Some food for thought from Charles Schulz regarding our Christmas traditions.

The announcement I mentioned in an earlier is that I have accepted a call to be an interim co-pastor at Eagle Rock Covenant Church. I will serve alongside my friend Brian, who was an intern with me at Pasadena Covenant Church. Together we will minister as pastors for the church as they reflect on the season they had with their outgoing pastor, listen to God for direction, and prepare to call the next full-time pastor. This will intentionally be a temporary position. It is not one I would have imagined for myself coming out of seminary, but as Carey and I have prayed and sought God’s discernment with other friends and family, it seems like this will be a good fit for both Brian and I and the congregation. It will be a part-time position as Brian and I will split the pastoral responsibilities and thankfully, Servant Partners has graciously allowed me to transition to part-time work there as well. I’m excited for the opportunity of this new phase of ministry.

Carey and I are back from our vacation and I’m ready to play catch-up on all the work I missed. We needed the relaxation and the exertion of hiking all over Yosemite—and taking way too many pictures of Half Dome. I’ll get pictures online soon. Be prepared for an announcement coming in a couple of days on this blog. A tip for readers: I won’t be announcing yet another blog or that we’re having a baby, so hold your horses.

Carey and I will be camping in Yosemite for our vacation next week. Today, I read this news from the Los Angeles Times:

A major rock slide this morning at Yosemite National Park injured three visitors, destroyed more than half a dozen cabins and prompted park officials to evacuate popular Curry Village as a precaution.

The slide let loose about 7 a.m. more than halfway up the 3,200-foot face of Glacier Point, which looms above the tent cabins and concession services on the valley floor below.

An 1,800-cubic-yard slab of rock cartwheeled down the cliff, shattered and sent boulders and fist-sized granite shrapnel spraying toward the edge of Curry Village and its more than 500 tent cabins, regular cabins and hotel rooms….

The rock fall was the second in two days at Glacier Point. Tuesday afternoon, a smaller slide sent boulders cascading toward Curry Village, destroying one tent cabin.

Thankfully the campground where we’ll be staying, according to the park rangers, is about a kilometer away, so we won’t be affected. Still, the news is a bit unsettling. I may wake up really early one morning and run through the campground, shaking a box of rocks near other peoples’ tents.

I feel like crawling into a cave for a spell with all that’s happening in the world, the market, and my life right now. Communing with raccoons might bring some welcome respite, though I hear they’re stingy.

A year ago tonight, as I lay in bed, reading James Michener’s novel, The Source, my mother called telling me that she and my brother were driving to St. Agnes hospital in Fresno. My father was in an ambulance experiencing major chest pains. At the hospital he would suffer a major heart attack and die at 3:16 the next morning.

As of tomorrow, it will have been a full year of mourning my father’s death. Without question this has been the hardest year of my life. I’ve tried to make sense of death, but ultimately, it is beyond my grasp. My hope in this time is to relish in the memories, press into relationships I have, and to trust, however faintly, Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15.54: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

As the months have passed, I have found a sense of responsibility regarding the dead. I realize now, that in many ways, the dead belong to the living. Their continuation in this life depends on those who knew them telling their stories again and again. If this is true, then I feel a great duty—not to speak on Dad’s behalf, but to present him as honestly as I can. Many of those who read this will have only known my father through the stories I told about him. He is no longer able to create new memories with his friends and family. By words or actions, he cannot contradict or correct what we say about him. Who he is now to the rest of the world oddly depends on what we say about him. It is the responsibility of the living to carry and represent the dead.

I don’t want to air out Dad’s dirty laundry. Neither do I want to write his hagiography. My father was a remarkable man and still a human, full of the wonderful contradictions that give mystery to this life. He was both generous and protective at the same time. He could make judgments of a person based on their appearance and remained open to having his opinions changed. I marveled at his patience and grew frustrated with his short temper.

Early in the grieving, Carey and I promised each other that we wouldn’t put on the “strong face,” but would try to be as present to whatever we felt at any given moment, no matter how against the grain those emotions might seem. Lately, I’ve wanted direct my grief a bit more, without trying to prescribe the process. I’ve begun a gratitude journal wherein I record things that happened during the day for which I am thankful—something Robert Emmons, a psychology professor of mine at UC Davis recommended. I also write down what I am thankful for with Dad, because I believe at its core, my grief exists because I have lost someone who makes me thankful. Dad may not be here to create new memories, but I want him to continue to be a part of my life and I can think of no better way to do that than to remember him to others and to myself as I live.

Today’s Google search: clean dog after skunk.

I regularly watch Matt Harding’s videos of himself dancing in front of various locales around the world. Seeing his joyous dancing reminds me that we live in a magical world full of wonder and beauty. His inclusion of so many people in his most recent video (the second one below) shows that humanity itself is as much a part of the beauty of this world as any rock formation or shoreline. If I had to pick one thing from the internet and send it into space to communicate with extra terrestrials, it might be one of these videos. In an interview he did with NPR.org, Harding describes the videos as “humanist propaganda,” but I find that they draw me into worship and in seeing God’s fingerprint on all creation.

You can read his story at his web site, Where The Hell Is Matt?

As I was eating lunch I saw the headline that Tim Russert died today of a heart attack. My prayers go to his family. In recent years Carey and I have become a huge fan of Russert’s work on Meet the Press. I appreciate how he pushed politicians and officials as well as his contagious love for the political game. He will be missed.

We hosted some friends as they vacationed in Southern California last weekend. We had a great time with them and found that it felt like we were on vacation too. Here are some pictures of their kids playing with the hose in our back yard. I only feel a little guilty that this happened just after the governor declared that our state is officially in a drought.