Being a summer baby all but guarantees that your birthday will be sweltering and/or muggy. It’s law. We were born as sweaty chub balls to a life of perpetual birthday heat. But it’s possible that we weren’t all born as summer babies. It’s possible that we were, all of us, born as autumn babies. Humanity may have been born in the fall. To quote Don Knotts in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, “Let me clarify”.

^“5 When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground,⁶ and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— ⁷ then theLord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” – Genesis 2:5-6 (English Standard Version)

Bear with me.

Some people read this bit of Scripture and think God installed some sort of miraculous irrigation system to water the whole planet. The word translated “land” in verse 5 could also be translated “earth”. Sometimes it does mean the earth as a whole (Gen.1:1-2). Sometimes it’s just talking about dry land (1:10). Sometimes it’s even talking about a certain region (2:11-13). How is the word used in the above quoted passage? Are we really talking about the whole earth or are we talking about a certain land?

In Palestine, it doesn’t rain. We’re had +100 degree heat in St. Louis the last week or so. It hadn’t rained in weeks. Imagine our joy, then, when a small thunderstorm snuck in yesterday evening to wring itself out over our sizzling city. It was wonderful. But in Palestine, the climate is much less merciful. The rains don’t really come until the autumn. That’s when you get a burst of plant growth.

So, the above quoted passage (Genesis 2:5-7) would make a fair bit of sense if it is describing a certain time of the year, a dry Middle Eastern summer where the plants aren’t growing in the land yet. The plants are missing here, not because they hadn’t been created, but because it hadn’t rained yet and there was no one to cultivate and irrigate the land. It’s all part of the rain cycle that God set up.

And in verse six, we see the mist (or rain cloud) rising up. The fog rolls in, bearing dew and moisture for the parched land. The rainy season has begun. And it is during the rainy season of autumn that God creates man and woman.

There are certain perks to being a summer baby. I can’t think of any right now, but use your imagination. I had a real nice birthday (with an official family celebration coming this Thursday). But as I read the text of Genesis, bearing in mind the original context, I lean with a certain seasonal slant. Am I 100% sure? Nope. But I’m roughly 96% sure. Some of us are summer babies. But all of us are autumn babies. That’s when God shaped humanity, pinching us off from the same piece of clay.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always liked autumn the best. Our birthday is coming. Autumn will rise up from the ground before we know it. But until then, enjoy the sweat and eat lots of ice cream.

I hate you. Here’s why:

You are made up of the most deplorable garbage and rubbish that this world has to offer. You sneak up on me after a relaxing weekend like a rabid possum hiding in the trash can at night. You wake me up at an ungodly hour. Seriously, I’m not even a Christian at 5:30am and yet you demand I meet you then and there. Merciless monster.

You are a reminder of everything I don’t like to think about: how much I need to get done this week, time is fleeting, I am mortal, the polar bears are losing their ice boats, the Loch Ness Monster is dead, John Lennon is dead, I have a hang nail, ECT.

Garfield hates you. That cynical cat taught me everything I know about life. Therefore, I hate you too. (Incidentally, I love lasagna.)

Traffic is always the worst when you come around. I run into more walls when you’re around. I’m always groggy and mad at the world when you’re hovering over me. I don’t have a case of the Mondays. I have a case of the “stupidest day ever”. It’s contagious.

Monday, you are terrible to me. But you know what? 

You are the day that the LORD has made. I will rejoice and be glad in you. Because this is the day, this is the day that the LORD has made.

I rejoice today for his sake. Not for yours, Monday. 

I’ve been thinking about the process of creation lately. I’m not sure how it works for other tortured souls. For me, it looks different in different mediums. If I’m writing words, it’s usually pretty quick (though I cringe and mope through the revisions). If I’m playing in the mud, I just try to keep it out of my eyes. But when I’m writing a song, that’s where I see the greatest distance between taste and ability.

Ira Glass from “This American Life” has some great words on this.

I have the language in my head. I have the harmonic rhythm in my chest. But the melody is hiding under the table. The lyrics are halfway out of bed or halfway smeared on a windshield.

