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Saint Velma

Dear The Pope or Current Resident, Concerning the Canonization of Velma Evans, I wasn’t the only one to call Velma Evans “grandma”. Though she was, in fact, my actual grandma—on my mom’s side.On Sunday mornings after church, when we were old enough, and while my parents loitered around to socialize with the other adults, we would walk down to her house. And when I say “we” I mean a variety of we’s.   At first, “we” meant me and my older cousin Jamie. Then, “we” added my brother Kyle. Then “we” became our friends Andrew and Michael. Then it became all my brothers, and our friends. At various times, “we” included exchange students, orphan neighbor kids, and an occasional stranger. This continued through college and on into adulthood. But on any given Sunday—rain, snow, or shine—a veritable parade of juveniles could be seen jamming down to grandma’s house immediately after the last “amen.” Grandma lived a few blocks away, in a single-story brick duplex with my grandpa Hayes. They lived in
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Sand Scorpions in the Snow

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  My name is Bryan.  And, I am a worrier.  It’s been 237 milliseconds since my last troubled thought. I am also a consummate optimist. No, not that kind of optimist. I am an optimist in the sense that I optimize  everything I can. When I see something, I focus on how it could be optimized. This does not always mean "better". In other words, I can take a bad situation, and through my patented process of optimization, make it infinitely worse. Like the time I went looking for turkeys and, instead, found sand scorpions. Last winter, I went elk hunting in the Manastash wilderness (west of Ellensburg) with my friend Chris and had seen a ton of turkey sign above a place called Buck Meadows. And, right now, it’s Spring Turkey season. So, my plan was to hunt this same area with my other friend Chris. But first, I wanted to check out another area to the north of Ellensburg, just in case it had MORE promising turkey habitat. So, two weeks ago, I drove out Coleman Creek Rd in the Ki
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Location: NF-31, Ellensburg, WA 98926, USA
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Groundhog Day

There are two types of people in this world... People who love Neil Diamond, and people who don't.  My ex-wife loved him... Oops, wrong Bill Murray film. Groundhog Day  IS a divisive film. Some people, understandably, can not stand watching the same thing over and over again. Am I right, or am I right, or am I right? Right? Right?... But, those people are wrong. The same thing does NOT happen over and over again, with the one exception that his day begins at 6am with the same morning talk radio show cajoling Phil Conners awake. But every day is different, even if only by one step. Each day is a cold, hard dose of learning the hard way . And for some of us, that's the only way we'll listen. The more I watch this film, the more layers of appreciation I find; the deeper it gets. It is literally an onion-peeling exercise. The more I watch, the more my eyes are prone to water. Tears of joy. Tears of laughter. Tears of frustration. Tears of understanding. Empathy. Ph
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Cultural Renewal

I came across a pretty awesome  lecture series  (this one is the first of the series) given by Tim Keller, author of  The Reason for God . He is discussing Christian Cultural Renewal and what it does and doesn't look like. The first eight minutes or so are great (It's all great, but the first section is devoted to how to respond to the critics of Christians who are trying to change culture).  Everyone has a worldview. Every opinion, decision and action is informed by that world view. People that propose segregating one's world view into personal and public are imposing their world view on others. There is no escaping the subjectivity, and yet there is a strong expectation that people ought to do just that. Put aside your personal, religious beliefs—those should be kept private—this is a public concern.... and so on... education, politics, foreign relations, healthcare, etc. Given that this is a tumultuous season—not just in the US with the elections, but also in
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