The Ballad of Wayne Kirby or My Very Own Joe Shlabotnik

My Grandpa and I were not very close. This isn't as much of emotional statement as it was a pre-internet geographical reality. We lived in Ohio, he, in my lifetime, mostly lived in Georgia. I knew him as my father's dad, retired, a smoker, originally from Michigan, had lived in Ohio for a time, (that's how my dad ended up there), and residing in Georgia. I knew that I got flowers from him on my birthday, got presents from him, (via my parents) at Christmas, and would say hi to him on the phone on father's day. I rarely saw him. We visited him in Georgia when I was 10 and he came up to Ohio or Michigan a handful of times.

I knew him as someone who moved a lot (or at least it seemed so to a young child). Like I said, I knew that my dad was born in Michigan, but he and two of his five siblings lived in Ohio, having moved down when my Grandpa's job relocated him. One of my first recollections of my Grandpa is hearing that he and my Grandma were moving to Georgia after having lived in Virginia for a few years.

Something that I remember about my Grandma is that she had a lot of nicknacks. Stuff she had picked up in the different locations she lived. Matchbooks in particular, all with the name of some restaurant or hotel in some town in the midwest or Atlantic coast. While my Grandpa was far from a minimalist (he'd stop and pick up items along the highway that had fallen off someone's car, and was hesitant to get rid of anything because it would probably come in handy some day) he didn't collect matchbooks in his travels, he collected people. My Grandpa would start a conversation with anyone who gave him a chance and quite a few folks who didn't. He was a fan of high school football and was a Friday night regular whether in Ohio, Virginia, or Georgia.

His youngest child was still in high school when Grandpa moved to Virginia and he took up supporting the Tabb High School Tigers. It was there, along his travels in York County Virginia, that my Grandpa added Wayne Kirby to his collection of people. After graduating from Tabb High, Wayne Kirby was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 13th Round of the Major League Baseball's 1983 Amateur Draft. A total of 288 players were taken in that draft before Wayne's name was finally called. When a team chooses a player in the 13th round, they aren't expecting much, and for a long time, Wayne met that expectation. He bounced around the Dodgers' minor system playing in cities like Bakersfield, Vero Beach, San Antonio, and Albuquerque . Finally, in 1990, Kirby was granted free agency, and signed with the Cleveland Indians. Just because he changed teams though, did not mean that his minor league days were behind him. He made is major league debut with the Indians in 1991, but only played 21 games in the big leagues, and again in 1992 he only played 21 out of 162 games with the Indians. In 1992 though, he had his best minor league year, and earned himself a shot a playing almost full time for the Indians in 1993. He played in 139 games that year, led the American League in Outfield Assists with 19, and finished 4th for Rookie of the Year.

1993 was also the year that I started to become aware of professional baseball, and specifically the closest team to where I lived, the Cleveland Indians. My dad took me to see the Indians for the first time on May 6, 1993 was the Indians last season at their long time home, Municipal Stadium (also known as the Mistake by the Lake). 1993 was supposed to be a promising year for the Indians as they got ready to move into a new baseball only ballpark in downtown Cleveland in 1994. The year got off to a rough start in spring training when two of their starting pitchers were killed and one seriously injured in a boating accident. To honor them, the Indians replaced a patch they were going to wear on their jerseys to commemorate their final season at Municipal Stadium with one honoring the two deceased pitchers, Tim Crews (#52) and Steve Olin (#31) The Indians never really recovered from the tragedy and finished the season with a record of 76 wins and 86 losses.

My grandpa had been watching the baseball transactions to try and keep tabs on Kirby, and knew that he was playing regularly with the Indians. I don't know when I became aware of the connection between this player that my Grandpa mentioned and my favorite team, but I imagine it was 1995. After his break through 1993 season, Wayne had turned into the 4th outfielder for the Indians in 1994 with the emergence of Manny Ramirez. He played in 101 games in 1995 due to injuries and played in the World Series with the Indians that year. It was Cleveland's first appearance in the World Series in 51 years, and I was hooked as a 10 year old baseball fan.

