A Beggar At The Table

It seems so strange now, what happened a year ago today. The terrible suffering and bleeding that Kelly endured, seeing my baby whisked away into the nursery for immediate intensive observation, that nagging fear that Kelly might even die, not just for my mother or me, but seeing the hospital staff also fearing for Kelly’s life… but now all is well. The events are still vividly seared into my mind, but healing has come. Kelly is well. Our little girl, even as I type this, is happily bashing keys and playing with the mouse.

As I reflect on her birthday and on one year of being a dad in the fullest sense, I’m also reminded of the great love and care my Mom and Dad have given their children. 34 years and still happily married. Today’s also their anniversary. Sure, it hasn’t been a perfect 34 years, but that’s life in this fallen world. By any human standard, they’ve been successful parents. 6 children all now out of the house and on their own, two married, two grandchildren, one on the way. A pastor, a physicist, a teacher, a doctor, a professional church worker, and a city planning staffer numbered among the children. But most important is simply how they love us and brought Jesus to us.

I only hope I can parent as well as I have been parented. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for reading to and with me, for praying with me, for playing with me, for singing to and with me, for telling me stories, for encouraging me, for bringing me to church every Sunday without fail, for living lives of faith that brought Sunday into the rest of the week, for always being there when I needed you and especially in those times I thought I didn’t! God grant you many more years!

Well, kind of live. Kelly and I went to see the North American premiere of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring as a movie with live choral and orchestral accompaniment last night. I’ll let her post the greater and more detailed review, as she is more aware of the soundtrack and such in general, having seen LOTR:FOTR probably twice as much as I have. But I do have to say that it was a really awesome experience. The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra played very well, and the Manitoba Mass Choir covered all the vocal bits with great agility and style. The men’s choir could have stood to be louder in spots, but other than that it was just like having a remix of the film with the score pushed up to the front of the mix and the dialogue mixed down somewhat. The entire film was subtitled, for that reason, which also meant that we caught nuances of the script in spots which we hadn’t before.

A wonderful evening out, and certainly a once-in-a-lifetime event. It was at the Winnipeg hockey arena (the MTS Centre) so it was a pretty big, and expensive, show to mount. I’m glad we went.

Apparently Limozeen played a live concert and songs are now on YouTube. StrongBad himself sings lead on several tracks….

We were at the Tiger Hills Art Gallery in Holland, MB this evening for the opening and meet-and-greet of Kelly’s exhibit. They did a wonderful job with the setup. We are very impressed with the gallery and the people who work there. I get this feeling we’ll be doing more with Tiger Hills in the future.

Kelly and I are taking a bunch of her artwork to Holland today, for an art show. They’re paying her way and a nominal fee for displaying her art.

Holland, MB, that is.

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PS: The Plumber: Sorry about deleting your comments, I only figured out after the fact that you must have wandered over from Opie’s blog. Post again, and I’ll moderate them in.

He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward
by John Donne

Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this,
The intelligence that moves, devotion is,
And as the other Spheares, by being growne
Subject to forraigne motion, lose their owne,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey:
Pleasure or businesse, so, our Soules admit
For their first mover, and are whirld by it.
Hence is’t, that I am carryed towards the West
This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.
There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,
And by that setting endlesse day beget;
But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,
Sinne had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I’almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for mee.
Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye;
What a death were it then to see God dye?
It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,
It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.
Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,
And tune all spheares at once peirc’d with those holes?
Could I behold that endlesse height which is
Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,
Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne
By God, for his apparell, rag’d, and torne?
If on these things I durst not looke, durst I
Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,
Who was Gods partner here, and furnish’d thus
Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom’d us?
Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,
They’are present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and thou look’st towards mee,
O Saviour, as thou hang’st upon the tree;
I turne my backe to thee, but to receive
Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.
O thinke mee worth thine anger, punish mee,
Burne off my rusts, and my deformity,
Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace,
That thou may’st know mee, and I’ll turne my face.

I don’t know that anyone who reads this blog who knew of IE hasn’t already heard, but here’s my contribution to the blogburst. Issues Etc, the radio program formerly on KFUO, is no more. Kelly and I had a chance to hear and meet Pr. Todd Wilken last summer at the Higher Things youth conference, and we did download and listen to the occasional IE program. It was a wonderful resource and will be sadly missed. If you’re interested in perusing the archives, check out
http://www.kfuoam.org/ie_main.htm

Please pray for Pastor Wilken and Jeff Schwarz, the producer.

A few points here:
1. I picked up the old classic boardgame Face Off (Waddington’s House of Games) during our Altona run last week. In very good condition, no parts missing… $0.25
2. http://www.sportsclubstats.com/NHL.html is a wonderfully geeky site calculating rough probabilities of teams making the playoffs. With last night’s win, the Sens are virtually a lock to make the playoffs now. This shouldn’t be a surprise, I suppose, but it is nice to see them playing well again after a really rough spell since about Christmas.
3. NHL Ice Breaker
This is a game which uses a marked deck of playing cards to determine the movement of a puck in a hockey game, with special notes for shooting, goaltending, and other plays as well. Fairly clever in design, simple to play, and it simulates the action of hockey fairly well, although the scoring rate can be fairly high–in my experience, about a 9 GPG average compared to the NHL’s 6 GPG. You’re not going to see many, if any shutouts, with this game. It was a gift from my Mom and Dad for Christmas. Loads of fun, even to play solo. The games system, being what it is, would be fairly easy to code into a computer game–I’m kind of surprised it hasn’t been done yet (licensing issues aside). Might be a fun C64 project?

Anyway, enough of that for now. Feel free to add your own hockey geekery in the comments.

EDIT: Peter reminded me of another geeky hockey game I have:
4. Hockey Challenge
Win the Stanley Cup by getting trivia questions correct! To add to the fun, the questions are from the mid-80s and the answers may not be correct anymore…

So on February 29 we went to Altona, on a whim and because Kelly had received a gift certificate to a store there. There were draw boxes and ballots throughout the Altona Mall for $129.29 in Altona Bucks, in honour of February 29.

I actually won the draw, surprisingly, so yesterday we returned to Altona to claim the prize and to spend our $129.29.

What we got was:

• a router for our computers, so the church laptop can be online at home for updating Windows and such
• a new wooden 72-DVD holder to help manage our collection
• a bunch of scrapbooking stuff for Kelly
• some groceries
• a couple books

Not a bad haul, really. We might have spent $4 or $5 over the $129.29 to cover taxes on a couple purchases. The router was on sale for $50, and it took a little fiddling with the laptop to get it to cooperate, but now that it’s working, it works well.