33 Years!!!!

Today is our 33rd anniversary. I figure we are about half way through our earthly marriage, which gives one pause for thought:
1. The season of raising children is just a short span of your marriage on earth.
2. The long season is being grandparents and great-grandparents. We'd like to be good friends with every one of them.
3. We have a long time left to live and work and accomplish things together.
4. What will we do with that time????
5. We have been really blessed with resources to use to serve others during that time.
6. The past 33 years seem so long that it is amazing to think there are another 33 years.
7. Hopefully we have a bit of wisdom now.
8. That means the best is yet to come.
9. There will be trials and aches and pains.
10. But we will have each other and a wonderful posterity to help us through them.
11. In the next 33 years some scary things may happen in the world.
12. But won't it be fun to watch the Lord's kingdom grow and be a part of that.
13. It may become hard to hear each other - we are already half deaf. I hope we endure that with kindness.
14. We also may develop some of the frailties we see in our parents now. We hope that medical science will soon find better ways to cure them.
15. At the end of 33 years we will be ready for the retirement home. We hope that having such a large posterity, people will visit us as often as we try to visit our parents.
16. As we look back on a long life, may we be satisfied with our service and our progress, and be ready to meet the Lord with joy.
17. May we be as humble and grateful and kind as many of the old folks we know now.
18. May we never stop learning and doing.
19. When we get to the retirement home, may we finally have time to do all the fun projects we never had time for when we were busy serving.
20. And mostly, we hope that we can live in such a way that our posterity will have an example and a record of righteousness.
21. May we continue to keep our covenants, and love one another as God loves us.
22. If we give our lives over to the Lord, the next 33 years will have more surprises than we can comprehend. It will be fun to discover them together.

The Meaning of Housework

All my adult life I’ve struggled to find meaning in housework – the endless laundry, the mystery of lost socks, the dust you scoop up and is there again tomorrow, and the children’s messes. Why? Why? Why? I’ve often described it as getting up in the morning and all the work you did yesterday is torn up on your desk. Chaos! Entropy! Why? What a waste of time!
I have finally found it’s meaning…by studying about Primal Religions.
Most of the tribal people who practice these religions face an endless round of toil for their daily subsistence. They don’t have the means to escape, like vacations, TV, internet, movies, etc., yet they are happy! That’s because for them, work is fun. They are playing make believe like we did when we were kids.
I’ll explain. There is now time, and there is sacred time, or a time of festivals, or holy days. They all get together and reenact their stories of how the gods created the world. They all participate in this event. They ritually recreate the world every so often. They do this at the new year, when they build a new building, start a war, or when someone is sick and they want to recreate the person. It brings the sacred time of the creation into the present. As they do this over and over, it regularly brings it into the present. Soon all their activities are mimicking that creation. While they work they are play acting the creation. Time becomes circular instead of linear - all time becomes sacred time.
Usually their stories involve a god, hero, or ancestor battling a big sea monster or snake. In the Old Testament they call him Leviathan. The snake symbolizes the chaos or darkness of the first day of creation when light was divided from darkness or chaos. Of course the god, hero, or ancestor kills the snake and creation comes forth.
So, when the hunters in Primal Societies go out to hunt an antelope for supper, they pretend to be, or in a sense become, the hero or ancestor going out hunting. (They are having fun!) And the moms, cleaning the house or grinding corn, are creating order out of chaos.
Whenever builders place a cornerstone, they drive a stake into the ground at that point. In doing so, they are creating. That means they are symbolically driving the stake through the snake’s head. Each creation does the same.
So faced with my dust and laundry and mess each day I too can recreate the world! I too can kill the snake and bring order out of chaos! I have that opportunity every day. And I can do it just like my god, or hero, or ancestor did. Does that sound like fun?
That is the meaning of dust, mess, and laundry – a constant opportunity to practice creating worlds.

Baby Singing

Cute baby singing...

Mid-summer visits

Sarah and the girls got a flight to visit us (very brave!!).

Here are some snaps of our time together: