– The thing I’ve noticed about the weird Levi’s commercials, with people backflipping into jeans and filling their pants up with helium, is the lack of a disclaimer at the bottom advising us against “trying this at home.” Does this mean they think these things are perfectly safe, or that they think it’s obvious that the commercials are fake?

– This poor guy drove all the way from upstate New York to Montana, worked one 10-hour shift, then got fired. Meanwhile, down in North Carolina, a couple fishermen a mile out to sea used a lasso to land a golden retriever.

– Last story’s a sad one. Six weeks ago, a 22-year-old Army reservist and Jefferson CC student named Jesse Kilgore walked into the woods near his home and shot himself. Now, in an interview with the questionable WorldNetDaily site, his father links his suicide to Richard Dawkins’s atheist snoozer, The God Delusion.

His death is a terrible tragedy no matter what its cause, but if these claims are true — that a book and “science classes” turned this young man’s faith into despair — the real problem is not with literature or science. The problem is not even a college that allegedly “undermin[ed] every moral and spiritual value” he had (which has not been the experience of the many JCC students I know). God created the world that biology explores and studies. When our faith in Him cannot stand up to a full, impartial consideration of reality, when we feel “we must shut up one of God’s books to read the other” (Noll), then it is we who are to blame: not God, and not science.

We cannot simply demonize learning and rely on this sort of mushy, meaningless answer: “I told [Jesse] it was my relationship with God, not my knowledge of Him that brought me back to my faith. No one convinced me with facts . . . it was a matter of the heart.” Heart or no heart, facts exist whether we ignore them or accept them. Part of the reason the university culture is so dismissive of faith is that so many people of faith are reflexively distrustful of education. Where teaching is openly anti-Christian, that’s understandable. But rather than disengaging from society, we’d be a lot better off teaching young Christians how science and philosophy are blessings, not threats.

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Married life is the best kind of life there is. Trading freedom for security has always been the way we roll here in the U.S. of A! So many rough areas of a man’s life can be smoothed out by the delicate touch of a feminine hand.

Decision-making is a prime example. Making decisions is a lot of work. Where to live, what job to take, what to wear? Who has time to figure out the proper choice in all of these important areas? Most single men learn to make decisions quickly, weighing options and coming to decisions so fast that the process seems almost primitive in its simplicity.

The married man can still quickly reach a simple decision, but it is never the end result. Instead, it’s just one stop on the interminable amusement park ride central to any marriage: the discussion. By looping around and around the many possible choices, a man with a skilled spouse eventually comes to see the ignorance of his original choice, and the unparalleled superiority of the course his wife has already selected. Eventually these “discussions” can strip a man of his desire to make an initial choice, streamlining the entire process!

Marriage also lets a man grow beyond the boundaries he places on his social life. Many single men prefer the company of a particular group of friends, spending the majority of social time with them, coming to know them well. Once a man is married, these constraints are taken from him, and he can come to full social fruition. New friends he would not have chosen! New activities he does not enjoy! An entire new family with whom to spend holidays, reunions, excruciatingly boring conversations, and arguments!

And chores! Once a man has a wife, he has a partner with whom to split the domestic tasks central to any household. A single man has no assistance in performing these chores, and no helper to decide when they should be done. It’s true that marriage brings a man a tidier house, but with a spouse helping, the net decrease in work will be offset by the extra discussions that will fill the saved time, in lieu of radio, television, or blessed quiet.

It’s true that some freedom is lost. If I were married, I couldn’t keep the random and flexible work schedule I enjoy. I wouldn’t be able to spend my leisure time any way I like, I wouldn’t have as much time for quiet reading, I might not amuse myself so much with the Internet dot com. I certainly wouldn’t be able to drop everything and take a trip, change my plans at the last minute, or do any of the other things that make me the man I am.

No, I would become a different man, a better man, with a thousand chips of my very nature shaved away by the delicate chisel in my wife’s knowledgeable hand.

I only hope that man will think of the old me fondly from time to time, as he lives his life to the beat of his life’s new drummerette.

If he can find the time between discussions.

You know, when you’ve been married as long as I have (almost three weeks!), you almost forget what it was like on the other side…

Being single has its advantages. Gas mileage, for example. With only one person in the car, you’ll use less gas, you know, when you drive places… alone. And you’ll never have to worry about another person changing your radio stations. In fact, you never have to be exposed to any tastes other than your own! Gosh, that does sound pretty good… cruising down the highway of life — alone — listening to the same old songs on the radio…

And there are benefits outside your motor vehicle as well. Like at work! Now that I’m married, Karen calls me at work once or twice a day. But if I were single, think about how great it would be: eight uninterrupted hours without hearing a friendly voice on the other end of the telephone line. Even better — eight uninterrupted hours without hearing the person I care about more than any other say, “I love you.”

