Post for this month

***WARNING! EXPLICIT RELIGIOUS CONTENT AHEAD***

I've been tasked to dust off the ol' MDiv and deliver a sermon at church. Apologies to anyone who's not religiously oriented who is reading: but if you're curious for some strange reason, here's the text of the sermon (not proofread):

Our gospel reading for today comes from matthew 25, where jesus tells three parables about the second coming. Last week we heard the first of these parables, the parable of the ten virgins. Pastor Hood told everyone to read it at the end of his sermon last week, so I know everyone went home and did it immediately. The bridegroom was a little late in coming, and all ten of the virgins fell asleep waitng. Five of them were wise, matthew tells us, and kept a little spare oil on hand so that they could light their lamps when the bridegroom came. Five of them were not, and when the word came that the bridegroom was coming, they had to run out and buy oil. Well, while they were out, the bridegroom showed up, and the five unwise virgins missed his arrival. While the five wise virgins went in to the house and feasted with the bridegroom, the five unwise ones were left out in the cold, and when they knocked on the door to get let in to join the feast, saying “'Sir! Sir! Open the door for us!” the bridegroom came to the door and said ” I tell you the truth, I don't know you” Therefore, matthew reminds us, we should “keep watch,” because “we do not know the day or the hour of the Lord’s coming”
The third parable is compares humans to sheep and goats. On the day of Judgement, we are told, the lord will separate out faithful sheep from obstinate goats. To the sheep, who the lord gathers at his right hand, a position of honor, he says:
'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in…'
But to the goats, who he relegates to his left hand, a position of comparative dishonor, he says:
Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in….'
Now lets be honest for a second here: these are not passages that sit comfortably with the modern, relatively progressive, relatively liberal ears of your average college town Lutheran. What are we to take from these passages where Jesus not only tells some folks to go away, but even goes so far as to say that “he never knew them” and relegates them to fire and gnashing of teeth?
I think that the key to all this lies in the middle part of the chapter, the parable of the talents, which is the heart of today’s gospel message. Let’s look at this passage very closely:
The owner of a house sets off on a long journey, and before he goes, he appoints some of his servants to take care of his business. Now presumably, the master is no dummy—he knows the talents and capacities of his servants, so he distributes them to each of his servants according to their abilities—the best guy gets five talents, the second best two talents, and the goat of the bunch gets a single talent. The master must have known in advance what would have happened, and his instinct is confirmed by what each of the servants does with the talents: the first two servants invest them, and double the master’s money, but the third one buries his talent in the ground.
Here’s where things get interesting. When the master comes back, he gives his servants the pre-modern equivalent of a performance review. To the two servants who created a good return on his investment, the master is exceedingly kind, almost gushing: 'Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.' But to the third servant, the one who hid the talent in the ground he calls him “wicked,” “lazy,” and demands that he be thrown “into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping an gnashing of teeth.”
It has often been said that there no American pastime that is more near and dear to us than complaining about the boss. We all have or have had bosses at one time or another, and it is easy for the master to come off looking, well, bad—like little bit of a mix of Alec Baldwin’s character in Glengarry glen ross, a demented Michael Scott from the TV series the office, and my personal favorite, Gary Lundbergh from the move “Office Space.” And let’s be honest, when we think in our deepest and most intimate moments about the character of Jesus, we are not likely to call up the figure of a boss grilling you over your performance—not in the ELCA anyway. So how are we to think through the image of Jesus as a boss in the parable?
