Sapfest '06

Happy Birthday, cute wife! You are getting so old. Like a good knife, better with edge, age, Aegean Sea, seahorse, horseradish, dishsoap (Palmolive, of course); these are a few of my favorite things, and chief among them is YOU! Sorry about not getting you any presents. Hope this post will make up for that oversight.

Family history

Visiting with my great-aunt Marnette last month I took a picture of the obituary she had of my great-grandfather, killed by a drunk driver. He was out trying to develop a cheese business, supporting a German immigrant. At the time, German Americans were not too popular, so he was championing an underdog. Alcohol is a poison, killing quickly or slowly, but indiscriminantly.

We are weasels in the arboreal world

"There must needs be a place of filthiness prepared for that which is filthy." My picture of the telestial kingdom is that of a crowded, poorly-maintained rest stop in early October when the cold eases up to become bearable for about 20 minutes. It smells with overflowing trash cans and stopped up toilets. There are flies. Lots of flies. People are rude and irritable. The snack machine contains only 5-month-old gum. The birds are loud and obnoxious.

And yet, it is not like that. It is nothing like that. In fact, it is a place and condition so wonderful it is beyond words. I am amazed that God can be that merciful.

And yet, it is not enough. Have to go for all the marbles, as Zeneph the Zoramite was so fond of saying. Eternity will not support an endless comparison of the earthly condition to what is available in the infinite. The (what we would now call) glorious telestial will, by comparison, look like that cesspool of a truckstop when viewed next to the terrestrial. Likewise, the glory of the moon will have nothing on the celestial. As Eminem so wisely noted, you get one shot. That's a lot of stress. Good thing I have the illusion of time measured unto me so that I can avoid paralysis from the scope of it all.