Last night I received a phone call from my mother.  My grandma’s doctors have stopped administering chemo and the family is setting up hospice.  Next week I will be traveling to Minnesota to spend time with my grandmother and family.  I wish I could tell you all about her, not in some personal, feel-sorry-for-me kind of way, nor in a shocking exposè format; in the way that demonstrates the power and grace and beauty of an ordinary life.  I might try.

Several months ago I wrote her a lengthy letter.  I am grateful for being afforded the opportunity to tell her how she has shaped my life.  As we prepare for her absence from her body, there are few words unsaid.  Thank God.  Then it hit me: we all have the same fleeting opportunity to say the things that ought to be said.

Take care to do so in 2009.  Grace.

Are you the resolution type?  Most resolutions are about changing something that you don’t like about yourself.  Entering a new year gives us all a window of joviality.  Then we take that joy and bury it underneath a pile of expectations based on things we’ve come to not like or even hate about ourselves.  Wikipedia has a list of top goals as the old calendar is discarded.  Let’s debunk some of those and set some that are way more realistic!

1. Reduce Stress. Talk about arbitrary.  How do you expect to accomplish that?  Last I checked stress was involuntary.  No one shoots for a more hectic existence, do they?  Stress happens, and when it does it is way beyond your control.  Go with something more concrete, such as practice breathing more deeply for 5 minutes a day.  Find practical ways to pause.  Read old Ream posts!  Resolve to appreciate beauty or discover art.
2. Pay off debt. In order to accomplish this you have to free up the money that you actually make to catch up with what you’ve already spent.  While this is a great resolution it will require a change in your lifestyle.  May I suggest, Want less crap. Look, paying off debt isn’t magic.
   
3. Be Less Grumpy. Whatever.
4. Loose weight. Which totally flies in the face of last year’s resolution to pack on an extra 25 pounds.  You gained it because you set brilliant, moving-target goals like “reduce stress”.  Included with this resolution are other subresolutions such as Eat Healthy and Get Fit. These kinds of goals are worthless, unattainable without a plan to achieve them.  What about Walk 2 miles a day?  Or Go to the gym that keeps deducting $33 from your checking account each month.  You don’t pay rent at Wendy’s.  Eat at home (you remember, the place without the wall menu).
5. Get a better education. I like this one, but again I think it should be more concrete.  Try Enroll in one class instead.  A more frugal option would be read better books.  If there is a guy smiling on the cover of the majority of the books in your library, you’re probably swimming in the shallow end.  Most likely the reason you want a better education is because you want your life to become a better story.  So read better stories.  Every used bookstore in the world has a shelf of recycled Steinbeck from local high schools.  They’re just like brand new as high schoolers have only pretended to read them!  Buy a copy of all of them.  Start with The Winter of Our Discontent (Penguin Classics).  That’s my favorite!

Resolve to live richly and deeply in 2009.  Have a stress-free, very skinny, non-indebted, intellectually improved and of course HAPPY New Year.

What are your resolutions?

Inscribed on the top lefthand corner, “david was here.” look closely.

(Part 1 and Part 2)
There is nothing about hiding out in a cave that makes me want to sing or to beg, “Fetch me my guitar.”  I quite hate caves, especially when death is waiting at the mouth of cave should I decide to pop my head out for a breath of non-stale-cave air.  The fact that the words below appear in scripture under such circumstances is not comforting at all.  It’s kind of the biblical version of my least favorite bumper sticker, “Too blessed to be stressed.”  

 
However in the biblical version there seems to be another common bumper sticker affixed right next to it, “S.S.D.D.”  I’ll let someone else translate…  One bumper sticker without the other just doesn’t work.  One denies reality.  The other walks about in uncreative nihilism.  I’d love to live in the conclusion of Psalm 57, the happy parts, but real life doesn’t afford that constant opportunity.    

      
7 My heart is steadfast, O God,
   my heart is steadfast!
I will sing and make melody!
 8 Awake, my glory!
Awake, O harp and lyre!
   I will awake the dawn!
9I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples;
   I will sing praises to you among the nations.
10For your steadfast love is great to the heavens,
   your faithfulness to the clouds.
 11 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens!
   Let your glory be over all the earth!

 
How come there are songs emphasizing the end and songs promoting the beginning, but so few combing the idea that the good and the bad, the happy and the angry, the faith and the fear are woven together more than we wish?  Perhaps it has to do with wanting to be able to sum things up in order to stick them on our vehicles.

Starbucks Off the Freeway was featured in the short story section of the most recent edition of the Just Write Blog Carnival.  Visit them and give em some love!  If you are a visitor from Incurable Disease, we’d love to trade links with you.

It’s (almost) Christmas!  Somewhere an angel is blogging,

“Glory to God in highest heaven,
and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.”

That’s right, Jesus’ birth announcement was peace (eirene – in the Greek – to set at one again) on earth.  Today peace will probably come easy.  Tomorrow you might have to work at it a bit.  But the whole peace process has been set in motion, and you get to share in promoting it.

Merry Christmas.

Ryan

Alright, back to King David for a minute…   (did you catch part I?)

4My soul is in the midst of lions;
   I lie down amid fiery beasts—
the children of man, whose teeth are spears and arrows,
   whose tongues are sharp swords.

 5 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens!
   Let your glory be over all the earth!

His enemies were courageous in their pursuit of him and also in their speech about him.  No doubt they defamed his character, and I would suppose hurt his feelings while bruising his young psyche.  The next couple of verses talk about actions against David, yet it is the words of his pursuers that he speaks of first.  Their words do the kind of damage that can undo a king.  Their words are deadly weapons – spears and arrows and swords (oh my).  All of these weapons pierce the skin.  Arrows are fired with the intention of never getting them back.  They’re stuck in their victim.

His response to this imminent attack, “Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; let your glory be over all the earth.”  Which is a great deal different than what my response would be.  It would sound a lot more like, “You people suck, and shut your freakin’ traps!” (at least that would be my response on a good day!)

The flesh wounds of spears and arrows and swords are not getting his immediate attention.  They are noticed.  They have hit their target.  But David is resolved in making sure that God is worshiped.  God’s glory is the king’s utmost concern. 

 6They set a net for my steps;
   my soul was bowed down.
They dug a pit in my way,
   but they have fallen into it themselves.
                         Selah

While his enemies are preparing his demise, they fall into the traps they have set.  Their own plots become the snares that trip up and ultimately destroy his pursuers.  All the while David is offering praises and adoration to God.

Selah.

I just want to say thanks for making the first 10 days of this little writing experience so enjoyable.  Thanks for the comments and the steady flow of emails.  The comments… yeah, you gotta love em.  Pile em high.  The “hits” keep coming like a BackStreet Boys record.  Lemme do a little housekeeping for the already faithful…

Your end…

1. Give SoxPlace $22.
2. Keep posting comments.  Keep em semi-clean.
3. Link to Ream.
4. Subscribe to the RSS.
5. Lemme know what you like/dislike so far.
6. Suggest some future topics…

My end…

1. Psalm 57 part II – Tomorrow
2. Psalm 57 part III – Friday
3. Pay attention to the readers!
4. Send you all a promotional T-shirt. (Someday, if you keep reading long enough)
5. Buy mice for snakes  Oops wrong list.

Have a great Christmas.  Eat too much, and save me a glass of eggnog.

Grace.

Ryan

Oops, I forgot 1 thing… email your friends about Ream.  Tell em we’re giving away old Halloween candy or something.