Elsewhere in Dreams

1. This evening Laura and I are going to Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. It’s a time where people in our church get together and share each other’s food and apparently also get to know each other in the process. I’m making vegetarian past and good old fashioned meat pasta. I can’t be bothered to be innovative for tonight.
2. Again last night… four hour of sleep. This is not good. At all. I went to be at 2300, 2400, 0100, 0200, 0300, 0330, 0400… and the last one was the one that took. But now I’m functioning on nothing more than diet cola and coffee.
3. Laura dropped by the office to say hello and bring me some food. Good wife, that one! And not just because she brings me food.
4. I’m voting NDP this election. I like Jack Layton, I like a lot of their platform, but I especially like their IP stance. Ever since I saw Charlie Angus debating Jim Prentice in the House of Commons, I’ve kind of warmed to the party. But with the Green Party’s current leadership — she looks and talks like a troll and not even a funny GNAA troll or something, plus she seemed out of touch and just a little dumb — looking a little lacklustre, who else to vote for? Certainly not the Liberals, curse their rotten bones. Absolutely not the Conservatives and their Rove-style politics. So there we go.
5. Canadian parliamentary politics is pretty interesting. The only thing that matters in these elections is the PM. All his MPs vote with him on all matter except the rare free votes. All his backbenchers vote with him unless they’re resigned to being backbenchers for the rest of their careers. I don’t like this. What’s the point of having MPs if they can only vote as the PM wills? We may as well just vote for a 4-year dictator and his assorted civil servants: After all, what are the MPs doing but spearheading policy issues for the PM and party brass? The MP voting and selection process is broken and meaningless.
6. I don’t like change any more. I generally don’t like new people. I like the people I already know and the faces I’m already familiar with and the places I’m used to going. Maybe that makes me old or something, but I don’t mind. The only thing I really like is new music. I can get into new music.
7. Oh, and I pretty much hate a lot of worship music. It’s bland, boring, artificial, meaningless junk for the most part.
8. Soon I will be at home cooking a mean. This is good.

Just a moment ago, I was vacuuming the carpet in front of her whilst she ate Wendy’s fries and a junior burger combo. Does a woman’s life get any better than that? I don’t think so!

I don’t mean to perpetuate any stereotypes with this post, by the way. I may be stuck in the past when I say that a mother place is, in most circumstances, in the home with her child(ren), but a woman’s place is wherever she chooses.

I have something like three topics in my head, none of which would make a proper blog post on its own; I think if I roll them all up into one big post it’ll go much better, and I’ll probably end up remembering that one last nagging thought I think I thought but can’t remember thinking, though at some point I thought I thought that thought and forgot that thought, you see.

* * *

Normally, I’m okay with James MacDonald. He’s generally a decent preacher, and I’ve had opportunity to be blessed by a number of the things he’s said. On Saturday I caught a snippet of a sermon he did on post-modernism, a snippet that I’m going to go on to criticise mercilessly. I’m not even going to pretend that I don’t like criticising, just to be nice, because I generally do analyse things in my head. This is no exception.

I’m well acquainted with the art of making a straw-man and then tearing it down: it’s a useful skill in certain circumstances. For instance, showing people what a straw-man is. Making a straw-man out of post-modernism, saying it’s all about relativism and denying truth claims, etc, is disingenuous at best, and outright dishonest at worst. The only way someone could come to such a conclusion is if he had never, ever actually joined the conversation and instead sat in the bleachers and listened to the hecklers.

Any post-modern worth his salt will admit that right now post-modernism is a tag applied to a whole bunch of junk, all of which is unified by the undeniable supposition that modernism is no longer good enough to meet today’s challenges. In short, modernism is broke. When modernism first burst onto the scene — or I should say evolved out of the Middle Age’s chaotic ruins — I’m sure the first generation considering themselves modern had no idea what that even meant. It took hundreds of years for the philosophy to coalesce. It took a long time to look down and see where the world had planted its feet. And even modernity as a definition fails to capture every facet of modern thought: after all this time we’re not quite sure where we stand.

I’m sure the first generation to question the King’s divine right to rule raised a few eyebrows. The first generations to question rationalisation, alienation, commodification, decontextualization, individualism, chaos, and industrialism should raise a few eyebrows too.

But the post-modernism as a philosophy, as a way of life, is in its infancy. Mocking its shortcomings or even its perceived shortcomings is like making fun of a budding artist’s paintings. It’s not in good taste, and it smacks of pure meanness.