Making a song requires the same discipline as anything else, I guess. It’s like when I was in college, working on Bach or Bottesini. I shaped every phrase. I measured out vibrato in coffee spoons. I strained to control bow speed and weight, listening through bedrock for the sound of a stampede. I even had one teacher tell me to write a poem, describing what I “felt” the Bach cello suite No.1 was about. It ended up sounding like a very sad Dr. Seuss story about cats. Never again…

There’s one particular clam I’m trying to pop right now. It’s called “Honey & Moonlight”. I tried to think of what I would call someone to show them how much I cared. Instead of “sunshine” or “doll” or “sweet cheeks” (which are not my favorite things and, therefore, not legitimate terms of endearment), I opted for honey and moonlight. They are two of my favorite things and I can think of no better combination to describe someone I like.

For a couple of years now, it’s only been a handful of words with this haunting, plaintive melody. The people who’ve heard it really like it and wonder what the rest sounds like. So do I.

Stuck. Stuck in the dark, straining to gain momentum. So, I ask you problem solvers: what do you do when you struggle with a problem off and on for a long time? Should I take a walk? Should I take a train to Pawtucket? Should I sing things upside down? How do you overcome writer’s block?

(So grateful that Jesus never gets writer’s block. Constantly speaking the world.)

If you know a punster, you’ve probably rolled your eyes more than a few times. You may even have tried to punish them for being hilarious. This post is intended to help you understand and love the punsters in your life. I’m no pundit, but I’ll try to help. I only have twenty minutes.

1.) Laugh. While an honest punster makes puns for the sheer pleasure and joy of it, they also appreciate it when other people get the joke. If the joke’s about a forest, branch out and enjoy their sense of humor. It will boost their self-esteem treemendously. If it’s a pun about cows, let the joke moove you to a chuckle. Even if you’ve herd it before, punsters udderly enjoy repeats.

2.) Have patience (even if you’re not a doctor). If nobody laughs at first, a dedicated punster will usually repeat the pun with greater emphasis until you at least acknowledge the genius of it. Nurse their comedic ego back to health. Give them a shot of confidence. Even if it’s complete pundemonium, keep cool.

3.) Join the fun! If their pun is humerus and you feel the kneed to get a leg up on the competition, share your own! Even if it’s lame. Even you feel defeeted afterwords. Don’t kick yourself. You’ll toetally heel. And if the punster is any friend at all, they’ll laugh patiently at the joke. Maybe yule get better by Christmas.

And what do you know? I finished on time. How punctual.

16% of my body weight is skin.

1.6 trillion skin cells coat these muscles and bones. Somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 skin cells jettison every hour. That means, in the last 24 hours, I have lost roughly a million skin cells.

This means that I change. I change a million-cells worth every day. Every hour, I regenerate like Doctor Who. Though I may look similar, my face today is not the same face you saw yesterday. It is newer even as I grow older. And the same is true for you. We age like a paradox and are the only creatures to fuss about it.

And because I am changing so frequently, every portrait of me is a lie. Even something as recent as a graduation photo is not representative of present-day me. That face is old and gone, even while the features of it are young and gone. This is the grinning madness of truth. We are older when we are younger. We are younger than we were yesterday. Newer cells for older selves.

But those skin cells have to go somewhere. Where can I put my old face? Casual litterbug that I am, my skin cells shed wherever they please. The dust on my books? Mostly me. Window sill grim? Mostly me. In the course of a year, I’ll leave 8 lbs. of myself just lying around the house. Or in the car. Or at the public library.

That is the wonder of all this is: I leave myself everywhere. If I’m shedding skin cells by the hour, then wherever I go I leave bits of myself. My body dispenses souvenirs. There are pieces of me in the deserts outside Tijuana. I still linger in the forests of Vermont. Most wonderfully, there are parts of me hanging around somewhere in Busch Stadium (where I truly belong).

Every portrait of me is a lie, but I everywhere I go, I leave faceless portraits. While I can’t be everywhere at once, parts of me can be parts of everywhere at once. And that’s a start.

What about you? Where have you left yourself? Any place nice?

After I saw the Princess Bride (the best film ever made), I was sure I would never see another movie that even came close to it. I waited, year after disappointing year, for something remarkable to come out of the theaters. Don’t get me wrong, there were some great movies in the last two decades. One thinks of Land Before Time, Gettysburg, and Midnight in Paris. All very fine movies. But they weren’t movies that left me with the same sense of awe and marvel that Princess Bride had done.

In college, I had to read the French critic René Girard. He said of his day that there was no great public suspicion of theater. There could be no great art unless there was great suspicion of art. The people would see anything. They had no discernment. With their expectations so low, the artists didn’t have to churn out a high quality product to survive.