In 1996, Kirby's production took a step back and he was released from the Indians. He was picked up by his former team the Dodgers, but never again played more than 65 games in a season with the Dodgers, Cardinals, or Mets. In 1998 the Mets released him effectively ending his career. At the age of 34 his skills had diminished and while he tried to make it for one more season in 1999 with the Blue Jays, he didn't make the team.

Wayne Kirby stayed a conversation topic between my Grandpa and I after he left the Indians. We watched him finish out his career, I sent Wayne two baseball cards in the mail and he signed both of them. I kept one and sent one to Georgia. After Wayne retired he became a minor league coach in the Indians' minor league system, and the team that he coached for honored him with a bobblehead one of which I found on eBay and sent down to Grandpa as a Christmas present.

My Grandpa died in March of 2013. Our second son Rory was born in May of 2013. We gave him the middle name of Donald. My Grandpa's first name.

For a while I had an idea that I wanted to try to execute. I wanted to get a Wayne Kirby jersey. Now, you can get replica jerseys of some of the more famous Indians of the time, Albert Belle, Kenny Lofton, Jim Thome, Manny Rameriz, but finding one of an obscure fourth outfielder who spent just a few years with the tribe? I quickly realized that this one would be a DIY project. I'm horrible at DIY. My handiness is limited to changing a dead lightbulb, and creative activities that I undertake often result in a miniature panic attack.

Even so, I kept a look out on eBay though for a blank jersey. This was somewhat difficult. I wanted to get a jersey template from Wayne's rookie season in 1993, often referred to as the 'Major League' era uniforms. The Indians didn't start mass producing jerseys until 1995 when they went to the World Series. They changed their uniforms in 1994 though as a nod to them moving into their new stadium.

After checking eBay every once in a while over the course of a few months, I finally found a nameless/numberless 1993 home jersey. The woman selling it wanted $200 for it. I offered her $25, just to see what would happen and got it for Christmas for $35 plus shipping. Then came the harder part, trying to find lettering for it.

I found a place here in Napa that does custom heat press lettering. It turns out that the font that the Indians used back in the early 90s was a pretty common font. They lettering guy found it in his software and quickly went to work. 15 minutes (and $25 later) I had a red 35 on the front of the jersey and a two-colored 35 and KIRBY on the back. Like I mentioned earlier, the Indians were originally going to wear a patch commemorating their last year at Municipal Stadium, but then swapped it out for the memorial patch for the two pitchers that were killed. I visited eBay and was able to find the sleeve patches, and decided that I'd put both on, replacing the Chief Wahoo on the left sleeve with the original stadium patch. They guy at the Coliseum was able to heat press the stadium patch on for me and as it turns out, the memorial patch is just a sticker, so I put it on myself and might have to sew it on to make sure it sticks.

Clive, Jay, and I went to the Indians/Giants game in San Francisco last month. I'm happy with how the jersey turned out, and wore it to the game. I think Grandpa would get a kick out of it as well, if for no other reason than it would give us something else to talk about.

Marley was Dead and Jesus was Hungry

There is no doubt that Marley was dead.  This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. 

The big themes or the beauty of literature is usually lost on me. That being said though; the above two lines from the first chapter of Dickens' A Christmas Carol are some of my favorite in literature. Dickens spends his first few paragraphs detailing the fact that Jacob Marley (played memorably by this goof) is dead; dead as a door-nail, gone for quite a while. He goes to such lengths because if you doubt that Marley was dead, then the rest of the story loses its wonder; its oomph.

This Lenten season I've been struck by two lines in the gospel of Matthew.

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. (ESV)

After not eating for 40 days, Jesus was hungry. When you read it in isolation it seems like such an understatement. My stomach is growling now, barely three hours after my last meal. He's not just hungry, he is famished, literally, he is craving food.

We, especially those of us who call ourselves Evangelicals, tend to pass right by this simple statement . We are in such a hurry to show that Jesus is divine, that he is the Son of God who came to die for our sins that we often forget that Jesus was hungry, just as we would be after 40 days with no food. Maybe this is why Lent is often downplayed in Evangelical churches.

We need to stop, we need this to sink in, we need to make sure this idea is stuck into our skulls, that it jumps out at us from the text, because if we don't grasp that Jesus was hungry, then the rest of this story doesn't make any sense. This story, like Dickens' with a living Marley would lose its wonder and its oomph.

