praising to the end

We visited my family in Missouri this weekend. On Friday we went to visit my grandparents. They have led more people to Christ in a year than I will likely ever lead in my life. I asked my grandfather last year how many people he thought God had allowed him to lead to Christ and he said "I don't know, I don't keep count. I have records so I could go back and try to figure it out. I know it picked up when I turned 80 to about one a week." He is trying to stay retired right now at the age of 85 (I think) so that he can care for my grandmother who has Alzheimer's. She has been a wonderful woman of God for many years. It is hard now when she is often confused, she can never remember my name, or even recognize numbers, and she needs constant supervision, but it is also a joy that some elements of her personality are still there. She is still loving and thankful, and God has spared the part of her mind that learned all the hymns she has sung for the last 50 years. At church Sunday morning it was great to watch her singing the hymns without needing to look at the words. She can still praise. Both of them, to the very end, are oriented toward the kingdom of God. That is what I hope Anastasia and I can be if God gives us long lives on this earth. Anastasia has wonderful grandparents too. We are unusually blessed in the spiritual heritage we have.

eating

Anastasia often blogs about her cooking experiences on this blog, so I thought I should say a little bit about my eating experiences. Last week Anastasia made a cheesecake. It was great. It was the best looking one she has made yet. Part of what made it fun to eat is knowing that making desserts is not really Anastasia's favorite thing. Contrary to gender stereotypes, she would rather have potato chips and I would rather have chocolate. Anastasia does a good job of putting thought into making sure most of what we eat is healthy and then sometimes making things that have no other purpose in life but to taste really good. I have a good gig going.

everyday dinners

Sometimes people ask me if I cook from scratch all the time. The basic answer is no, because we do eat some processed food, and we eat leftovers quite often as well (that's why I especially love food that freezes).

Often we end up eating food like the meals pictured above: it comes together quickly but is made of primarily fresh ingredients. So even though they aren't elaborate meals, they have the benefits of from-scratch.

The details, starting top left and going clockwise:

1. Baked tilapia (topped with a little mayo, herbs, breadcrumbs, and parmesan), baked potato, fresh raspberries and salad.

2. Super tuna salad on cocktail rye--mayo, celery, olives, dill

3. From scratch pancakes and syrup, lightly scrambled eggs

4. Egg frittata with roasted peppers, olives, and feta cheese; toast with homemade rhubarb jam

5. Baked tilapia marinated in teriyaki sauce (Alex's favorite), baked potato, stirfry veggies

6. Overeasy eggs, fried potatoes and onions, frozen green beans

7. Baked chicken, noodles baked with water and a chicken bouillon mix I found in a magazine, fresh peas from Mom's garden

8. DiGiorno pizza, roasted asparagus from the farmer's market (my favorite juxtaposition!)

9. Sausage and greens soup (greens from Mom's garden), vegetable oven pancake with broccolli from the farmer's market, strawberries from the farmer's market. (This was the most time-consuming meal, but we had the soup the day before as well, and it was all so delicious!)

Share your favorite everyday dinner!

know what you are bad at

One of my mottoes since back when I was in college is that a big part of life is knowing what you are bad at. In my cases it is a little easier because I tend toward extremes and tend to be either good or bad at things and rarely average. I let my sisters have a veto over my wardrobe back then (my wife has one too now- she has recently relented and let me occasionally wear the infamous Hawaiian shirt since the cruise). We sometimes talk about how we need to improve on our weaknesses, but I think there is a distinction. Sometimes by a "weakness" we mean a "character flaw" by which we should mean "sin." Using "that is just how I am" as an excuse to be lazy or selfish or careless (just to choose some not so random hypotheticals) is wrong. I am talking more about what our skills and talents are. As we have been moving and getting our house ready I have been forced into a world where I am consistently below average in my abilities (painting, moving dishwashers, etc.). One of the great blessings has been how many people have helped. They haven't just saved us time, they have done things better than they would have been done if I had tried to do them. Truly a blessing.

A trip to the Gardens

Alex and I took a trip to Reiman Gardens a couple weeks ago. I took advantage of digital pictures being free and took 65 pictures in 50 minutes--probably a record for me.

Here are some of the best ones. We enjoyed the roses, the dinosaurs, and the butterflies. I have the shot with all the red roses as my wallpaper and it's lovely! I'm quite proud of the photo. I also tried using the macro settings with single flowers and butterflies, with mixed results. The single rose next to the picture of me really is meant to be gray. The picture I could not get to turn out was of a butterfly with a fluorescent green stripe--no matter what settings I tried, the color wasn't true. I guess you need an expensive camera for some things!

Diamonds

I have a list of movies that are in the category "won't be particularly pleasant to watch, but would probably be good for me." Last weekend I decided to watch one of the movies on the list- Blood Diamond. It came out a few years ago and presents a very violent depiction of African civil war and the way diamond smuggling makes it worse. The real issue isn't actually diamonds- it is greed. The same horrors of civil war: villages burned, people killed and maimed, children being forced to become soldiers, masses of people living in refugee camps in terrible conditions... all of these also happen in places where there are few resources as well. I think one thing I took away from it was a needed reminder about how much injustice there is in the world and how often I insulate myself from thinking about it.

It also made me think about wedding rings. I actually anguished for a while about whether to buy anastasia a diamond engagement ring. Partly because of the shady side of the diamond industry but mostly because of questions about money. What if we both just got gold bands and used the rest to help people in Africa get clean drinking water? I decided to go the traditional route. I didn't want my wife to have to engage in social commentary everytime everyone asked about the ring for the rest of her life. I decided rather than flouting social conventions in that way, the real issue is how we use the money that God brings our way over the course of a lifetime. Put another way, I realized that generosity toward the world doesn't always have to come at the expense of generosity toward my wife.

Political Hamburger Helper

The idea of hamburger helper is that something valuable (meat) is in short supply (at least for the price) and so you can cook up a meal to stretch the meat you have farther. That is basically the theory behind most of our political and economic system. General concern for the public good is in short supply, but self-interest is plentiful. So lets set up a political system where politicians pursuing their self-interested desire for reelection will have to make us happy to maintain power. Let's set up an economic system where everyone can just look out for their own family and the magic invisible hands of supply and demand will take care of the rest.

That's the theory. The problem is it can't work for ever. Selfishness is a vice. The thing about both virtues and vices is that they are not constant. Exercising a virtue tends to cause you to become more virtuous not less, and indulging a vice makes you more likely to act from the same vice in the future. Do you really think we all have 1000 self-control units to use however we wish each month? People who practice self-control find it easier to be self-controlled the next time and people who indulge their desires find it harder. So if you set up systems that encourage people to be selfish, then eventually ....