Dez' Parents Visit 1/08

In January, my parents left below zero temperatures to brave it sunny Southern California for a whole week. Our 65 degree winter weather felt glorious to them and was the talk of the trip--Minnesotans can't help themselves, they must always comment on the weather.

We introduced them to two of our beloved cheap dinner date places, Chipotle and In & Out. This might have been my dad's favorite part of the trip. Both establishments are very good at what they do: big, big burritos with the best guacamole around at one and oh-so-tasty burgers at the other.

I would say my mom's favorite part was probably the beach. We took them down to Crystal Cove, our favored beach and the Lord blessed us with an incredible sunset. The sunsets are one of the greatest things about living here. How I enjoy watching that brilliant ball of fire take it's evening dip in the great ocean.



We visited the Autry Museum of the American West, which by the way, had an exhibit about Walker Texas Ranger. You can never go wrong with Chuck Norris in my family! My dad is a big fan of "the West" and likely sees himself as a modern day John Wayne. You can find him wearing his cowboy cut Wranglers, boots, western shirt, leather vest, and cowboy hat. His duster and black Stetson are for special occasions.
http://www.autry-museum.org/

Brandon and I had been curious about what it would be like to visit Saddleback Church where Purpose Driven Rick Warren is a pastor, so we asked my parents if they were up for an adventure. The four of us knew it would be big but we were totally unprepared for the MEGAchurch. I think you could put all of my hometown of Spring Grove, MN on their campus and still have room left over. It was like a small city. The worship service was well polished and well attended. Rick Warren even happened to be preaching that night. Interestingly enough, he spoke about his views on spiritual formation and how he thinks we mature in Christ. It made for lively conversation on the way home as Brandon and I had several points of contention with his ideas, since I am studying spiritual formation and the care of souls. I won't go into all that here, but my mom called me after their return home to tell me what she learned from that experience: just because you write lots of books and pastor a huge church doesn't mean you've got it all figured out.
http://saddleback.com/flash/

Rose Parade

Now, the Rose Parade was back on January 1st. Some of you probably watched it on TV. You probably had better seats then we did. But what you probably didn't have was the experience of getting up early to catch the Metro up to Pasadena, fighting through crowds and climbing buildings to find a spot where you could see at least something, hearing all the Illinois people drunkenly shout at all of the USC people, and vice-versa, and seeing the sheer dedication so many people have to spending the night on the street to get the best seats around.

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The floats were, from what we could tell, transformers. (Well, this particular float was, I guess I don't know about the others.) Here is the car state. The robot transformation took place as soon as it passed out of view. (We could see the steam and smoke and flashing redish lights.)

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The Olympics will be in Bejing this year, and they are being promoted everywhere, even in the Rose Parade, which turns out to be just a big advertisement for all kinds of stuff we can't actually remember at this point.

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Balloons. Floating. Into the sky.

Our Honeymoon Slideshow

Here at last are our honeymoon pictures. We've added little captions to them all to walk you through our adventures. Enjoy.



Here's a link to the pictures themselves:

Honeymoon Cruise Winter 2007

Painting at the Artists' Retreat

The artist retreat was a wonderful time to sit down and paint. Though I was sketching what I saw in the outdoors, I find I often use my sketches (in combination with journaling) as a sort of interactive prayer, and this weekend was particularly inspiring, for a number of reasons.

First, I had to go through all my art supplies. I've done some loose sketching outdoors before, but I've (and I'm somewhat surprised to say this) never really painted outdoors. I was inspired by a few blog posts I found, including this outdoor painting tutorial and this entry by James Gurney. (I highly recommend his blog by the way.)

So I distilled my art supplies into a surprisingly small bag, and started my first endeavor into outdoor painting/drawing. (I actually chose to use a mixture of ink pens, ink wash, and watercolor, so I'm not sure if it's better described as painting or drawing. I'll use the two terms interchangeably until further advised.)

[My drawings.]

[Photo's of what I was painting from.]

I'll quote from my journal here to explain what I was thinking about as I drew these:

In the morning I felt the need to climb something. Somehow my drawing required something more, something difficult. I ascended a steep hill. I walked past many things worthy of being drawn. I asked myself "at what point is it time to stop? Which scene will I paint?"

I kept moving. Something drove me on. A destination perhaps? Would fatigue stop me? I am not sure. It's as if I needed to earn or prove something. At last I settled upon a spot, a downward spiraling path. The painting went better than i would have hoped.