Well, a closer reading of this parable reveals a different boss than we might get on first reading. First off, notice that the reward for the first two servants is the same, even though they produce different fruits: the first servant produces more than twice the return of the second servant, but both are “put in charge of more things” and perhaps more importantly, both are equally invited to join in the “joy of the master.” It seems that all that the master wanted is not related to the bottom line, but more importantly what is wanted is simply an effort, that the real reward for the master is that the servants do the best with what they were given. Because the master treats them equally, we can conclude that it is not the return on the investment that is significant (wish those of us with retirement portfolios these days could say that) but it is the mere fact that the servants invested themselves in the master’s work that is the ultimate thing that pleases the master. So it is with the Christian life, at least as I see it—we will hardly ever, if at all produce a perfect return on God’s investments in us, but it is the fact that we are invested in doing god’s work that ultimately pleases God, at least I imagine that that’s the case.
In the end, perhaps part of the reason for this is the way that our investment in God’s work changes us. Notice that the master does not say that the first two servants are great because they are profitable—a close reading of the scripture shows that what pleases the master is that the servants are “trustworthy” but perhaps more precisely, that they are “faithful.” The greek word here is pisto, which is the basis for all kinds of fancy academic talk like epistemology—the study of the nature of belief and knowledge…pistuo in this context means to be faithful in a business transaction, and to be trustworthy, to be reliable, but it is also the word for belief, and in the new testament it also implies one who trusts god’s promises, or even one who has become convinced in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Pisto here is not just a characteristic that describes the servant’s nature, but is also a term that describes a kind of transformation in the servant, that he has come to believe in and put faith in the promises of the master as a kind of response to the faith that the master puts in him by giving him money to invest. So what is the point? The point is that the thing that pleases the master is not the profit, but the transformation in the life of the servant, a belief out of which the servants’ investments flow. Thus the first part of this parable is less about God the accountant’s balance sheet, but rather about a concern that God has for us, that if we invest in God’s work, we are transformed to believe, and ultimately to live faithful lives of Christian service.
If we read the passage this way, the Master’s interaction with the third servant takes on a totally different light.
Quote:
Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, 'Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; 25so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.'
Three things are immediately apparent from the third servant’s report to the master. First, master is not really mad about the money. After all, the third servant could have taken the talent and thrown a heck of a party. One talent was the equivalent of over a thousand dollars, which almost covers a night out in Chapel Hill (not including babysitting and parking). The servant did not lose the master any money, he returns the whole sum to him. What the master is really mad about is that the servant did not make an effort to invest it.
Second, and here is the key, why? Why did the third servant not invest his talent? The clearest thing to me is that the servant misunderstands the master’s motives “master, I knew you were a harsh man.” This servant is convinced that the master is an angry boss who is waiting for the opportunity to reprimand him. This belief led the servant to bury the talent in the ground, figuring that this was the best way to avoid the master’s wrath when he messed up the investment. The third servant’s vision of the master dictated his investments.
Now, many times in the complex morass that is American Christianity (god bless all our Christian brothers and sisters) we hear voices that read passages like Matthew 25 and, preaching fire an brimstone, folks declare that God is an angry God, that we are all at risk of being labeled as goats, and when Jesus comes back, he is going to be mad. Well, maybe, but I just want to point out the funny irony here: folk who emphasize just how mad god is going to be upon God’s immanent return share the belief of the third servant. The belief that God is coming back angry is a core attitude that influences many Christians beliefs about the world: some hold that we do not need to do anything about poverty, oppression, the destruction of God’s creation, or anything else because that is just the way the world is, and God is going to come back and destroy everything anyway, so why work to make things better. The funny part is that this attitude parallels the attitude of the third servant perfectly. Why invest in doing God’s work when the sheep are going to be caught up in the air in a blessed rapture and the goats will be “left behind”? But let’s not misunderstand the master here—he has given us talents to invest, and if we are to believe in his ultimate goodness, and that his desire for us is to be transformed into faithful servants, into believers, we are called to invest radically in this world and in being the face of Christ to it.