Besides, no post-modernist will say that 2 + 2 does not equal 4. But if you can’t see the difference between that and saying that truth claims are contextual, that narrative matters, and that not everything can be measured and sorted into a list, then you’re the one who deserves a good mocking. It’s not hard to make straw-men for modern American churches — pastored by a Canadian or not — especially when they cater to a rich middle-class audience by tickling their ears while explaining why they’re better than those dirty post-moderns. Thank you, Lord, that I am not like them, that I believe in truth claims! (See what I did there?)

That said, I don’t consider myself post-modern. I don’t think it’d be a good idea, as it seems to be every good Evangelical’s whipping boy lately. I have, however, read books by Brian McLaren and Donald Miller, and see a lot of good in them. Though I fear I’ve said too much…

* * *

Today’s message reminded me that there’s quite a difference between hearing the stories of Jesus and hearing lists of attributes of Jesus. Maybe it’s just me, but I can list facts all day and no one will give a toss (facts are by their very nature boring; even documentary film-makers understand this). Novels and poetry and stories and songs aren’t simply entertainment, they’re also communicative mechanisms.

Once, when was a lot younger than I am today, I started volunteering at a soup kitchen. My motives weren’t that great, I suppose, as it gave me an excuse to not attend one service of a church I had begun to dislike quite a lot. But I still did it, and I think that counts for something. Most of the people that came there were pretty much the dregs of society. I was trying to think of them as noble and loved and the sort of people that Jesus would have had a meal with or maybe healed of something, but I had hard time seeing them as anything but very smelly and dirty. I honestly didn’t like myself for feeling this way, but I just couldn’t get past it. To me they were just people who needed a bath.

Then this one guy — he looked about fifty years old — sat down at this badly tuned piano, pulled out a sheaf of dog-eared music, and played. And man, could he play. I presume to play keys a bit here and there, but nothing, nothing like this man. Later the staff told me he was a hardcore alcoholic, that he had destroyed his life with booze, and I’m sure this was very true. Yet it seemed to me that amidst all that brokenness there was this indestructible beauty that simply couldn’t be kept in.

I don’t how he did it, but this man helped me as much as I helped him. I gave him a meal, true, but he gave me the ability to see past the surface into the inherent nobility that is contained in each person’s soul, whether that person is a redneck or is homeless or is a soccer mom or is an annoying television preacher with bad hair.

Sometimes I tell this story to people to show them that there is beauty even in ashes, that there is joy in an alcoholic’s music, something like that. I suppose I could simply tell them that, or maybe make a slide with some bullet points, but it isn’t the same, is it?

* * *

Laura and I just got back from celebrating our six month anniversary. It’s flown by! In that time, we’ve had no major problems or even any major fights. My mum thinks this is because we’re essentially still honeymooning. I like to think it’s God’s grace. See, I’m much more spiritual than my mum, though of course I’m not. She’s got me beat by a good kilometre or two.

We stayed at a local hotel, since local hotels cost a fair bit less than non-local hotels, and feasted on Elliot House food. Both were excellent. We even had a whirlpool bathtub. I made it too hot to get into when I first drew the bath. I’m stupid like that, but you can see how my wife is long-suffering.

It’s still odd to say “my wife”. My wife. Yep, still odd.

I wish I could tell the world how much I love Laura… but I can’t. I wish there were words to spell it out… but there aren’t.

All I’ve got it approximations: She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me: She the greatest gift I could have asked for.

Those are just tip-toeing around it. I can try to approach it in writing, in poems, obliquely; but in the end I’m stymied by how badly my tongue and my brain connect.

I’ll leave it there. I love her.

The end.

Last night Laura and I were in bed (don’t worry; no raunchy details shall follow), Laura getting a leg rub courtesy of myself. I eventually found this spot that really loosened up her muscles, even if it hurt a little. After showing her she asked me to demonstrate and I did. Her leg muscles relaxed a lot.

We both stared at her leg for a second, and at the same time said, “Weird!” (We do that a lot.)

As if on cue, after a momentary pause, we both said, “Weirder!”

*shiver*

You know what weddings are all about? Weddings are all about stress. Let me explain. Yesterday, I left work early, as delivery men from both Sears and Jysk were showing up. Show up they did, both of them late, and I spent the rest of the evening assembling furniture, which isn’t as therapeutic as it may sound. In fact, by the time I had figured out how the TV stand and the couch fit together, I had spent three hours bolting things together, deciphering schematics cleverly encrypted with 128-bit stupidity, and wondering why so much extra hardware had been crammed into the little plastic bags, until I longed for the sweet embrace of death.