If Jesus was hungry, then he could really be tempted by the Devil's offer of fresh loaves of bread; then his desires could be bent into taking up the Devil's dare to leap off a tall building, or into taking the bait of  bowing his knee for wealth and power. We all know that we can do uncharacteristic things when we're hungry. In short, if Jesus was hungry, he was human.

That's the beauty of observing Lent. It reminds us that Jesus was human, and no time is it more obvious then the 40 days he spends fasting in the wilderness. I was speaking to someone recently who is a non-practicing Roman Catholic. He mentioned that he likes the idea of saints (and has a few necklaces with medals of saints that are related to his way of life). I asked him what he likes about 'his' saints, and he said he likes their accessibility, that they are 'real' people. There's a longer discussion about saints that is best left for another time, but you see, this is what we are left with if you breeze by Matthew's statement that Jesus was hungry.

It was also in Jesus' humanity that he overcame the Devil's temptations. He didn't scare off the Devil with some extravagant divine fireworks coming from his fingers. No, he countered the Devil's scripture laced lies with a more wholistic picture of what the scripture teaches. Perhaps that is what we should be about this Lent, imitating Jesus' time in the wilderness, by taking up a thoughtful reading of scripture. Not sure where to start? How about reading an entire book of the bible in one sitting. It can be done. Bounce your understanding of them off of others in the Church. Let the scriptures build up inside of you. 

The Wing and I: AT-ATs

If you're a Star Wars' fan, you don't have to hang around the Bay Area long before you start to see and hear about some oddly StarWarsesque things. For one, there's the Miwok people who lived in the forests of Northern California (sound familiar?) and if you keep a sharp enough eye out it's like living a real life George Lucas in Love.

Well one of the first things that stuck out to me when I first visited Erica back in 2006 were these guys -->

Recognize them?

Do they kind of look like these guys?

I did, and now that I see them up close on the boat, I really do.

Well what are they?

They're shipping cranes, and they're huge!

They sit beside the Oakland/Alameda estuary and load containers onto massive ships that go back and forth from Asia and Europe. When you see them from a distance, altogether, they really do look like an army of AT-ATs bearing down on the rebels.

Now George Lucas has never publicly admitted that these cranes were an influence on him, but then he has been slow to admit other influences in the past.  

The Wing and I: Moving Forward

My latest posts on this blog (nearly a year ago) were lighthearted thoughts about the weather, the Super Bowl, and languages (beside English) that are spoken in the UK. I made a one sentence mention of our concern about my ordination situation in the Church of England, but left it at that.

After March 13, things started to fall apart in that regard. My CoE discernment process (whether they wanted to ordain me or not) unravelled pretty quickly. It was discovered that there were going to be some issues in getting us a visa that would allow me to start my training. We initially thought it was going to be something that just need some extra creativity on our part to reach a solution. With the help of some folks at Cranmer Hall in Durham we were able to be extra creative in designing a course of study that would satisfy the UK Border Agency's requirements, and in theory the study requirements of my sponsoring diocese.

We prayed and brain stormed and came up with an even more creative solution. We were schedule to meet and discuss it with our vicar and the diocese on May 9th at 2pm, Erica's due date being May 12th. When Erica woke up early May 9th in labour, it looked like we'd have to cancel the meeting, but Rory came quick and after seeing Erica stitched up and in a recovery room, I went straight off to Canterbury.
There, we were told that they would not agree to our solution, and thus we would be moving back to the US in approximately 8 weeks time.

Rory's birth took a lot of the sting out of the meeting, but it was still an overwhelming day.

Our church family sent us off with a wonderful farewell party (and a new iPad) at the end of June and on the 4th of July we returned to the U.S.

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We visited my family in Ohio in July and had a wonderful visit where Rory got to meet his Ohio grandparents and we just relaxed. We went west in August and have settled down in Erica's hometown of Napa.

Our initial goal was to earn some money, pay some bills, get our feet back under us and have a long term plan by the end of the year. Our long term plan didn't develop in our original time frame, but we achieved the rest of the goal. Rory smoothly transitioned into our daily life, Erica continued doing her design work, Clive got settled into two-morning-a-week pre-school, and I went to work for Erica's dad.