Third, the servant thinks that the master “reaps where he does not sow” and “gathers where he did not scatter seed.” If you read between the lines, it is not too difficult to detect a slight hint of resentment toward the master—why should the master get to come back and reap the rewards of his servants’ hard work? It seems that he resents that he might not get to own the fruits of his labor. We can imagine the third servant steaming as he buries the single talent he has been entrusted: “I’ll show you master, you can’t make me work for nothing…”
But think about the logic of the servant’s resentment—two things are notable about it. One, the servant has a little bit of a sense of entitlement: what is the master’s is the master’s and what is his is his, and whatever paltry sum is his, he does not enjoy it, but resents the fact that the master and the other servants have more. But the servant doesn’t understand that perhaps the greatest joy of the Master, and of the other servants, is that when the master returns they all get to share together in the joy of the master—so in too narrowly construing his own self interest, the ungrateful servant misses out on the opportunity to share in the joy of the master.

Two, the servant, at least implicitly, sees the work that he does as something that should be done only for his own benefit, and this is why he ultimately resents the master’s demand that he work. Now here is the interesting thing: even though the servants do not get to keep their earnings, the talent is still a gift—it is the gift that allows the servants the potential for enjoying the fruits of the master’s kingdom. But how can a loaned gift whose return goes directly to the giver be a gift? It seems like that kind of logic would have us praising the people at American Express, Mastercard and Citibank for giving us money to spend and only asking for 14 to 29 percent in return for the privilege—not a sentiment that you hear at my house very much around the time that the bills are due.
But God is not constrained by normal conditions of credit—and God certainly never worries about an impending “credit crunch.” Augustine, that great saint of the early church wrote in the refined and high language of philosophical theology that the world is created ex nihilio, that it is literally created out of nothing, sustained only by the creative act of God’s will. Likewise, in the beginning, John tells us, there was only the word, and God’s word speaks the world into existence. And, In the Genesis account, it there is nothing more than God’s command: let there be light…and there was light.

So what? Well the everyday complement of both Augustine’s insight and the various accounts of creation is that we are not just endowed with specific gifts from God, but that way more radically, everything that exists, and even our existence is a gift from God. Let that one sink in for a bit. It is one of those things that we can say, and even affirm conceptually, but that we never quite come to emotional terms with. Every breath (the exhilarating and the labored ones) every day (the perfect and the depressing ones) every moment with our friends and families (unforgettable and the stressful ones)every kiss, inconvenience, hug, crisis, kind word, and nasty day are fundamentally gifts, because as bad as or good as things might be for us at any given moment in life, that we even have these things to experience is infinitely better than not having them at all. Creation ex nihilio is a fancy solution to a difficult theological problem, but it is more than that: it is also a reminder that there are two basic ways that we can be in the world. One, we can say that our existence and everything that we have is a result of our skill, our cunning, and our calculation. When we do this, we live an entitled existence, and as a result we hold on to what is ours and seek to maximize our gains.