The times have not changed.

At the risk of sounding downright shnobbish, I think superhero movies have sort of numbed our culture  with a white noise blanket of “meh”. After that last Spider-Man movie, I think I curled into a ball for a week and whimpered. So when something as marvelous as the Avengers comes out in the genre of the superhero movie, it tends to get overlooked or muddied over by the public’s presuppositions. It smells like a rock. It’s feels like a rock. How could it be anything but a rock? Fair point, but it’s actually a diamond. Look.

Alright. So why? Why is the Avengers the best movie I’ve seen in twenty years?

1.) Script. Joss Whedon directed and wrote this movie and it shows. The quick, rapid fire wit he’s known for (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dollhouse, Firefly, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Cabin in the Woods) is everywhere in the movie. Iron Man is as self-absorbed and sarcastic as Tony Stark is supposed to be. Captain America sounds like an idealist from the 1940s, old fashioned and values-driven. In terms of dialogue, Whedon stays very close to the characters’ tone in the comics. If you like intelligent, snarky, funny dialogue, go see the Avengers.

2.) Character development. If all you want out of a movie is “excitement”, that’s fine. Go see the Expendables 2. You’ll get all the guns and knives you can handle. But if you want a movie with actual people in it, see the Avengers. Iron Man digs his heels in the entire movie, not wanting to fight Nick Fury’s war. In the end, he tries to make the ultimate sacrifice to save an entire city. Bruce Banner is the eccentric, soft-spoken scientist he should be, purposefully trying to hide in a lab for most of the movie. At the climax, he’s the Hulk, smashing everything and just being awesome. You have a couple characters (Hawkeye for one) who are actually on the wrong side for half the film. Basically, just about every major character goes from unstable, distrusting, and egotistic to being focused, cooperative, and sacrificial. That is development.

3.) Good story. This isn’t your standard world-in-danger type of movie. The aliens don’t even come until the very end. Yes, there is a major bad guy but he’s not the main antagonist. He’s an antagonist. The main source of conflict is actually within the team of protagonists. Authority butts heads with authority all over the place. Division keeps the Avengers from fighting as a team for most of the movie. They actually fight each other in a couple of places. The whole story is about how a group of broken, unstable rogues can come together to achieve something marvelous.

4.) The hint of a grand scope. Elie Wiesel’s editor once wrote to him and said, “Your story shouldn’t tell everything. Never tell everything. But your story should hint that there is an everything.” That is exactly what this movie accomplishes. In this area, I would say it even surpasses the Princess Bride. That’s because this movie operates within the Marvel universe. Everything has a history. Everything has an origin. And you only get little hints of it (Black Widow’s past, her and Hawkeye’s relationship, the origin of S.H.I.E.L.D., Thanos showing up at the end, to name a few). It’s a very Tolkienesque way of not showing your full hand.

5.) Fun. This movie is just a lot of fun. Superhero fist fights (what would a fight between Iron Man and Thor look like?), explosions, an alien invasion, clever dialogue, an engaging plot: this is just a good flick. “Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, True Love, miracles.” It doesn’t sound too bad.

It’s hard for me to obsess about things. I’m not a Marvel geek. It really is just a movie. A movie isn’t life. A movie isn’t a substitute for reality. But wow, the Avengers sure is a great movie. Best I’ve seen in twenty years.

Oh, and if you haven’t seen it, stay until after all the credits are over. You’ll smile.

Did YOU like it? Why? Did you not like it? Who hurt you? Why do you hate happiness? I’m interested.

My friend and I were talking about what we would do if we weren’t bound by Christian convictions and ethics. Basically, we liked to play the “what if” game. Some people don’t have much patience for this game, but Paul apparently liked it (1 Cor.15- “what if Christ is not risen from the dead?”).

While I can’t remember his hypothesis, but my own speculation was this: if I wasn’t a Christian, I probably would’ve killed a few people before taking myself out in some dramatic fashion (wrestling a bear, maybe). This sounds dark, but when you’re shooting your mouth off as a high school kid, you don’t always ponder the weight of your own words.

Why did I tend toward destruction (both my own and others’)? Why not, “If I wasn’t a Christian, I’d steal a lot of stuff” or “if I wasn’t a Christian, I’d become a paranormal investigator and make some sweet coin on my own T.V. show”? Because I had rage issues. And I find I still do.