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Erica's parents had started two businesses and co-owned a third. Their primary businesses are PJ's Canvas, where they make custom made awnings and Adventure Cat Sailing Charters, which takes folks out on the San Francisco Bay, and under the Golden Gate Bridge on a 55' and a 65' Catamaran Sail Boats. They've been doing awnings for over 35 years and the Catamarans for nearly 25 years.

I helped out in the businesses' shared office updating some of their procedures and trying to stream line and modernize at lot of their practices. Then Jay recruited me for his newest venture. The Wing.

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Wind+Wing Technologies is the attempt to offer a solution to two big problems, rising fuel costs and the rise in pollution. What we hope to eventually create is a wind-assisted commuter ferry in the San Francisco Bay. Currently large diesel powered ferries criss-cross the bay delivering commuters and tourists to their various destinations all while burning almost 70 gallons of diesel per hour. Our goal is the same reliable product in terms of transportation while cutting fuel consumption in half.

How are we going to do that? By putting a wing on it.

That is a trimaran with a wing on it. It's a demonstration vessel which we hope will show the effectiveness of the wing and lead to grants and investments to build a full size ferry.The wing has it's own brain with which it senses the wind and puts itself in the best position to harness the wing for maximum thrust. The vessel is wind-assisted, so we can use the engine in low wind situations and back off the engine when the wind picks up.

My current role is to monitor and troubleshoot nearly 40 sensors that are on the boat and help the captain get us on and off the dock. We're out on the bay nearly forty hours a week gathering data ranging from fuel consumption, to wind speed/direction and anything else that will be helpful.

I've learned to tie and few knots and know that on a boat you use the head and not the toilet, but I still have a ways to go, but whatever happens, it is certainly interesting.

The Weather

I'd give you an update on how my ordination process is going, but to be honest, I'm not really sure how to begin going about explaining our current situation. With that being said, we'd appreciate your prayers as we seek to move forward, hopefully continuing to stay in England and ministering within the Church of England.

And now for something completely different.

I picked up a little gem of a book by Richard Mabey entitled 'Turned Out Nice Again: Living with the Weather'. Brits are pre-occupied by the weather and it is normally the first or second topic to come up in a conversation.

This passage from the book sums up British weather pretty well;

We don't have to live with active volcanoes or sudden tsunamis. The temperature has only exceeded 100 degrees three times in the last hundred years. The heaviest rainfall in a single day was eleven inches in Martinstown Dorset on 18 July, 1955. When you compare that with the several feet that can fall in a couple of hours in a tropical monsoon you can get our weather in some sort of perspective. What we really suffer from is a whimsical climate, and that can be tougher to cope with than knowing for sure you're going to be under three feet of snow every December.

Whimsical is a good term for it, but it's hard to feel very whimsical about the weather when you wake up for church on Palm Sunday and have to scrape your windshield and expect similar for the rest of Holy Week.

The NFL on PBS!

Well not quite, but I'll ask you this;

If the Super Bowl was on PBS (with no commericals, but instead of commercials every break would be the announcers yapping) and your announcers were Don Cherry, a guy who played division three college football turned announcer, and Willie McGinst would you watch it?

I'll Also throw in that the game doesn't start until 11.00pm.

Life in the UK.

Saesneg y frenhines

An example of a Cornish language sign.

Many of our American friends probably realise that not all Brits sound like the queen. What you may not realise though is that the UK has seven non-English indigenous spoken living languages, the BBC supports television channels devoted to two of those languages and that one of these seven even is an official language in part of the UK.

Apart from English, Welsh is the most widely spoken of these indigenous languages and shares official language status with English in Wales. Many over here treat Wales almost as a fictitious place that you might somehow wander into, like you would Narnia, but it's a real place with a real language, with real people speaking it. (It's probably the second most spoken language in the UK, but we'll have to see what the newest census figures show when they're released this week, Punjabi, could pass it up.) Welsh has a type of sing-song quality to it, and just looks ridiculous on signs. The BBC produces Welsh language content for S4C, an independent publicly broadcast station in the country.