Or, there is a second, more excellent way—we can live in the light of a realization that is as beautiful as it is terrible: that nothing had to be, and that what we have, we have only as a result of God’s grace and provision, only as a result of God’s choice to give us something from nothing. But here’s the catch, to live that way, we have to, as Paul tells us “die to ourselves.” What does this mean? For some it has meant self hatred and flagellation. But I think that this misses the point entirely of the Christian life. The beautiful paradox of the Christian life is that as we die to ourselves, as we live our lives out as a gift and not an entitlement, we are called more fully into the joy of God. To live a life that dies to the self is to live a life fully and explicitly as a gift from God, as a loan that creates all the moments of beauty and dismay that make up the tapestry of our existence.
It is only in this light that we can understand the response of the master to the third servant, which contains both a little bit of sarcasm, and maybe even a little bit of hurt: “You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? 27Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. “Now keep in mind that in a good Jewish household at the time, Usury was a no-no. At least as I read it, Jesus is calling out the servant, essentially saying:” if you really believed that I was all about the bottom line, about getting a return on my investment, you would have at least stuck the money in a bank!” The point is, of course, that the Master is not mad that the servant didn’t deposit the money in a bank, but that the third servant has radically misunderstood the true nature of his master, and that this was his greatest sin. Here, in sum we have a parable that teaches us that God desires that we invest ourselves in the work of the kingdom, but not because it gains God an specific benefit—rather, we are called to invest because ourselves in God’s work because of what it can do for others (how it can help the “least” of those among us) and how it transforms us by bringing us more fully into the Joys of the Christian Life.
But more importantly than all this, this parable teaches us something about the nature of investments. It is the good investments of the first two servants that define them as “good” and “faithful.” And, equally, it is the bad investment or even the lack of investment by the third servant that defines him as “wicked” and “lazy.” By “define” here I do not mean that the good and faithful name the essential character of the servant—instead I mean to identify what the servants are made into in the act of investing. In the prayer for today we will respond to the petition by asking God to “make all things new.” This is what I think is going on in the parable—the first two servants are open to being made anew in their investments, and the third is not—he would rather stew in his resentment of the master. Thus, it is not some essential quality of the servants that makes them “good” or “faithful” in the parable, nor is it our usual understanding of return on investments that defines the goodness of the servants in this parable: these investments are about the way that a person is “made new”, the way that they define themselves in investing that is at the heart of this parable. Perhaps the ultimate lessons of this parable are that we are what we invest in, that our investments flow from our beliefs about the character of God, and most importantly, that where our treasure lies, so lies our heart.
You see, an investment in this parable is so much more than a monetary transaction. It is a cumulative measure of a person. We are what we invest in. A human life is nothing more than a cumulative set of investments—sure there are investments of money, but more importantly, there are investments of time, of belief, of emotional energy, of work, of love. And at the end of the day, we are the result of our investments. An investment is a funny thing, because as any financial analyst will tell you, no investment is without risk. Every time you invest, you are laying yourself on the line a little bit. But this is the nature of the human condition: the question is not will we invest, but what will we invest ourselves in? What will you invest yourself in? In success? In money? In prestige? In the appearance of wisdom? In the love of your peers? All these are great, but let’s not miss out on the infinitely greater joys of the kingdom of God. And why? Because even if we are not at immediate and direct risk of bodily harm from an investment, every investment is a form of laying your life on the line, because every investment requires an expenditure of your person. What are you willing to lay your life on the line for? What are you giving your life to already? Would you lay your life on the line for any of the things that I listed a second ago? Would you die for success? For popularity? Who are you if you are defined by what you invest in? We are what we invest in, and as Christians the way we invest is by dying to ourselves and living for Christ. But the payoff is far greater than anything that we might gain in terms of personal advancement, because in dying to ourselves and living as the face of Christ to each other and the world, we gain a share in the infinite beauty and joy of God’s unsurpassable love. So for myself at least, I pray that I might die to myself, because as Paul reminds us in his letter to the Phillipians “For me to live is Christ…to die is to gain” or, in the eloquent words of John Wesley, “To me to live is Christ - To know, to love, to follow Christ, is my life, my glory, my joy.” Amen.

How did Sarah Palin make such a remarkable public turnaround in the span of the few short days between her infamous interviews with Katie Couric and Charles Gibson and last night's Vice Presidential debate? Those who tuned in for last night's debate did not see a meltdown, or new material for Tina Fey—they saw a political communicator who recovered some of the debating form that made her a force to be reckoned with in Alaska. How is it that, at least if you are the kind of person who puts stock in polls, she debated Joe Biden, an experienced debater and effective communicator in his own right to a dead heat?

The answer is effective debate coaching. Governor Palin went to debate camp and she paid attention to (among others) the coaching advice of former Liberty University debate coach Brett O'Donnell, now the primary debate consultant for the McCain/Palin ticket. Though I am sad to say that I don't have any insider information to spill, I can say that having worked with Brett O'Donnell for two years, and with the college debate community in general for a good bit longer, Palin was effective because she did three essential things, all of which are well known and widely used strategies in college debate.

First, she controlled the terms of the debate by talking about what she wanted to talk about. This is a well-worn college debating technique. A debater does not necessarily need to be strong on their opponent's arguments if they can control the flow of the debate by continually emphasizing the arguments that they are prepared on and know well. In the interviews with Couric and Gibson, Palin appeared unsure of herself and lacked fluency on the issues, in part, because Couric and Gibson's questions determined the content of her responses. By steadfastly refusing to answer questions, or by only giving one word answers to them when posed directly, Palin took the opportunity to talk about her core issues "directly" to the American people.

