Reading aloud

Unfortunately these days I don’t spend a lot of time reading for pleasure. I’ve discovered that most of the litertature/fiction/non-work material that I take in is through audiobooks or briefly in a magazine. Jeremy and I had a conversation last night about books and he mentioned that he saw Pillars of the Earth in Borders the other day and thought it would be something that I might enjoy. Oddly enough I’m almost finished with the book, but I’m listening to it on audio as I commute to work or ride on the train. I was a little embarrassed to try and explain that I was only a couple of chapters from the end, but that really means I’m an hour or so from listening to the end.

You see, I have a long history of listening to stories in audio format. Back when I was four or five I would pop in the 8 track (don’t even say it…) and listen to Chicken Little, Peter Rabbit, Winnie the Pooh…I loved it. So as I began to read on my own I loved to read aloud to my parents. In first grade we had a contest to see who could read the most books in two weeks, but the catch was that you had to read them aloud to a parent. One of my friends matched me book for book and we read about eighty books aloud and practically went hoarse in the process. I think my parents had enough Dick and Jane in those two weeks to last them a lifetime. I read to them when they were getting ready in the morning, when mom was cooking dinner and any other chance I could find. It was ridiculous.

Flash forward about 15 years to when Suzy and I first got married. We used to read books aloud to each other almost every night. I think we started with Chronicles of Narnia, then Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and so on. It’s been a while since we’ve done this on a regular basis and I hope we can pick it back up again. These days our reading aloud consists of board books and golden books, but hopefully as Oscar gets a little older we’ll be able to have some family reading nights instead of movie nights. This story in the Times offers a similar perspective and got the creative juices flowing (two posts in as many days!). Happy reading…

Litter Road Rage

I’ve mentioned before about how much littering bothers me. Yesterday was another incident and the irony has never been more apparent. I was driving home from work on the Bronx River Parkway and Friday is usually a pretty slow commute. The guy in the car in front of me reached out and dropped his empty pack of cigarettes on the highway and get this…he was driving a Prius! I am amazed that someone can spend the extra bucks to buy the electric hybrid, but not care enough to find a trash can. So I honked my horn in vain to get his attention so he could catch a glimpse of disdain and disgust written all over my face. Of course he’s not going to be able to notice it in his rear view window, he would probably wonder why I was honking at him. I have all of these scenarios playing out in my head about jumping out of the car and cramming the pack in his mouth or some variation on that general theme. The thing that surprises me is how quickly I can get so mad over something so small. I just need to harness that righteous indignation and funnel it into areas that won’t put me on the six o’clock news.

Wake up and steal the coffee

I’m chilling on a Sunday morning, drinking my coffee and eating some cereal. Oscar is down for an early morning nap and Suzy has taken the opportunity to get some more rest before she has to go to work at noon. I’m amazed at what has happened in the last six months, but this is not a post about that. I won’t promise to try and make up for the past six months of perceived silence; you and I both know that I probably won’t post anything again for a while. I read this in the Times this morning and thought I would share it with you, it made me smile – “Wake up and steal the coffee.”

You knew it had to happen…

So, now that Oscar is getting a little older I can be a little more playful with him. One of my favorite things to do is to let him stand up on my lap and we just laugh and giggle at one another. I also like to bounce him around on my knee, typical father-son stuff. I think what I enjoy the most is lifting him up over my head and seeing him smile down at me with complete trust and joy, not realizing just how high up in the air he is. If he knew the potential danger, he might not be smiling so much. The truth is that the danger is all on my side. The potential, as one might guess, is the wellspring of liquids this kid contains (especially shortly after a meal). I mean this kid used to spit up like nobody’s business and you would wonder if he was actually keeping any of it down.

Well, up until today I have been able to sidestep this hazard. Oscar had his dinner about an hour before, so I thought we were passed the danger zone but I was wrong…seriously wrong. We were sitting in the office and just chilling out and having some fun and of course I lifted him up above my head. If you’ve ever done this before with a little one you can understand just how great this really is…usually. This time, just as Oscar was at full arm’s length, the floodgates were opened. I suppose it could have been worse and ended up all over my face or even in my mouth, but my shirt was completely covered with half digested milk…yummy.

This may not seem that bad, but I took pride in the fact that I do this with him all the time and it hasn’t happened until now. I guess the next time won’t seem so bad.

(I hope you’re happy now, Christie.)

My 5 seconds of fame…

World Vision New York Storehouse – News 4 New York from Brandon Edling on Vimeo.

Homer is new again…

I can’t tell you how scary and cool it is to know that Suzy and I are (at least right now) completely responsible for another life. Sure it comes with lots of stuff that nobody wants to do like getting pissed on by a little boy fountain and going through six diapers at one changing (that’s a whole other post in itself). However, one of the coolest things is knowing that we have an influence on what he reads, what music he listens to and understanding what is important in life. We get to actually mold someone’s mind from the very beginning.

Just to make sure that I got things off on the right foot, I read Oscar a book yesterday. I must admit it was an abridged version with pictures, but I don’t think he would have been able to stay awake for (nor would I have been able to read) the whole Iliad and Odyssey. It was this 1950’s children’s book that told both stories in succession with great Greek potterty style illustrations…how cool is that! You can’t start an appreciation for the classics too soon. Now I just need a children’s version of Plato and Aristotle with illustrations, any suggestions?