On the way back I thought it strange to walk uphill so much to paint a downhill scene. I thought how hard it was to ascend, but how easy it is to descend....I began thinking about how normally we think it hard to ascend up to God, how much work it is to "get to heaven", or "see God", or "be good", etc. I'm reminded of the painting "The Heavenly Ladder of Saint John Climacus" with pious souls climbing the ladder to God and flying demons knocking them off.

[The Heavenly Ladder of Saint John Climacus, 12th Century]

Even Christian from the Pilgrim's Progress is reminiscent of this mountain climbing theme. But ascension is not where I am at. Like Dante, I am descending. And descent is hard. It's hard to see myself as I am, and it's hard to receive love as I am. Perhaps this mirror's Christ's pattern, his "descent" from Gethsemane to the Cross to the Belly of the Earth was hard. Clearly. But his ascent to glory at the Father's side was, in a sense, easy. Descent and death are hard. Ascent and glory are easy. I tried to paint these things, but instead only struggled with ascending. As if work ascending might make descending easier, or more meaningful, or less painful.

What I'm saying is I found this amusing flip: ascending is difficult if it's a physical mountain, but easy if it is spiritual glory. Descending is easy while hiking, but descending into the soul is perhaps the hardest work we could ever do. It amazes me how often I try to ascend on my own under my own power to try and earn acceptance and love. Or how often I sit around and pray and wait for God to raise me up with his power so I can be accepted and loved by others. But the reality is, I need to go down. I need to descend.

The funny thing is, I don't see God at the top of a ladder. I don't see God in the heavens or standing upon a mountain. I see Him in my heart, in the deep waters, and it is to these deep waters that I hear Him inviting me. It is while I descend that I have my closest most meaningful moments with God. It is as I descend that I am most terrified. I've been throwing things into the basement of my soul for a long time, and it's become somewhat of a garbage pit. I really don't know what I'm going to find down there anymore. Except, as I mentioned, a God who is waiting for me.

(A proviso: when I say "deep waters" I am referring to the more hidden portions of our hearts, as described in Proverbs 20:5, not some sort of "deep thinking" or intellectual high-ground. I say this rather sloppily, but the strict rational mind has proven to me to be quite perilous when dealing with the deep waters, which are filled with emotions and feelings and beliefs and desires and a great many things that do not necessarily follow rhyme or reason.)

Birthday Extravaganza 12/18-19/07

Wow did I ever have a great birthday! Definitely in my top three of all time. Although it didn't start out very promising:
We got back from our honeymoon cruise on the 18th. Unfortunately we came home to a bit of a disaster. Facility Services was in our apartment replacing the kitchen sink and doing some work in the bathroom while we were gone. They weren't terribly considerate of the mess they made as there was an impressive layer of industrial strength dust on EVERYTHING we have--even in the cupboards. We had to leave for a while and regroup before returning to begin the massive clean-up effort. We even had some neighbors stop by to clean our rather large book shelves while Brandon and I scrubbed out the kitchen. It was an extremely disheartening day, but it was also an excellent distraction for me.

As it turns out Brandon had been conspiring with our neighbors to throw a surprise party for me. At the last minute the party was moved to our upstairs neighbors' place instead of the original off-site plan. So they were scrambling around trying get things ready without me seeing. We had our door and windows all open, so they were so worried that I would see them sneaking around. However, I was so engrossed with the in-depth cleaning that I had absolutely no clue. So I thought nothing of it when our upstairs neighbors stopped by and asked us to come over and tell them about our trip. When it was time to go I was wearing my dirty t-shirt and track pants from cleaning and had every intention of going that way. Brandon talked me into jeans and a sweater saying that it would make me feel better. I'm glad he did. Imagine my surprise when after we started visiting with the couple upstairs all of these people jumped out and yelled, "SURPRISE!!" and it was a surprise. They had me. It was fun to hear them tell stories about all of their sneaky business in arranging this party and working hard to keep me clueless. We had pizza and played Pit. Good times! I felt blessed and loved.

The next day was my actual birthday. There was lots of talking on the phone as friends and family called to wish me a happy birthday and to hear about our cruise. I got to go shopping with my neighbor Melissa to spend my birthday money while Brandon was at work. Brandon's present to me was tickets to see Wicked at the Pantages Theatre that night. I love getting dressed up and going out to enjoy performing arts of many kinds, but this was an especially enjoyable evening. Check out the link to find out more about this musical production. http://wickedthemusical.com/#AboutWicked