The BBC also produces content for the Scottish Gaelic television channel BBC Alba. This puzzles me a bit since Scottish Gaelic, out of the seven indigenous languages is spoken by the second least amount of people. To me, Scottish Gaelic sounds exactly like a language you'd imagine Scots to speak, if they didn't speak English. (Although to hear some of them, you might think that they don't speak English.)

Out of the seven indigenous languages in the UK, four (Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Cornish) stem from the Celtic language. Two are mixed languages spoken mostly by gypsies (yes that's a politically correct term over here) and one is very closely related to English and is considered by some to not be a language, but rather a dialect of English.

Say What?

Clive has a smattering of vocabulary words, most of them you (as generally non-baby speaking adults) wouldn't recognise as actual words. He tries his darndest and he loves to wave and try to say hasta luego, which often comes out as aa-ta.

I'm not concerned though, according to my mom, I didn't speak until I was two and Erica was late on the scene verbally (mostly because as a multiple she could communicate with Allie and Inga and didn't care to talk to anyone else) so it could be in his genes.

I prefer another explanation:

He listens to mom, dad, and his auntie and then listens to all his friends and can't decide which accent he's supposed to use.

:)

Eugene Peterson on the Danger of Bible Reading

Eugene (Don't hold the 'Message' against me) Peterson has quietly found his way into a lot of my pre-Bishop's Advisory Panel preparatory reading. He's not known for his quotable quips so for better or worse you have a two paragraph concept to delve into. I think it's for the better, but you have to stick with it. He sums up a concern I've had for a long time that I couldn't quite verbalize; mainly that it isn't enough to tell people to read the Bible, they have to know how to read it. In the rest of Eat This Book (the text where this comes from), he flushes out how we are to read the Bible properly. I've included these paragraphs and some other insights, both from Peterson and others, on my other blog, Quotation Inspiration. Without further ado, Eugene Peterson.

 

Reading the Bible, if we do not do it rightly, can get us into a lot of trouble. The Christian community is as concerned with how we read the Bible as that we read it. It is not sufficient to place a Bible in a person's hands with the command 'Read it.' That is quite as foolish as putting a set of car keys in an adolescent's hands, giving him a Honda, and saying, 'Drive it.' And just as dangerous. The danger is that in having our hands on a piece of technology, we will use it ignorantly, endangering our lives and the lives of those around us; or that, intoxicated with the power that the technology gives us, we will use it ruthlessly and violently.

For print is technology. We pick up a Bible and find that we have God's word in our hands, our hands. We can now handle it. It is easy enough to suppose that we are in control of it, that we can use it, that we are in charge of applying it wherever, whenever, and to whomever we wish without regard to appropriateness or conditions.

There is more to the Honda than the technology of mechanics. And there is more to the Bible than the technology of print. Surrounding the machine technology of the Honda there is a world of gravity and inertia, values and velocity, surfaces and obstructions, Chevrolets and Fords, traffic regulations and the highway patrol, other drivers whether drunk or sober, snow and ice and rain. There is far more to driving a car than turning a key in the ignition and stepping on the accelerator. Those who don't know that are soon dead or maimed.

And those who don't know the conditions implicit in the technology of the Bible are likewise dangerous to themselves and others. And so, as we hand out Bibles and urge people to read them, it is imperative that we also say, caveat lector, let the reader beware.

You Say Goodbye, I Say 'Allo 'Allo

Erica and I don't watch much TV. One of the main reasons for this is the TV Tax that I wrote about almost three years ago. We still watch some shows after the fact via DVDs or Iplayer. (Hulu is blocked over here dontcha know?) I've started watching a classic Britcom called 'Allo 'Allo. Set in occupied France during WWII this comedy is from the creators of 'Are You Being Served' and bears a slight resemblance to 'Fawlty Towers' in that it is centered around a cafe owner who has a wife whom he tries to forget about interacting regularly with foreigners. One of the most enjoyable features of the show for me is the fact that while the audience hears all the characters speaking English, the characters interact as if they are speaking different languages. The French and Germans understand each other as it is assumed that they are speaking the same language (probably German (in reality English with exaggerated accents)). When two British airmen are stuck in the village and the Resistance tries to sneak them out, they are unable to comprehend the 'language' being spoken. The only person who knows 'English' and can communicate with them is Michelle, the leader of the resistance who when speaking to them uses an exaggerated posh accent (how all us Americans expect Brits to sound (except obviously the lower classes who all sound like Dick Van Dyke)). The show relies on a lot of verbal gags and innuendo, but is a welcome companion for late evenings while Erica does her freelance work.

Some of the other programs I've enjoyed while over here.

Downton Abbey--The first series (as the Brits call seasons) was certainly the best, but two and three are a nice distraction. It'll be interesting to see how far they can stretch it out.

Fawlty Towers--John Cleese at his finest. (Yep I said it) You also have the loveable Manuel and they only made twelve episodes so it never feels like it jumped the shark.

Top Gear--I find that if I watch too much of it, it can feel very forced. Some of the stuff they do is fun to watch, especially on Youtube. 'Star In A Reasonably Priced Car' (Take celebrities, give them a cheap car and have them race around a track (A real one that's shaped like this and not one like this NASCAR fans.))

Extras--Probably the program I've most enjoyed. It's a Ricky Gervais creation where he plays an out of luck actor who gets work as an extra on movies. Always hoping to somehow get a speaking part, he bumps shoulders with stars such as Ben Stiller, Patrick Stewart, Kate Winslett and Daniel Radcliffe who play themselves with exaggerated or inverted personae. The Daniel Radcliffe episode was my personal favourite. 

Friends--I know it's an American show. Brits love it though. For almost the first three years we were here you could basically turn on the TV at anytime of the day and some channel would be showing an old episode. When Erica was pregnant with Clive we worked our way through the complete set of episodes.

Dr. Who--...Dr. Who I feel just demands too much energy. You have to buy into the whole experience. You can't just watch one episode because if you do it just doesn't make sense. I want to want to like Dr. Who, so perhaps someday, but for now I'll just leave the good doctor for all his other fanatics.

Wow, I guess I was important

I left my job at the sporting goods store I had been at in early August. Less than two months later they were in administration (ie. Bankruptcy)

My skills as stock unpacker were obviously what was holding the company together.

It was kind of funny actually, I intended to only be at the job for a month or so until I got a 'real job'. That real job was nearly three years in the coming, and I didn't start getting as many hours as I needed until the week that JJB went under.
God certainly seemed to want me there, and I hope that while I was there I fulfilled his purposes.

Life, Recently

A lot has happened in the last month or two, but with limited internet connection we've not documented it very well.

We moved house! We're now living in Coxheath (a village next door to Loose); which makes my cycle commute to church a lot better.

Inga and Simon (new parents to Elsa Simone, dontcha know?) bought the house we're living in. We're participating in a communal living experiment. So far all is well. It's only a two-bed house, but Erica, Clive and I have the third floor all to ourselves.

Communal living cuts our costs quite a bit and for the first time in a while we're ending up with money leftover at the end of the month.

Part of this financial positiveness is because I'm working more hours at the prison. I'm enjoying it and my bosses are giving me more responsibility.

Erica's graphic work trickles in, but is always just enough. If you need a website, promotional material, logos or anything else, just let us know. She'll cut you a deal.

The three of us have been sick with viruses for the past few weeks. Poor Clive is doing his best to stay up beat but has been pretty miserable. Hopefully soon we'll all be healthy at the same time.

Erica's parents are here in the UK for two weeks. They've come over to see the new baby (grandkid number 5) and to help out a bit.

Lastly, I'm still plugging away at my ordination process. I have a day-long panel on December 1st that will determine whether I continue on the process. I'll know the outcome within a week of the panel.

That's it.

We'll get some new pictures up soon.

This One Goes to Eleven!

The BBC has a device called iPlayer on their website that allows you to watch shows, clips, and films after they have aired. The max volume on the iPlayer isn't ten. It's eleven.

TGIF! (Thank God It's Freecycle!)

Apparently I was in the right place at the right time.

I was sitting on the computer on Thursday and a batch of Freecycle e-mails popped up. I noticed that someone was giving away a bike and decided to try for it since the one I had been using was stolen a few months back. 