Then I got into work to discover everyone calling for their tools, and every tool not done or done wrong. Hyperbole, but it stands. In the midst of this I discovered that money is going to be a little tight for the first few months of marriage because OSAP — predictably, I might add — thinks that we don’t actually need any money for food and whatnot.

Of course, some of you are going to be saying, “Well, then you shouldn’t have bought that bed and that furniture.” But of course they were both a donation from my parents, bless their moneyed souls, and not a cash donation. And I will not beg money from them; things tight, but we’ll survive just fine. For the first time I understand why finances are the ruination of many an otherwise sound relationship.

We will find ourselves, after the honeymoon, in a house full of semi-nice things, with a few thin dimes to rub together. At least for the first few weeks. Add to that the inevitable tension of getting used to — for me at least — having another person around the house whose needs I have to consider, whose well-being I am entrusted with, and you have the makings of a rocky road. It’s scary too: are my shoulders broad enough for this?

Something is going to blind-side us. The time is ripe. I mean, me and Laura love eachother and we’ll make it through whatever comes, but it’s all too simple right now. The challenges seem straightforward, and life seems to generally dislike being straightforward. So I’m waiting to get hit by a bus.

All this to say that I may well be fraying and wearing thin, but this is going to happen. It will, and if I find myself taking a bus in the chest, it will be for love. I’m a big ball of hope that no bus will come, and that the rewards of the tension will be legion, and that in all of this there will be a knot of blessing.

But I still can’t wait for it all to just be… over.

Last night Nick, Laura, and I started moving stuff into our new place. It’s awesome to finally have enough room to, you know, set up a bedroom and all that sort of stuff. Tonight we go back for the heavy lifting, and hopefully we can get everything moved out.

On the wedding front, almost everything is done. The invites are a little late, but Elyssa is making them and we’re going to hand them out in person instead of mailing them, and people are asked to reply either by phone or via email. I’ll be checking my spam pretty closely over the next while.

We’re going to Cuba on our honeymoon.

We have the location, her dress, my clothes, the minister, the pre/post-marital counselling, the guest list, the honeymoon, the new house, transportation, ushers, bridesmaids and best men, registry at Canadian Tire, and all that sort of thing.

Laura is having something like five showers for her.

Two days back Candice and Peter and Nick took us out to the West Plains Bistro (expensive but excellent food), where even though we had to wait an unacceptably long time to be served, the mean was very enjoyable. And of course me and Peter geek talked. I love geek talking! Laura locked her keys in the car while the car was running and CAA had to come rescue her.

I have just enough money right now to pay rent. I can’t wait for next week’s paycheque and oh boy am I glad that I worked this week instead of lazing around and taking it off.

Me and Karibeth have very different taste in books. This is what she said, and I agree.

This afternoon I go taste-testing with Laura at the caterers. Thank heaven we don’t have to pay for that stuff, or you’d all be having crackers and jam.

For the very last time, no, no, it’s not a shotgun wedding. I am pleased to announce that there will be no baby in eight or nine months, nor will there be one — as per the plan — for a while yet.

As a person about to be married, it is incumbent upon me to find a place to register so people don’t end up buying us a primary-coloured fruit bowl made by a gypsy from refuse found behind McDonald’s. There are several ways to do this, but the simplest and easiest way should be the internet, right?

Wrong.

Apparently though shops have put their entire inventories online, with SKUs, pictures and everything, they still haven’t found a sensible way of creating a registry. But it’s not rocket science, it really isn’t.

Guess who had the best wedding registry on the entire internet (at least what we’ve ventured to use)?

Canadian Tire. That’s right. The place you get your oil changed in a pinch, the place where you buy screwdrivers and hockey equipment, the place that gives out Canadian Tire ‘Money’ in denominations as low as five cents. Yes, that Canadian Tire.

Sears, on the other hand, has the worst. It’s an absolute mess. I cannot overstate this in any way. Sears cannot possibly have made it more difficult to navigate, choose, and otherwise just use the website.

That’s not even mentioning Home Outfitters and The Bay who don’t even grace the internet with a gift registry: you actually have to go into a brick and mortar store to register with them. Insanity.

In a modern marriage, leveraging the power of the internet is the only sensible thing to do. And we have leveraged it. We co-ordinate via Google Docs, we communicate with email, we invite people over Facebook, we get advice from our forum friends, we research, we look up prices, we find apartments, blah blah blah over the internet.

I don’t know how to finish this post, but let me say this. In the words of Laura, “Sears sucks. The end.”