I think I’m married to Wonder Woman…

No, my wife is not from the Amazon nor does she walk around in tights or fly an invisible airplane. However, she does have absurd amounts of energy and a work ethic that rivals all normal humans. Seriously! She is seven weeks from her due date, works a full day and then comes home and works on stuff for our little bun in the oven. By the time I get home at night, I’m tired and don’t want to do anything at all. I have even resorted to taking naps in the evening…on purpose. Sometimes it reminds me of when I used to go jogging with friends back in college. You never wanted to be the one to say let’s only do one more lap or let’s go five more minutes because you didn’t want to look weak or lame. Well, my wife puts me to shame. If being pregnant during the summer, working full time and still having energy to do things was an olympic sport…I would be married to the reigning champion. Now all I need to do is talk to the IOC and try and get her a gold medal…or at least some gold wristbands!

It’s not that I don’t care…

I guess you could say that a lot of life-changing things have happened since last month. The pathetic thing is that I have basically been sitting at home for the past two weeks and didn’t post one single entry. Here are a few thoughts from the last six weeks to quickly get you up to speed, I may or may not write more about these later…you know how it is.

• We found out that we are having a son, hands down the coolest thing that has happened!
• I had hernia surgery two weeks ago, and am just now able to sneeze without too much pain.
• I did my second sleep study, this time with a mask…I totally flipped out, don’t know if it will work.

Those are the important things, but now we’re off to see Indiana Jones. I guess that’s important, too. More later…maybe…

Berdyaev on Christology of humanity

Back when I was in seminary and writing on Dostoevsky’s theory about personality, Suzy introduced me to a biography written by Nikolai Berdyaev that she had from high school (she’s so cool). As it turns out, this is one of the best thematic biographies out there on Dostoevsky. He makes an excellent attempt to capture some of the common threads and lays them out for you in a way that makes you want to read Brothers Karamazov over and over again.

Anyway, I ran across this quote tonight and it really struck me:

Christianity has always taught of the weakness and fall of humanity, of the sinfulness and weakness of human nature. At the same time, Christian anthropology recognizes the absolute and royal significance of humanity, since it teaches the incarnation of God and the divine possibilities in humans, the mutual inter-penetration of divine and human natures. But for some deep reason, hidden in the secret of times and seasons, Christianity never revealed in its fullest what one might venture to call a Christology of humanity, that is the secret of humanity’s divine nature, a dogma of humanity, analogous to the dogma of Christ. Christianity has revealed the nature of the Holy Trinity and the nature of Christ, but very little of the nature of humanity. … And yet in Christian revelation the truth about humanity’s divine nature is really only the reverse of the medal of truth about Christ’s human nature. The Christology of humanity is inseparable from that of the Son of God: Christ’s self-consciousness is inseparable from that of humanity. The Christological revelation is also an anthropological revelation. And the task of humanity’s religious consciousness is to reveal the Christological consciousness of humanity.

Most of his books aren’t even in print anymore, but you can still get them used. Anything that mentions him these days just lumps him in with other existentialist theologians like Tillich, Buber and Maritain. I remember when I was studying to write that paper that I had about four of Berdyaev’s books and I couldn’t stop reading long enough to write my paper. That seemed to be a trend throughout my entire education. At least now I can read without have to worry about turning a paper in on time!

Why Chesterton is my hero

Back in college we spent some time studying apologetics classical style. We scoffed at the trite and superficial ravings of Josh McDowell; we dove right into G.K. Chesterton. The hard part about was that his best work wasn’t in writing an apology for the Christian faith, though his Orthodoxy is ranked among the best, it was in his fiction and his social commentary. He didn’t have to come out and say, “This is why I believe…” Chesterton studied the world around him, digested what he took in, and then proceeded to comment…on everything. He wrote just over 4,000 essays, 223 short stories and 82 books, not to mention countless letters. Let’s assume he didn’t start publishing until he was twenty and keep in mind that he was 62 when he died. That’s like writing two books, five short stories, and 100 essays each year. Granted, some of these books are small, but it’s taken me almost a year just to read a couple of them because they are so thick with meaning!

Anyway, what reminded me of Chesterton today was an umbrella stand. Strange, I know, but that’s how mind mind works. He has this one essay in What’s Wrong With the World called “The Fallacy of the Umbrella Stand.” I’ll try and put things into perspective the best I can here. He always critiqued everyone – Socialists, Anarchists and Capitalists alike. In this particular essay he is writing about how Socialists tend to blur the line between what should be public and those things that are private. They take personal liberties and creativity away by trying to force everyone into the same mold.

To illustrate just how great the Socialist’s misunderstanding of human nature is, he states that a Socialist is “a man who thinks a walking stick and an umbrella the same because they both go into an umbrella stand.” As if the two are not different enough, he continues the illustration and describes their respective qualities. The umbrella is a shield, shelter and a convenience. The walking stick is a sword, ceremonial and a pleasure. This is my favorite quote

An umbrella is a necessary evil. A walking stick is a quite unnecessary good. This, I fancy, is the real explanation of the perpetual losing of umbrellas; one does not hear of people losing their walking sticks. For a walking stick is a pleasure, a piece of real personal property; it is missed even when it is not needed. When my right hand forgets its stick, may it forget its cunning. But anybody may forget an umbrella, anybody can forget a necessary thing.

Though the two items may seem similar as you see them sticking out of the umbrella stand, their soul and function are completely opposite. I guess all of this rambling is to say that I wish I was cool enough to use a walking stick every day…

(For the record, I really don’t know where my umbrella is, but my walking stick is in the basement leaning against some shelves.)