Yep, being single sure has advantages. I mean, at home you’ll never have to worry about someone messing up your stuff, the kitchen, unmaking the bed, or leaving the toilet seat in your least favorite position… because there’s never anyone there. In fact, when you’re single, you have the immense joy of doing all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and chores yourself. All by yourself. Sure, you can daydream all you want that the next time you’re at the laundromat, there’ll be a pretty, single girl there who shares your joy of separating whites from darks for a bleach load, or your cultivated taste in fabric softener… but probably not.

And who does this ‘God’ fellow think He is? “It is not good for man to be alone.” What’s that all about? Certainly people weren’t designed with a helper in mind, a divinely inspired counterpart, like that “Bible” of yours says in Genesis 2:18.

When you’re single, you’ll experience neither the joy nor the pain that having a spouse brings. You don’t understand what Solomon means when he writes, “you have ravished my heart with one look of your eyes.” Just the numb comfort of loneliness and hope deferred.

Man, those were the days!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a loving wife to attend to. Cheers.

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The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Mark Noll

Its First Words — “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”

In Ten Words — Evangelical Christians must again think seriously — or risk cultural irrelevance.

In Fifty Words — Fourteen is usually an awkward age, for human beings and non-fiction books, so it’s a bad sign indeed that Noll’s indictment of the intellectual impotence of the evangelical church has aged so well. 10 years later, he largely stood by its conclusions, seeing any improvements as exceptions, not the rule.

In Its Own Words — “Fidelity to Jesus Christ demands from evangelicals a more responsible intellectual existence than we have practiced throughout much of our history.”

Fighting Words — Young-earth creationism and dispensationalism come in for some serious and well-leveled criticism. In one particularly blunt passage at the end, Noll compares evangelicalism to the deuce in the card deck of Christianity. Really? Not even the four or five, Prof?

Well-Chosen Words — A juxtaposition of the 19th-century Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart with the 20th-century Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus is cherry-picked but interesting. “Under the influence of fundamentalism, evangelicals turned their eyes to Jesus, and the world grew very dim indeed.”

As an Aside — Mike Huckabee is the new William Jennings Bryan: populist, activist, and Christian progressive. (I do not think this is a good thing.)

Closing Words — Christians must obey the mandate to love God with our minds, wherever that leads. Learning matters — our habits of thinking matter — because the world and its people matter. “The search for a Christian mind is not, in the end, a search for mind but a search for God.”

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The salesman noticed me eyeing a brand-new compact car and began giving me his pitch on the way out. He opened the door and made me slide in; I experienced that “new car smell” and took in the spotlessly clean interior. It was mesmerizing, and as far out of reach as the constellations in the sky. I thanked him, turned down a test drive, and slogged through the snow back to my old junker, which I drove off into the gathering gloom of a wintry evening.

I thought about that car forever, struggling to make ends meet raising a family on my income while my wife stayed home to raise our children. I marveled at a world that seemed so far beyond my reach: a world where people could buy a house, not rent; where people bought their children new clothes whenever they needed them; where people could walk into a dealership and buy a new car if the mood struck. All I could see was my poverty, and I was convinced that this other world would be a happy one indeed.

When I saw that same model, dented and rusted, smoking its way through traffic the other day, I was amazed at how small and unspectacular it really was. I’m 47 now, almost 48. My wife went back to school after the kids were grown, and now she teaches. We certainly aren’t rich, but we have bought and discarded a half-dozen new vehicles that all put that low-end GM product to shame. The poverty that shamed me and left me feeling so helpless at times is just a distant memory. Like all young couples, we struggled. but God was always faithful to provide what we needed — we never went without.

We’re reading through Ecclesiastes in our Bible study, and someone asked what value the book holds for a Christian. Well, when you understand it was written by a man of unlimited wealth, who sought to test the limits of the happiness it could buy, always coming up empty, then you see the wisdom of Ecclesiastes.

There is no “other world,” where material wealth brings forth a joyous existence of unbounded peace and contentment. Test if you must, but my experience with automobiles shows me that Solomon knew what he was talking about: “Vanity, vanity! All is vanity!”

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“Did he tell you what gauge to get?” asked the clerk.

“Are you kidding? He doesn’t even know I’m going to shoot him!”

