Dave | unobtrusive lucidity

A Hiro of a Different Sort

Our daughter, from as early as we permitted screen time, has loved Thomas the Train.

I have no complaints. First off, the grammar and language use are excellent, and the morality tale contained within each movie is of high quality. I think that it’s a good thing for her. I also like that she likes “playing trains” with Daddy, because, honestly, I’m sort of into watching the trains rush around the track. For that matter, I like putting the track together with her. I’d much rather she be absorbed in the world of Thomas than in more…well, more frilly, girly things to which I would have difficulty relating. So, we feed her habit. She’s amassed quite a collection of trains and track at this point.

Because we travel over the Christmas holiday, we usually open our gifts at least two days early, before we’re either in a car or on a plane to see family members. This year, the gift from Daddy was one that I had been hoping to be able to have her unwrap for some time.

One of her favorite Thomas movies is Hero of the Rails, where we are introduced to a new character, Hiro. Hiro is a wise, old engine that brings a new dynamic to the group of friends and characters of Thomas’ world. Our daughter loved Hiro, but, because he was initially a character only appearing in that movie, the toy was produced in limited quality and had become a bit of a collector’s item. Hiro was rare and difficult to find for less than $50, which is more than we were willing to pay for a toy.

Recently, Hiro has been produced again, but it still more difficult to find than many other engines. When we stumbled onto him online while shopping for other gifts for an under-$20 price tag, we clicked the buy button without a second thought. Our daughter’s squeal of delight when opening her gifts…”It’s Hiro!!!”…was more than worth it, and I was having a tall day after having given her the favorite gift of the season.

Of course, then the travels to grandparents happened, and I was totally upstaged by the onslaught of gifts that comes with being an only grand-daughter. I’d like to say I’m too emotionally and spiritually mature to be jealous of this, but…I was totally jealous.

Over the weekend, we were playing trains. We will sit and spin stories and tales of the adventures of Thomas and his friends as her amazing imagination gets its workout and she amazes me with her eloquence. I steered the story to revolve around Hiro wherever I could. I have to be honest, it wasn’t because I was excited about how excited she was about the new toy. Rather, I was a little irritated that she had all but forgotten about Hiro amongst all of the other toys that she has to play with following the Holiday. I was saddened by the fact that the impulse to “nudge” her toward playing with the plastic representation one of her favorite characters wasn’t because of my desire for her happiness, but rather my desire to rectify what I saw as a way that I had been cheated.

Not cool for me to role model selfishness, even though I’m relatively certain she’s aloof to my motivations at age three.

I think that the character of Hiro would probably recognize the sad predicament of my selfishness. Little girls see their daddies as their heroes. I grew up as an only child, which, despite best efforts, results in a bit of a mentality that the world revolves around me. I want to think that, now that I’m an adult, I’ve grown out of that, left it behind. Turns out that I have a great deal of which to purge myself so as to not pass this along to my little girl.

The Eve of the Most Wonderful Time of Year

In watching the joy of our daughter as she unwrapped some early gifts…

In thankfulness for the life together that He has given my family…

In going back through where I have been on past Christmases, I found this, a post that I wrote on a Christmas that, for various reasons, feels much like this one does. And the words that I quoted then are just as beautiful to me now. So I’m re-posting them here.

My dear brothers and sisters, let me get to the main point without delay. Who is he who was born the son of Mary, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger? Who is he? I do not ask who he was. Christmas is not the birthday celebration of a man who lived long ago, then died and passed away, and whose centennial we solemnly commemorate. True, he once lived and then died–and how he died!–but he also rose from the dead; he is present and lives among us now, much closer to each one of us than we are to ourselves. Still, who is he? The answer to that question is the good news of Christmas.

Today, let me say simply this: He who was born in the stable is he who stands by you, stands by me, and stands by us all. I do not say onewho stands by you, but he who stands by you. For only one, only he who was born on that first Christmas day, can stand by us in utter unselfishness and with ultimate authority and power…This is the good news of Christmas. He who stands by you and helps you is alive and present! It is he who was born that Christmas day!</p<

(From Karl Barth’s 1958 Christmas sermon, “He Stands by Us.”

May your Christmas season be most blessed.