I e-mailed the guy and he said I was the first one to contact him so I could have it. He told me that it had been in his garage (the Brits pronounce garage like this by the way) and that all that was wrong with it was that both tyres were flat. It turns out that nothing was wrong with the back tyre (used the included pump to find that out). I had to replace the inner tube on the front tyre, but luckily had an extra tube from Erica's bike that fit.

It is a seven speed, comes with a pump that fits in between the frame, and he left the saddle bags that he had on the back which will be very useful for items that I can't fit in my messenger bag.

p.s. The picture above isn't actually my bike. I was too lazy to go take a picture and someone had sold one on a classifieds site over here and I found the picture there. Same bike though, even down to the colour.

And did those feet in ancient time...? Nope

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England’s mountains green?

And was the Holy Lamb of God

On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

And did the countenance divine

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here

Among these dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!

Bring me my arrows of desire!

Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!

Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England’s green and pleasant land.

And Did Those Feet in Ancient time is a poem by William Blake that was set to music by Hubert Parry. Jerusalem (as it is commonly called) is a patriotic song that has almost reached the level of God Save the Queen (King) as England's national anthem. In fact many English prefer it to GStQ. It seems to me that one of the reasons for this preference is that Jerusalem excludes those other parts of Great Britian that the English aren't so fond of (see: Scotland, N. Ireland, Wales, etc)

I find the song itself to be a fantastically mesmorising tune, full of gravitas. But then there's the unfortunate inclusion of the words to the song.

Blake's words were inspired by the apocraphyl story that Jesus, accompanied by Joseph of Arimathia (his uncle as the story goes) visited England in the years between the story of Jesus visiting the temple at the age of twelve and then starting his ministry at the age of thirty. This story, like the stories of Jesus visiting the Buddha and Jesus visiting the Native Americans (ala Mormanism) are complete rubbish, but it seems to be one of those things that people like to believe and towns like Glastonbury have taken advantage for tourism and religous purposes.

So in short, 'was Jerusalem builded here'? Nope. But if you have different lyrics to fit this powerful tune I'm all ears.

Quotation Inspiration

I had the chance to preach at our church back at the end of July and as I was preparing, I ran into a familiar problem. I needed to find illustrations, quips and quotes that would help my audience grasp my concepts.

I have these resources, but my problem is accessing them; trying to remember who said that one thing about that one topic, etc.

I came up with a solution that I hope will work. It's a blog and I've called it Quotation Inspiration. I'll let my second post explain it for you here.


If this resource would be valuable to you, I'd invite you to visit often. Or stop by if you like reading the odd quote on various Christian themes. I have some quotes backlogged that still need to go up and I'll be adding new ones as I come across them. I also have a few friends who are contributing and I'd welcome other contributors.

Update

Life has been moving along and we thought we'd share how it has been.

Clive will be 15 months tomorrow. He's progressing strongly on the walking front and is incredibly good at causing mischief. He loves keys and anything electronic. His fascination with the washing machine continues and whenever we can't find something we check there first.

While he is walking, talking hasn't really happened yet. He's got 'mamama' and 'dadada' figured out, but the rest of the time he thinks he's speaking english, but isn't. Both Erica and I were late talkers (Erica probably because she was a triplet, and me probably because I was dumb (intelligence-wise that is)) so we aren't too fussed about it.

Erica had been quite busy with freelance work having picked up a few new clients and still doing work for the church. Things have slowed a bit, so you could pray that work continues to come in.

We went camping for a week in July in Dorset which is on the southern coast of England. The area was beautiful and the rain held off for the most part. Here's the pictures in case you missed them.

After almost three years of working at a minimum wage retail job, I've taken a position at HMP (Her Majesty's Prison) Maidstone. I'll be working in the library overseeing the two inmates who run the library, and checking books that inmates would like to get from other libraries for content. I interviewed for the job back in April, but due to various background checks (including writing to the FBI) I just started last week. The nice part about the job is that I think I'll enjoy it more than JJB and it pays 50% more. I won't get as many hours, but that will leave time for me to care for Clive while Erica does freelance work.