Two, to borrow a term from college debating, the majority of Governor Palin's speeches were "blocked" in advance. Managing a wide ranging debate is difficult for any debater, even the most experienced ones. One of the first things that we teach students in college debate is to attempt to predict the arguments that your opponent will use and to write out a "block" (a set of pre-scripted arguments) that apply to any specific version of an argument that your opponent might make. Now, my bet is that in this instance Palin's team "blocked" the debate by writing a 15 or so small (minute long or so) pre-written speeches that Governor Palin could rehearse in advance. The speeches might have been classified by the various broad themes that the consultants for the ticket predicted that moderator Gwen Ifill would ask. You can imagine what the categories were: the bailout, the economy, foreign policy, I am qualified to be VP, global warming, the energy crisis, and so on.

The strategic insight of this way of preparing is that it allowed Governor Palin to do exactly what she did so well in the debate: she could ignore the question posed by the moderator, and could either choose to give one of the pre-"blocked" speeches on an area generally related to the question, to pick up on one strand of what Senator Biden said, or could choose to ignore the topic completely and give a snippet of a speech on an entirely unrelated issue. The danger of the strategy is that a debater might seem to be dodging the issues. But this is the point where one of Governor Palin's most effective rhetorical moves comes into play: with only a little spin, she could claim that she was ignoring the questions for the higher purpose of speaking directly to the American people without Gwen Ifill and "the media" as an intermediary. What she lost in technical debate points, she gained in sincerity and fluency.

Finally, Governor Palin did what we in debate like to call "generating offense," or emphasizing a few big themes that advance the core ideas of your side while putting your opponent on the defensive. Governor Palin introduced two overarching arguments that helped to frame all the individual arguments in last night’s debate: that Joe Biden and Barack Obama are obsessed with talking about the failings of the past and not he future of American politics, and that Biden and Obama are a continuation of Washington politics as usual. These arguments were helpful in “generating offense” because they both framed much of the meat of Biden’s attacks as mere partisanship, and because they help challenge the Obama/Biden ticket’s core theme of “change.” But more importantly, Governor Palin’s “offense” gave her a coherent narrative that weaved all her individual responses together for a viewing audience, and thus contributed to a sense of overall coherence.

For what it is worth, I also thought Senator Biden had a good debate, especially when he did not allow himself to be hemmed in for fear of attacking or patronizing Governor Palin (I am thinking here of his very nicely executed rebuttal to the idea that McCain is a “maverick”). I will not weigh in here on who I thought won the debate, in part because I’m not quite sure what the benchmark for “winning” a political debate is: is it the candidate who made the best arguments, the candidate who looked most vice-presidential, or the one who connected with the people best. Whichever of these it is, we can at least say that as a result of some good debate coaching and intensive preparation, Sarah Palin was able to prove that she belonged on the same stage as Senator Biden, and that alone is an important win for Governor Palin and Senator McCain.

If you want a buddy in the White House

Today in class I had a discussion with my students (professor code for I ranted for awhile) about the election. Now, I try to stay pretty opaque about my political commitments in the classroom, and what follows is a similarly non-partisan reproduction of my rant today. Question: why do people care so damn much about whether or not presidential candidates "get" them? Frankly I found the answers of my students a bit disturbing. Most of them agreed that it was important for a candidate to understand them, taking that as evidence of the candidate's ability to govern.

But this inclination is not entirely their fault--after all there is a billion dollar plus political machine composed of Republican and Democratic political consultants, pollsters, spin-meisters and an obliging media establishment that actively promotes the idea that the candidates' ability to empathize with the common person is a crucial litmus test of the ability to govern. It seems like both sides have put a ton of energy into proving that they are "just like us" or that if they are not, they at least have their ear to the pavement of "main street." Really it is pretty amazing how far both sides have gone to frame their candidate in a comforting populist light: Palin is a small town workaday mom who struggles with demands of career and family and who has seen her fair share of very middle class family problems; Obama is a hard working midwesterner who has a soft spot for the problems all of our communities face; "working Joe" Biden takes the train to the office and hangs out at Home Depot; McCain "gets it" and is a good old fashioned patriot who grills a mean steak and knows what it means to sacrifice.