Now let me be clear. You will never see me storming down the sidewalk, tripping children and kicking blind puppies. I’ve learned to control it. I’m actually a very laid back, peaceful guy. I’m just a peaceful guy with a proclivity for rage.

I tend to be passive-impulsive. That’s probably a psychological category, but here’s how I use it: I’ll get a sudden surge of anger, but I won’t do anything about. Some imagined slight from an acquaintance. Some careless word from a friend. A direct insult from someone I don’t much care for.

It could be anything.

It will immediately become enrage, but you would never know. Externally, I’d look calm. But internally, it would simmer and fester there just beneath the surface. It’s terrible. It breeds bitterness and resentment and I end up plotting terrible things on the people that wrong me and tearing them apart in my mind. But again, it’s passive. Nothing will ever be acted out. And that, of course, means that I will rarely resolve the issue with the person who’s offended me. And that’s not healthy.

There’s a great line from this great movie called the Avengers. You may have heard of it. At one point, Bruce Banner turns to Captain America and says, “That’s my secret, Captain: I’m always angry.” When I heard that line, I instantly identified with it.

I can look as calm as a Hindu cow, but if I’m not careful, anger and rage and resentment can sneak in and eat away at me. They can combine to become a constant presence in me. And before I know it, I’m living life, trying to love people and honor everyone with a time bomb just beneath my ribs.

Sure, I’m not always angry. Sometimes, I’m very happy. But anger and rage and wrath are the struggles that come up most often. You have yours. I have mine. We learn to control them and we deal.

Now, this brings up the question: is my love, then, sincere? Paul tells Christians that our love should be genuine. So, if I’m loving people while I’m angry, am I really loving them?

I’m angry because my pride has been wounded or I feel I’ve been cheated out of something I was supposedly owed. Rage turns me inward, introspectively and forcefully focusing on my self. Love, as a rule, is others-focused. So, I find this law at work: two opposite forces, rage and love, active in the same body. That sounds like a pretty common Christian experience to me (see also Romans 7:7-25).

But what do you think? If you’re a Christian, can you imagine what your life would be like without Christ? What does such a scenario tell you about your particular inclinations as a broken human being? Is there any value in the “what if” exercise when applied to matters of faith?

Schweigert tried therapy, self-help books, friendships: anything to fill the void in her life. “I was waiting for someone to come along and make me happy.” Tired of waiting for that someone to come, she found that someone in the mirror.

You can read all the particulars in the article. I’m sure it was an interesting ceremony to watch. But as I read her story, I was reminded of that quote by Blaise Pascal:

“All men seek happiness without exception. They all aim at this goal however different the means they use to attain it. . . .They will never make the smallest move but with this as its goal. This is the motive of all the actions of all men, even those who contemplate suicide.”

Happiness was so important to Nadine that she finally just married herself, convinced that such a move would bring her the happiness she’d been missing. But I have to wonder: what happens if she meets somebody new? What happens when that person makes her more happy than she could ever make herself? Would she divorce herself? Who will keep the house, her or her? I mean, how quickly could she move on after that sort of heartbreak?

I don’t mean to make (too much) fun. She obviously was a hurting individual who thought this maneuver would satisfy. I get that. We’re all desperate for happiness. But as someone once said, “There’s no smaller present that a person wrapped up in themselves.” And I just have to wonder how different her life will be now that she’s hitched to herself.

What do you think? Would you be happier if you just married yourself? To what extent does happiness factor in a marriage?  Is it better to be alone or is it better to marry yourself? Would that really make you less alone? Discuss.

Bedtime was around 9 o’clock for me. I’d tip-toe to my door with the hall light on. I’d turn the knob and  tap it open. (You never just swung the door open. That’s a sure way to let the monsters know you’re coming in, rookie.) In those days, my light switch was by the door and my bed was at the other side of the room. So, I had to flip off the switch, sprint to my bed, jump the last couple feet, and dive under the covers before they got me.

If you move fast, the monsters can’t catch you.

Night lights didn’t help. My brother making scary monster sounds didn’t help (we shared a room then and, for some reason, his impression of Harry Monster from Sesame Street terrified me). The darkness didn’t help. And the fact that there was an entity of pure shadow and evil waiting just a few feet below me as I slept did not help.

Monsters under the bed.

As a man, I’ve come to terms with their existence. I think I’m too old to be much bait for them anymore. I enter the room and perhaps the monsters smell a faint trace of the terrified child within me. But I’ve got too many things on my mind to pay attention to that fear. That fear is tiny and see-through. I don’t even notice it. I’m really not much of an bargain to those midnight predators. So they leave me alone. I’m no longer a target.