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PREVIOUS DISCUSSIONS:
Genesis: 1-4 | 5-9 | 10-14 | 15-18 | 19-22 | 23-26
27-29 | 30-32 | 33-36 | 37-39 | 40-43 | 44-46 | 47-50
Exodus: 1-4 | 5-8 | 9-11 | 12-14 | 15-18
19-22 | 23-26 | 27-30 | 31-34 | 35-40
Romans: Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4 | Ch. 5 | Ch. 6 | Ch. 7 | Ch. 8 (I)
Ch. 8 (II) | Ch. 9 | Ch. 10 | Ch. 11 | Ch. 12 | Ch. 13 | Ch. 14 | Ch. 15-16
Luke: 1:1-38 | 1:39-2:40 | 2:41-3:38 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
11 | 12 | 13 | 14-15 | 16-17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24
Esther: 1-2 | 3-5 | 6-8 | 9-10
Acts: 1 | 2 | 3-4 | 5 | 6-7 | 8 | 9-10 | 11-12
13-14 | 15-16 | 17-18 | 19-20 | 21-22 | 23-24

 
INTRODUCTION:
Connie:
Paul, still in chains, once again meets with Festus and is offered the deal of going back to Jerusalem to defend himself. He declines and appeals to Caesar, removing the burden of the decision from Festus. But before he heads for Rome, another king visits and asks for an audience.

 
SOMETHING YOU’D NEVER NOTICED BEFORE:
Josh:
During this retelling of Paul’s testimony, he included the words from the Lord, “It is hard for you to kick against the goads.” Perhaps it had not been until then that Paul fully understood how hard it was, what the price would be for that persecution.

Connie:
Festus was concerned about how King Agrippa may have been perceiving Paul’s story, and tried to cut it off by calling Paul crazy. Agrippa responds with the famous “You almost had me at ‘hello’” line, later immortalized in Jerry Maguire.

Djere:
The trial before Agrippa and Bernice was a big show, in an arena filled with “prominent men of the city.” Weird.

 
BEST BAND NAME FROM THE PASSAGE:
Josh: The Learned and Mad
Connie: Conversion
Djere: Uncle Festus
Steve: Oh Felix

 
STORY IT REMINDS YOU OF:
Connie:
It reminds me of how Jesus and (later) the disciples had no time to prepare when dragged before their accusers, yet it was always clear that the cases had no merit.

Steve:
Very much like the classic courtroom dramas of the mid-20th century, or even the television procedurals still around today. Can’t you just feel the tension in the air as Paul bellows: “I appeal — to Caesar!”

 
DEEP THEOLOGICAL MEANING:
Connie:
God sees the bigger picture, ALL the time, and we need to trust Him when going through trials and hard circumstances. I’m sure Paul would have been bitterly disappointed to hear that he could’ve gone free if he hadn’t already filed his appeal to Rome. Or would he? (see below)

 
RANDOM THOUGHT:
Connie:
Would Paul have felt bad about going to Rome instead of being set free, or just confused? When God gives you a word, circumstances should line up with it. The prophetic should always confirm, not just instruct. Its purpose is to prepare us and give us hope that He controls everything, especially in tough times.

Josh:
Two years later and the Jews were still planning that ambush. I wonder if they’d eaten yet.

 
VERSE TO REMEMBER:
Djere:
26:29 — “And Paul said, ‘I would to God that not only you, but also all who hear me today, might become both almost and altogether such as I am, except for these chains.’”

Josh:
26:8 — “Why should it be thought incredible by you that God raises the dead?”

Steve:
26:23 — “that the Christ would suffer, that He would be the first to rise from the dead, and would proclaim light to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles.”

Connie:
26:16 — “But rise and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness both of the things which you have seen and of the things which I will yet reveal to you.”

 
LESSON TO TAKE AWAY:
Steve:
After some less successful tries earlier in Acts, I think Paul’s testimony here is his best recorded sermon. He connected with his audience; he established his pedigree; he explained why he had once been just like his accusers. And then he showed them, in clear language, just what God had done to change his life. Accept it and you have to agree with Paul that he had no choice but to follow Jesus; agree with him and the only logical next step is to do the same.

And Paul didn’t leave it there — he made Agrippa choose. “Do you believe the prophets? I know you do.”

Connie:
When someone “almost” becomes a Christian, it gives me hope that the Word is inside and fruit will come. We need to be faithful to sow seed, then let God water, grow, and harvest.