Seriously, when did people stop giving a shit about what these people would actually do if elected? I really don't care if a candidate "gets" me or can sympathize with my struggles. After all, no one (hopefully) chooses a doctor because they really really know what it feels like to be sick or an accountant because they know what it is like to struggle to pay the bills. We choose the professionals we do (or should) for one reason, and one reason only--because they are competent. Truthfully, I don't want someone just like me to run the country: I want a ticket that is way smarter and way more experienced than me at, oh, I dunno, fixing a faltering global economy, figuring out how to deal with health care, and dealing with an expanding list of global security and environmental threats. Does anyone really care more if Barack Obama or John McCain "gets" us than if they can devise and implement policies that can deal with the sub-prime mortgage crisis?

As for me, if it was a choice between the former and the latter, I'd take the candidate that could fix the problem even if they didn't really know jack about me and my struggles every time. I think that it was LBJ who said "if you want a buddy in the White House, buy a dog." Seriously America, as Bob Barker has so eloquently pointed out, there's a big time pet overpopulation problem. So get a furry friend... then do a little research on the interwebs, decide what policies you think are in the best interests of your family, community and nation, determine the relative importance of each of these three (if there are conflicting interests), pick your candidate, and then start mercilessly mocking all the goofs who make their political picks on the basis of anything other than good old fashioned prudential political judgment.

Update: okay, the quote really is "if you want a friend in the White House get a dog." And it was Truman, not LBJ. But you get my point...

The Standard Caveat

These days I feel like I've been constantly issuing the parent of a newborn's "standard caveat" for almost everything I do. What is the standard caveat? X action cannot be performed to specifications/done in a timely manner because of crying baby. Haven't posted to your blog in over a week? Insert standard caveat. Not getting as much writing done as you need to? Insert standard caveat. Mediocre day running class? You guessed it-- insert standard caveat.

One great pop-psychological piece of comfort that some have offered is that the near constant state of exhaustion is healthy in the long term because, frankly, you forget just how relentless crying baby can be, and only remember the coos, giggles, and funny baby gas. Maybe, but if so, perhaps it is not too great of an idea to publish this blog post, lest I remind myself of the trauma of crying baby...

Then again, maybe I'll read this later and ask myself who the crybaby really is. I mean, if our parents gutted us out without too much long term damage, shouldn't we have faith that we can do the same?

Gotta go: crying baby.

CNN or the Onion?

Seriously, is this CNN or the Onion?

Awesome. CNN is so desperate for a little climatic disaster porn that it put this clearly fabbed pic of a hurricane "victim" as their lead image on the website this morning. Post adolescent prankster 1, "The most trusted name in news" 0.

Gosh, who woulda thought that the MSM had an incentive to spectacularize disasters for the sake of generating web hits, selling ad space, or capturing news viewership? But is it really possible that the urge to show everyone that "one great shot" caused someone at CNN to mistake some joker's antics for a picture of a guy holding on for dear life in the face of hurricane force winds? Or did CNN willingly accept a clearly fabbed image? I don't wanna run around publically slinging haphazardly constructed ideas or images without verifying them (ahem...) but I think that the people of Galveston should be careful if they see Anderson Cooper or Soledad O'Brien lurking in an alley with a fire hose and a giant wind machine...

My gripes with CNN aside, we hope and pray that the folks in Texas and LA are safe and that the damage was not too severe.

Please Send Lipitor

Seriously, I haven't been able to write for the last few days on account of: 1) Demanding new baby and 2) Massive waves of comfort food sent by very kind friends. I mean: enchiladas, cheddar soup, chicken artichoke wraps, shepherd's pie, macaroni and cheese. I have been alternating between taking care of work business, taking care of wife and baby, and deliciousness induced food comas... So thanks to everyone who has sent food, and keep it coming--it is really easing our load immeasurably. But please, send lipitor too: if you could figure out a way to hide it in cheddar cheese, I might even take it.

