formula and occasionally a little rice cereal.  I've kicked myself for that ever after, because I think there's a good chance that those two things contributed to her self-weaning at just nine months (we'd really wanted to make it until at least a year for all the immunity and health benefits).  But I had forgotten what the bottomless pit was like.  Then, she was nursing every two hours all day long.  "Your supply will adjust!" they said.  "Just give it a few days!"  I'll never know why that didn't work but a few weeks later is when we started to supplement.

And now we're there again!  It seems like this child wants to do nothing more than eat...and eat...and eat.  If it's been an hour, it's time for more!  Since we've taught her to sign, she follows us around the house signing "more...eat...more...eat...more...eat..."  Dratted signs!  And it's not that she's eating her way to chubbiness - she's actually thinning out, having gone from the 75th percentile in both height and weight at her nine-month check-up to the 90th percentile in height and 80-85th in weight at the twelve-month one. 

**Sigh.**  I'm sitting down right now to come up with a menu plan for her so I don't keep throwing the same four foods on ther tray all day long (peas, Cheerios, cheese cubes, bananas) - not that she minds; other foods are usually met with the "ew, poison!" look.  Hopefully a little more variety will leave her a little more satisfied.  Is that possible?

Suggestions for a young toddler menu very happily accepted. :)

Let the Dead Bury the Dead

Do you like the title of this post?  We'll get back to that in a minute. First, I'd like to break my silence by saying how very, very thankful I am for the little bits of sun we've seen lately.  Hallelujah! and it's about time. :)

I've had a few posts flying around in my head for days, and some for weeks.  But you know how it goes - one day passes, then another, and then a week, or more, and hey, when was the last time I posted again?  And there's laundry to do and babies to be played with and all the thoughts flying around in my head just get stuck there, and get quieter and quieter, until I forget what I had been going to write about to begin with.

But!  I do remember one thing I was going to write about.  It's the passage that was preached on this past Sunday, Luke 9:57-62.  Unfortunately, I completely tuned out during the sermon this week, so I am the only one to blame for any errors below. :)  Anyway, the passage:

As [Jesus and his disciples] were walking along the road, a man said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go."  Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."

He said to another man, "Follow me."  But the man replied, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father."  Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God."

Still another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-bye to my family."  Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God." 

I've always found this passage troubling, the kind of troubling where I start humming a little tune and looking out the window and really kind of hoping that if I ignore it, maybe it will disappear.  The first one I don't really have a problem with:  Jesus is giving fair warning as to what life as his disciple would be like; the passage doesn't even say what decision the man made.  (While Jesus always had the twelve disciples with him, it looks like there were many others who traveled with him occasionally or for a time, and these would also be considered his disciples.  So it would be entirely possible for this guy to decide to follow Christ after all and never be mentioned specifically again.) 

The second man is putting Jesus off, making an excuse, though perhaps a good one.  Commentators don't believe that these words were spoken in between his father's death and funeral - burials tended to be pretty immediate in these days.  Rather, the man wanted to continue caring for his parents and give them a good burial whenever they did die, however many years down the road that was.  But wait - isn't this a good thing, a foundation of the Dr. Dobson gospel?  Family first?  And what about the third man, who just wanted to go and say good-bye to his family?   

The message is really pretty clear.  When God, the creator of all that is seen and unseen, from beyond the furthest, greatest galaxy to that spot on your hand that always cracks when it gets dry - when this God empties and humiliates himself by taking on human flesh and containing himself here on earth... well, we'd best take notice.  There is absolutely nothing in our lives that can be more important than that (I shrink from that as I type it, thinking of the little girl sleeping in the next room).

But I've always gotten stuck here, because if these words apply to every follower of Jesus at every moment, we are completely, unquestionably sunk.  Do you know anyone who has sold or given away their very home and commited themself to a nomadic lifestyle in order to follow Christ, becoming a wandering Aramean in a very literal way?  Would you leave your elderly parents without your support in a place where you are the social services network?  Am I required to walk away from my family without a word, hoping to run into a neighbor someday who can explain my mysterious disappearance? 

I started pondering other bits of the Bible and Christian tradition.  Certainly, many have given up possessions and homes to follow Christ in a nomadic life - according to tradition, Jesus' disciples spread the gospel from Africa to India to Europe.  Certain monastic traditions have similar requirements.  But I don't see any mention of this in the epistles - the letters written to fledgling churches that make up the bulk of the New Testament.  Of all the things the Corinthian church was urged to do, leaving their homes and abandoning their families wasn't one of them.

I suddenly realized something that should be so obvious, and maybe is to all of you:  the words Jesus spoke here were directly related to where he was on his journey.  At this point, Jesus had reached the second stage of his ministry.  In the first stage, he taught and healed and met with people primarily in Galilee.  In the second stage, he begins his journey toward Jerusalem - a fair distance south - with the full knowledge that he is traveling to his own death.  His mission becomes much more urgent, and time is short.  The man who wanted to wait until his father died to follow Jesus simply would have missed the boat - Jesus would likely have already been crucified, died, buried, risen, and ascended by then. 

What about the guy who just wanted to say good-bye to his family?  Could he have caught up with Jesus, maybe?  I still wrestle with this one a little bit, but the bottom line, I think, is this:  This was a uniquely urgent time and there was no room for any other consideration to come before the kingdom of God.  For this, I don't know how long, year maybe? in the history of the world, the God-Man was making his final journey.  Every second was precious.

This says two things to me.  First, these words of Jesus don't necessarily apply to me now in the same way that they did the men he spoke them to those many years ago because the context in which we're living isn't the same. I can read this passage without feeling like my faith is a joke because I've never done anything so radical as that.  I am called to live my faith in every moment of the life that God has set before me, and right now that doesn't seem to require me to leave my family; quite the opposite, in fact.  It's okay stand where I am and strive toward a stronger relationship with Christ, to deepen my knowledge, to cultivate joy, to practice spiritual disciplinees like generosity and hospitality, to ask myself and others how I can be more real in my faith and deepen my practice of it.

But!  But, but, but.  Even as I feel that ease in my spirit, even as I take that breath of relief, I'm caught up by the terrifying undercurrent of this passage:  Such sacrifice may one day be required of me.  If a day comes when a choice must be made between everything I adore here on earth and the God I have sworn to follow at all costs, there is no decision to be made:  I have made that decision already.  What is not demanded of me now could be required of me in the future.  As we look through time and across oceans, distant witnesses of martyrs and others who suffer grievously for the sake of Christ, we have no guarantee that we will escape their fate, no promise that we will never kneel with that gun pressed to the back of our heads, commanded to deny all that we know to be true.  We can be thankful that we live in a place where this eventuality is oh-so-unlikely, but the whole point of this passage is that our commitment to follow Christ is radical and absolute.

This spin on the passage is far more meaningful to me - and far more dificult - than than the guilty "should I be doing more?" avoidance-feeling that I used to have.  I no longer feel like it's a cop-out to say that it's okay to more or less live like I'm living now.  Instead, I feel like I've been thrust into training for an Ironman Triathalon or something.  What if the time comes and I'm found lacking?  What if I can't hack it?  What if I just can't do what God - the Triune God of everything, the things I'm leaving behind just as much as the God of me - what if I can't do what my God requires of me?  It's an incentive to view my faith in more radical terms... as I go through my Bible study lessons, as I spend time in prayer, as I sit in church, to view these things as exercises on a training ground, preparing me for who-knows-what the future may bring.  "In the unlikely event of a water landing," so to speak.  Because it's too late for swimming lessons once the plane's in the water.