But if I ever have kids, what will I tell them when they come running to me, crying about the beasts that wait for them in the night?

I’ll accept their story as credible. I’ll walk them back to their room. I’ll stoop under the bed and stare straight into the blackness and address that monster directly. “Hi. Remember me? We’ve met before. Listen. My kids are fast. My kids are smart. My kids sleep with semi-automatic weapons under their pillows and they tend to get twitchy when they’re scared. I won’t be responsible for what they do to you should you feel bold tonight. Sleep tight, monster-under-the-bed.”

After applauding me for training my children to be hardened warriors, you’ll probably tell me that I shouldn’t encourage their wild imaginations. I should turn on the lights and show them the cluttered, monster-free space below their beds (even though monsters have active camouflage when under direct illumination, silly).

But I’ll disagree. If I tell my children monsters aren’t real, I won’t merely banish their fear. I will also banish any ennobling courage that will make their fear endurable. If I threaten the monsters under their bed or if I make sure my kids are loaded up on ammo for the night, the fear is then treated as real and legitimate, and my kids will have a licence to fight that fear, to stand up to it.

I’d rather my children be afraid of monsters under the bed than a bully at school. If they can shoot a monster between the eyes in their sleep, how much more will they be able to overcome the fear of bullies, tests, public speaking, green beans, etc?

To echo C.S. Lewis on the merits of scary stories for kids, “Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies [in life], let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage [and semi-automatic weapons].” I will not keep their minds from the knowledge that they were born into a world of pain and strength, death and healing, fear and courage, monsters and Jesus. My children will have open eyes and brave souls. That is why I support monsters under the bed. Face fear. Shoot it in the face, if you like. Cultivate courage however it comes. And by all means, sleep tight.

I remember that story because that little guy’s desire was so right. In my favorite book in the series, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Reepicheep the mouse has this lifelong wish to see Aslan’s country, the land where Aslan came from, where Aslan’s father reigns supreme. And at one point in the book, Reepicheep says this:

“While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world in some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise.”

Christians tend to get very excited about heaven. And that’s great. I’m sure heaven will be fantastic. But it seems to me that we’re missing something. The Bible is very clear: heaven is not our final destination.

People really want to know what heaven will be like. People are so desperate to know about it that they write books about the afterlife. I completely understand this motivation. Some people even go so far as to say they’ve died, gone there, and come back to tell us what our home will be like. But heaven is not our home. Heaven is merely the threshold.

But this reigning “heaven-is-the-ending” philosophy has a few problems.

1.) It leads to an “I’ll Fly Away” escapist mentality. The rationale goes something like this: This world is not my home. God will scrap it anyway. My job on earth is to grin and bear it until I die and then the real party starts. To quote Colin Hay, “I’m waiting for my real life to begin.”

2.) If heaven is the final destination for a Christian, then the Christian has no meaningful reason to take care of the earth. Oh sure, we should be good stewards of creation and we’re commanded to care for the earth. But because our citizenship is in heaven, I don’t really have a reason to recycle or fight pollution or save the whales. Heaven will be litter-free and THAT’S where I’m going.

3.) It just ain’t biblical.

I’ve already written about how I think God is not going to scrap the world and start over with a new one. But whether you agree with me there or not, the real biblical story does not end with all the saints floating up in heaven. It ends with a new sky and a new land, renewed and cleansed from all sin and death.

And upon that new earth, the holy city, new Jerusalem, will come down out of heaven to be the dwelling place of God among humanity. That old hymn “I’ll Fly Away” should really be about leaving heaven to come back down to our true, eternal home: the earth.

This is what C.S. Lewis was trying to get at with the idea of Aslan’s country. A real place with real walls and streets and trees and running water. That’s where the saints will live out eternity. You can read all about this in the Book of Revelation, chapters 21-22.

In the end, heaven will come down to subsume the earth with “the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel” (Rev.21:10-11). We will live out eternity here, on the earth-renewed, in Aslan’s country, bathing in the glory of the Emperor-Over-the-Sea. And he will dwell among his people and they shall reign forever and ever.

That is why I will sink with my nose to the sunrise. Because that’s my real home: this earth, cleansed from evil, wrapped in the Light of the glory of God. The promise of Aslan’s country.