Disciplinary Actions

SIlhouette of a person in front of code projected onto wall

Something that I’ve heard a lot of colleagues and friends speak of during my life is the idea of practicing and improving at one’s craft. Because of my natural inclinations, the crafts that I’ve generally discussed…the crafts that I’ve practiced…have been writing and theatre. I can talk about both crafts in some detail, because they’re things that I’ve done, creative pursuits in which I’ve seriously engaged. I’ve touched just about every part of placing a production on stage, I’ve been published in various mediums…I’ve learned not only from academic studies, but from experience in both of these areas.

It’s my understanding that there’s a generally accepted logic that, after you’ve read a certain number of books on a given subject, you’re considered to be an expert at some level in the subject matter. While I find that logic a bit suspect (the number is always arbitrary, and it says nothing as to the quality of the source material that you’ve been reading…God help us if all “experts” in journalism were declared such after reading only books by authors like Sean Hannity), there is something to be said for studying something in depth, taking an interest beyond the realm of hobby and into the realm of a serious discipline. I suppose I’m able to speak somewhat expertly about religion and theology, because I hold a master’s degree in the discipline. I haven’t practiced the discipline of theology since grad school, however, at least not in any formal way beyond the ways in which we all practice it in our daily lives.

So, I’ve studied disciplines, and I’ve placed some of them into practice and called them crafts. I can speak somewhat authoritatively on both, but I wonder…what’s the difference between the two? Specifically, I wonder if this newest venture of digital construction, of building on the web, that I practice is actually a craft?

The idea of a craft carries with it something that can be honed to some degree of perfection. A person can be recognized as a master of his or her craft. I’m not sure, though, that every craft carries with it a discipline. Master carpenters and master electricians have mastered their craft without what we would consider academic pursuit, but have very specialized knowledge that eludes most of us. As with theatre and writing, we refer to artistic endeavors as craft, as well…one can practice them to a degree of mastery.

What I see in common in all of those examples is that there is a relatively static method of doing things, a set pattern with which one can become intimately familiar through repetition and practice. They all involve a process. The art of acting, the coordination of words in writing, all move in much the same ebb and flow from one project to another. Not so with technology. The pace of change is so ridiculously fast that there is never going to be a static referent to which one can achieve mastery, because by the time that point is reached, the methods and processes will have changed dramatically enough to be unrecognizable.

So, I don’t think that the web can be a craft. Perhaps it can be considered a discipline…perhaps. Certainly it’s a vocation, a skill set. It’s concerning to me, a bit, that crafts marked by long-term standards of excellence are being replaced by such rapidly evolving pursuits. That lack of longevity says something about our cultural identity, something disturbing.

I want to say that this new field in which I make my living is a craft that I work toward perfecting, but I know that it is all too immaterial, too temporary. Or, perhaps this is our new definition of a craft…perhaps the term is evolving. In any case, while it is it’s own form of poetry, and even though I believe that there is a right way and wrong way to do it, building for the web seems an extremely impermanent thing.

I hope that all of our pursuits are not as fleeting.

Photo Attribution: Nat Welch under Creative Commons

Recovery

Christmas tree standing in my favorite apartment from years ago As I write this, I’m listening to a country artist doing a cover of questionable quality of a Christmas carol while I’m sitting in a Starbucks surrounded by red and gold. I’m pausing for the first time in a long time, or at least the first time when I haven’t been too exhausted to formulate coherent thoughts, and attempting to wade through the slush of melting ideas in my head.

You know those great articles that you occasionally read in good magazines that make their point with the story of the experience rather than formulating a logical argument? So, with that in mind…

The last time that I remember having a truly devoted Advent and Christmas season was over three years ago. Last year wasn’t actually too bad, but it was still scattered, too scattered for my taste. This year, instead of being swallowed in the realization of this most holy of seasons, I’m swallowed in my desire to be swallowed in the realization of this most holy of seasons…like so much of me is exactly where it needs to be, and yet something central, something core, needs to be brought from the past and re-introduced to where I am today.

I’ve forgotten something that I knew then, something that is still within me somewhere, but flitting just out of sight with each attempt of my eyes to focus when it appears in my peripheral.