Not Quite Free...

Well, Beth got her get out of jail card, and they discharged her. Of course, like that nonexistent lunch that we all keep hearing about, this card it is not quite free for two reasons: 1) Calla's blood work came back clean, but they want to observe her for one more night so we're still in the hospital and 2) C'mon--medical care, the U.S. of A, and free? That's just crazy talk.

At any rate, the three of us are due to be let out and reunited with a cranky Annabeth sometime early tomorrow afternoon. We are very thankful for the fine staff of Durham Regional Hospital (and their antibiotics), our families, our friends and my colleagues for their boundless kindness.

Hannah Arendt, one of my favorite political theorists, argues that natality (the fact that we are born and can remake our world by living in it and doing new stuff) is one of the primary sources of, well, hope--a realization that I think is great. But even more significantly for us over the past few days, the fact of birth seems to almost magically open a wellspring of human goodness. This renews our (or at least my) hope that there might be something not only fundamentally decent in human kind, but perhaps, and under the most fragile of conditions, dare I say, fundamentally kind in humankind.

Now back to the Republican Convention...

G'bless

Chris, Beth, Calla, and soon even Annabeth

How you know that Calla is a Lundberg

It's not as if there's much doubt, but I offer for your consideration:

1) freakishly big head: she's got it--they had to find a different baby hat for her than the standard one, because the standard ones basically fit her like a yarmulke. She shares this characteristic with Annabeth, whose head was so big that it looked like a grapefruit on a toothpick. The bigness of the Lundberg head runs deep in the family lore--I can never find hats that fit, and my dad had to have a football helmet specially made to accommodate his ginormous noggin.

2) she's loud: I really think if the other babies in the nursery could evict her, they would

3) penchant for the ambiguously threatening medical symptom that never quite turns out to be a concern: Calla is in the special care unit because she had a high I.T. ratio (basically a count of mature to developing white blood cells--hers was more slanted to developing white blood cells than normal, which is a weak indicator of infection) and a high overall white count. This means that if all goes well we'll be delayed a day or two getting out of here while she gets prophylactic antibiotics ("prophylactic" is a much more fun word and concept when not attached to antibiotics).

This runs par for the course for a Lundberg: Calla already had one really fun false alarm, a Choroid Plexus Cyst, which is a weak indicator of rough disorder, trisomy 18. Even though these cysts are almost always benign, it is never fun to have to read articles like "Should I Be Worried About a Cyst in My Baby's Brain?"

Maybe Calla's just taking after her big sister. Anna had a fun encounter with MRSA
as a newborn. Even though a flesh eating antibiotic resistant bacterium sounds pretty spooky, MRSA was a dud in Anna's case. The worst thing it did was force all the visitors to wear gowns and eye shields.

But hey, isn't Daddy to blame in the end? In the great tradition of Lundbergian hypochondriacs, Daddy had a record setting SIX different imaging studies (CT, MRI, Endoscopy--you get the picture) and three ER admits during grad school with a net outcome of exactly zero significant medical problems.

Oh well, at least she's learning how to fit in with the rest of the family. I only wish one of the kids would take after Beth and be a paragon of health and well-being.

Pictures

4.0 drops!!!

It's a Girl!

I am officially surrounded.

At 7:59 tonight Beth gave birth to a 8.4 lb pink bundle of joy. They are both resting comfortably after an efficient five hours of labor. Beth went so quick that the hospital wasn't able to get an epidural in, and let me tell you if you haven't seen it in person, labor au natruale is no joke. Even I needed pain medication after that was over.

Beth's mom and sister were able to be there and, at least as far as experiences of coming into the world go, this one seemed pretty good. We're thinking about calling her Calla, after the Greek for beautiful (not just the cosmetic, but the more eternal flavor). For the Greeks, the beautiful was not simply a measure of sensory pleasure, but was intimately tied to ultimate goodness.

Suggestions? Objections?

More details (and hopefully pictures) later.