 
GENERAL RESPONSE TO THE PASSAGE:
Josh:
Waiting two years in prison with no formal charges. Appealing to Caesar for yet another delayed trial rather than insisting Festus rule on his case. These things seem strange until you remember that freeing himself was not Paul’s concern.

“Then Agrippa said to Paul, ‘You almost persuade me to become a Christian.’

And Paul said, ‘I would to God that not only you, but also all who hear me today, might become both almost and altogether such as I am, except for these chains.’”

Every chance Paul had for a defense, he chose not to make his own case, but rather, the case for Christ. And so even the governor and the king came to know of “a certain Jesus, who had died, whom Paul affirmed to be alive.”

 
CONCLUSION:
Steve:
A lot of excitement’s left in these last two chapters: sea voyage, shipwreck, snakebite, and even a trip to Syracuse!

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PART ONE:
Ever since the night I lay awake crying at the pending approach of my tenth birthday, I have been acutely aware of the impact of the passage of time. Although I have been blessed to avoid much significant loss so far in my life, there has stayed in my mind, throughout times both mundane and happy, a constant reminder that they will not and cannot remain. Nothing lasts under the sun.

Inertia may rob me, at times, of golden opportunities for entertainment, education or exercise, but I have vowed that I will never have cause to lament the days I could have spent with ones I loved and could have seen. This attitude is what takes me back to my family home and church most weekends, at the cost of a five-hour drive. It led me to spend the last week before my bar examination with my girlfriend amidst the New Mexico mountains, fording a stream in flight from deluge. And this year it brings me along on a four-week tour of America — and the people I love who make it their home.

The itinerary was to begin directly following my sister’s graduation, when two of my brothers and I would set out by car for far-off Alabama. After that, a few days in Georgia, a wedding in South Carolina — then the others were to head home, dropping me on Staten Island. From New York, a flight to California, a day at home to exchange clothing (thanks to my own scattershot planning), and another flight to the Southwest. The month would end with three days of basketball officiating at a camp with that same now-graduated sister, perhaps a chance to give her a celebratory technical.

Four weeks. At least 14,577 miles. And perhaps the most exciting month of my life to date.

PART TWO:
If you have ever driven through southwestern Virginia, you may have noticed that, for nine miles, Interstates 77 and 81 form what is called a “wrong-way concurrency.” I-81 travels from northeast to southwest, while I-77 was built from northwest to southeast; as a result, when the two roads meet and ever-so-briefly join, the unsuspecting driver (heading due west by compass) finds herself simultaneously traversing I-81 south — and I-77 north.

Up looks down, wrong seems right, and west can be both north and south…and if you try to turn around, you’ll find that east is too.

This fact, which once crouched amidst foggy dusk to add a loathsome 45 minutes to a previous trip, returned to my mind as I recalled our preparation for the 1200-mile drive to the Deep South™. This leg was nothing new. Several times before, I have set out on similar trips: unstopped until Pennsylvania, optimistic until West Virginia, and awake (with brief exceptions) until the bitter end, with the occasional pharmacological assist.

But this time we had a plan — to attend church with my uncle in Alabama the next morning — and it depended, or so it was thought, on leaving directly after my sister attained America’s mark of minimal educational competency that afternoon.

Circumstances prevailed, though, as is their way, and we were delayed one round hour, mostly by my brother’s newly discovered (and irrepressible) need to fold everything he owned. Wrinkles, not failure and tardiness, were to be this journey’s most fearsome enemies. Our fate we would trust to the road; his fashion he guarded with his life.

The drive was thankfully unremarkable, and once we finally did arrive, we found the church was quite new, the silver lining from unfair and contentious division elsewhere. Its services were held in the conference room of a local motel, and after the overnight drive, we savored, to some extent, the languorously maintained breakfast buffet, most notable for its pile of buttery, watery hominy grits. Two sermons later, our first experience down South was precisely what we had hoped, a small congregation of the devoted faithful, giving thanks to God in all things, even (inexplicably) for grits.

And our time of arrival? Somewhere around that I-77 merge, I realized we had overlooked the variable of the time zone — and that the hour Princess spent folding his dainties had saved us from turning up on anyone’s doorstep at the unholy hour of 6 a.m.

The wrong-way concurrency. Sometimes advance feels like retreat.

PART THREE:
Some of my co-workers expressed unguarded alarm when I mentioned that my itinerary included visits to Alabama and Georgia. One confided, in all seriousness, that although she had once been forced to drive through Alabama, she had refused to stop in the state for any reason. “It’s scary down there. Everybody’s got a gun! I didn’t know what would happen.”