I know what it is, almost by name, and I’ve caught glimpses more often in the past two weeks. I saw it when I watched our daughter, now old enough to begin hanging her own decorations on our tree, hanging each decoration with care, proudly placing the angel on the top of the tree when I lifted her high to do so. I saw it when, beaming from ear to ear, she rang a bell that had been given to her by my late grandmother, and announced, “Merry Christmas, Mommy! Merry Christmas, Daddy!”

I heard it in the words of hope on the first Sunday of Advent, announced most beautifully and most powerfully by a minister with a pony tail and a bow tie in a small church in which I had never set foot before.

I’ve seen it as I looked back over our memory tree, pausing especially on the maple leaf that we purchased to recall our home in New Hampshire before we made the most abrupt move to North Carolina this summer.

I’ve read it in emails from friends in New England, felt it in my longing to return to what has forever become my home.

What I’m truly swallowed in is a frenzy, an unforgiving scramble for things that we have been forced to consider as important and necessary, and which are ultimately material and will not survive this corporeal life. Yet, we are forced to forsake the unseen, the immaterial of infinitely more worth for more and more time in order to survive with the material pittance without which we cannot eat, cannot live.

I’m swallowed in angst as police officers shoot unarmed people, as some celebrate in excess while others have too little, as the idea of God is supposedly made less plausible by a deity of a different type that we’ve conceived in our own minds.

There are about two weeks of Advent left before those of us who celebrate Christmas observe our most precious Holiday. That isn’t enough time for me to recover what I’m missing, to lay hold of what I’ve mis-placed. Not nearly enough time for my cloudy eyes to clear. And I wouldn’t be able to part this fog on my own, in any case. It’s not within my power. That clearing must come from outside of myself, by something external, something that is not myself.

Then again, that’s sort of the point.

Paean

As of shortly after 9:00 p.m. on Tuesday, I no longer have any grandparents.

I grew up with three…one maternal and two paternal…and I’ve buried all of them in the last eight years.

When my maternal grandmother passed, we had a sort of false alarm a couple of weekends before. Karen and I had packed and were leaving for an impromptu trip to attempt to maximize those final moments with her, when her condition unexpectedly improved. We turned around and went home, both tired from the week and glad to avoid a few hours on the road. We questioned briefly whether or not there would be wisdom in going to see her anyway, but ultimately decided that we would not.

Forgetting the clinical principle that there is frequently a spontaneous partial recovery just before a catastrophic crash, I lived to regret that decision.

Years later, Karen and I were returning from an unplugged vacation. I turned my phone on for the first time in a week, to be greeted with the voicemail that my grandfather was gone. We returned from vacation only to pack and travel again for a funeral. That time, I hadn’t seen it coming. I remember watching my grandmother say goodbye during the grave-side service, and marveled at her strength as she proceeded forward with her life as she always had. She had a firm constitution, and had lived through more than her share of hardships. She had endured more than I likely will ever have to, and she had figured out a way to make it through each time. She had always done so with her partner, though, and this would be a new…and unenviable…phase of the journey into which she would enter.

She carried on for years until this week. An unfavorable diagnosis a little over a month ago heralded what would be a fast decompensation…faster than we anticipated. At the end, she knew no one. Her transitioning on was a merciful relief.

I’m of the age at which losing grandparents is to be expected. I grieved late for the first. When I received the call for the second, I asked Karen to please keep me distracted for the day…I couldn’t work through the grief in that moment. When I received the call for the third early this week…and I knew why the phone was ringing, because, whether it be the odd time or some other sensory perception that we suddenly possess in such moments, we just know…I talked with my family about it, and then I kept working.

I’m sad. I’m remembering different moments that I had with both grandparents while they were alive. Mostly, I’ve just kept going with life. When I pause to think, though, I consider the time in the future when we tell our daughter something to the effect of, “You were very young when she died,” perhaps while looking at photos or something of the sort. This grandmother was the only one of my grandparents to have met our daughter. I’m so glad that she did. I think that the thrust of what overwhelms me…whenever I pause to let myself feel something like overwhelmed…is that, with my grandparents gone, I know what the next phase of loss in my life will be. That is a thought that I keep at arm’s length, a darkness which I cannot contemplate.

Sufficient for today are it’s losses.