I had the opportunity to preach at both of All Saints' morning services on July 29th. We were working our way through the first half of Romans and I preached on 8:17-30. I felt a bit rusty, but enjoyed the experience. Critique for yourself here.

The Olympics are in full swing and Team GB (as they insist on being called) are doing very well. We, along with Erica's sister Inga and her husband Simon will be headed to Cardiff (It's in Wales, 150 miles from London, but whatever) on Saturday to watch the bronze medal football soccer match between Japan and South Korea.

Speaking of Inga and Simon, they just bought a house and have asked us if we would like to be subletters, cotenents, lodgers. We've put in the notice with our landlords that we'll be leaving the place we're at and will hopefully be moving house (as they say over here) in early September. The house is in Coxheath (home of the world custard pie championships), which is the village right next to Loose (where our church is). This will mean a much shorter commute for me on my bike to work and it's still the same distance from the prison. It will also be a help to Inga and Simon to cut down their mortgage.

Lastly, my ordination process moves on. It's been confirmed that I'll be a part of the local Bishop's Advisory Panel (or BAP, but not to be confused with a bap) on December 1st. The BAP is a one day selection process that is my next hurdle in going for ordination. Please pray that I'll have the time and energy to put work into prepping for it. My advisor tells me that she is feeling pretty positive about it, but as you know with Erica and Zac nothing is ever straight forward.

That's us for now. We miss all of you back in the states. We probably won't be back in the U.S. of A. until July 2013, but if you have some leftover pence (the proper plural of penny dontcha know?) and are looking to get away, we'll gladly take you in.

Euro2012

I'm a sucker for international competitions. (Which is probably why I watched Eurovision this year) I just really like the idea of countries personified and competing against each other.

This summer's competition is Euro2012; the biggest soccer/football competition aside from the World Cup. It is held every four years just as the world cup, but on the alternate even years (2012, 16, 20 where as the WC is 2010, 14, 18, etc).

The tournament features 16 European sides, 14 had to compete to quality while 2 sides had automatic bids (Poland and Ukraine the co-hosts of the tournament).

The competition has been wittled down to two sides, the defending European and World champions Spain who beat its Iberian rival Portugal on Wednesday night to reach the final, and Italy; who after eeking out a penalty-shootout win over England in the quarterfinals, beat Germany Thursday night.

Some of the highlights of the tournament?

Greece and Germany meeting in the quarterfinals in a match that was widely referred to as the 'debt derby' (for those speaking American English, derby is pronounced darby, and is synonymous with the word 'rivalry'). The Germans won handily.

England going out of the tournament on a game decided on penalty kicks. (They've only won 1 match decided on penalty kicks of 8 they've played in.)

Mario Balotelli (pictured above) establishing himself as a true force to be reckoned with scoring both goals in Italy's upset of Germany. Balotelli is the mix of all the bad reputations that athlete's get, petulant, arrogant, lewd, rich, but he's the petulant, arrogant, lewd, rich guy you want on your side and not on your opponent's.


By the way, the final match just ended. Spain repeats as Euro champs (a first) with a 4-0 victory over Italy.

Oh My Omar

I have an Omar Vizquel Cleveland Indians t-shirt jersey (basically this, but blue) that I picked up at a thrift store (charity shop) probably four years ago now. I figured that he was probably about to retire and when he did I'd start wearing it around in honour of one of baseball's best defensive shortstops. We'll Omar is still going and while he does, the Indians have another fantastic fielding SS in the form of Asdrubal Cabrera. He made the play above (not sure if you can see it direct from the blog) a few nights ago and I immediately thought of Omar.

(Sorry about the bad quality. Plus skip to :35 to see the good stuff).

QE II

Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her Diamond Jubilee (60 years on the throne dontcha know?) with an extra long weekend.

It was a pretty big deal. She's only the second English monarch to reign for 60+ years. Her great-great-grandmum Victoria reigned for 63 years and 7 months.

In honour of the Queen I have composed a song to the tune of 'God Save the Queen' or 'My Country Tis of Thee' whichever you prefer.


God save the good queen Liz.
She's the best in the biz.
God save the queen.

She's reigned for a long time.
I'll celebrate with rhyme.
Now, I've run out of lines.
God save the queen!