Veteran of a few prior trips to the region, I was a little surprised by the unveiled condescension aimed at the people of the South, and I noted the irony of judging a group to be ignorant and uncultured on the strength of a single drive to an airport. But then we all have our prejudices — I personally dislike Turks and teenagers. The important thing seems to be choosing the ones that result in knowing nods, rather than stunned silence, when you confess them too frankly over a second Heineken.

If anything, this trip helped to reinforce to me the tremendous variety and beauty of our land, and the unmistakable similarity of its people. Our outsides may be as different as the countryside of New Jersey and New Mexico, and our behavior and language may be a function of our subcultures, but the cloak of diversity does little to hide the universal human motivations. And there is too the homogenizing effect of capitalism: every Walgreens store I passed, from Phoenix, Ariz. to Phenix City, Ala., displayed the same message about gas prices in flashing red letters. Comforting, in a way. Also eerie.

A week down South is never enough. After three short days of four-square and fireworks, we were off from Alabama, driving across the heart of Georgia to the coast — where, it seemed, the next three days leapt by in a blur of alligator spotting on the dock and reading beside the pool. My respective Southern relatives are further ammunition for my claim: vastly different in the incidental (one living room packed full with four dogs and nine people; the other as sedate and collected as the oil paintings on its walls), yet so similar in graciousness and generosity.

Amidst the haste, there are times during travel when the moment freezes, and I am overcome with identification, imagining how different life could have been for me, there, then. And for this I will remember Fort Valley, Georgia: steering around a curve, I watched two children madly pedal their bicycles along the road in front of me, then suddenly dart off the side, onto a well-worn path that wound through the knotty pines and led to who-knows-where. I recalled the paths and bikes and forts and clubs of my childhood, and thousands of miles from them, sat struck by nostalgia for a life I would never know. For a moment, that town felt like home.

And — would you believe? — I never saw a single gun.

PART FOUR:
We didn’t plan to bring John to the wedding, but when we found out the reception was taking place on the grounds of a zoo, it only seemed fitting. And his suit was already in the trunk, after all, wedged in at the last moment by our mother, ever hopeful that we would change our minds and sneak him in. That’s how I found myself parking in the terraced lot of a random South Carolina church, angled to block the view of passing cars, while my brothers donned the traditional, oppressive wedding garb of our people.

The Palmetto State was hot and sticky, like a candy bar sent through the dryer, and as I amused myself by releasing the emergency brake and watching John scurry to keep up with the trunk, I found it hard to fathom the state’s near-myth status in the rural Northeast. How many people — young women, especially — had I heard confess their ambition to leave New York for the temperate beauty and utopian job market of South Carolina? Slow-cooking in a black suit, the attraction puzzled me. If I’m going to give up snow and seasons, I demand climatic perfection: Honolulu, San Diego, Omaha. This was just Florida North: sweaty, crowded, and muggy, with fewer snakes and better drivers.

The wedding itself was most notable for the objection; the objection was most notable for the $50 the groom paid to obtain it. I suspect that this combination may have also made the couple’s ride to the reception quite, er, notable.

At the lovely baked potato reception, we took a place behind the dance floor, so as best to ruin the pictures, and celebrated our friend’s wedding with a group of Syracusans, many of whom I may never see again. Nothing in life comes alone; when you open your door to one thing, you spread it wide to a world of unintended, unexpected consequences. One downside to a month-long trip of reconnection is the awareness, the repeated, painful awareness, that everything ends. The arriving is sweet, the staying divine, but there is, too, always the leaving. Without it, the joy would have no meaning; alongside it, the joy can never be complete.

After a stroll through botanical gardens, we were off again, driving in shifts through dark Virginia and a foggy D.C. We slept for a few hours in the parking lot (and, later, the well-appointed youth room) of the Exton Community Baptist Church, before joining Bweinh!’s own Rev. Mike Jordan and his church to worship. You can actually listen to that sermon right here. Running on three hours of sleep, I didn’t doze off once.

Mike had family and a then-very pregnant wife to attend to, so soon we were on Staten Island, introducing John to the wonders of White Castle — and then my brothers were off, heading home, leaving me to complete the next portions of my trip alone: New York City, California, New Mexico. The long drives had ended, but the long flights were dead ahead.

PART FIVE:
I’ve never really cared much about symbolism. I’ve never found it very important. I hated “awareness days” in high school, enough to hang ironic posters in the halls to draw attention to deadlier, but less trendy, diseases. I remember complaining, as a child, about a news story honoring teenagers who went without food for a day to better identify with the hungry. They seemed so proud of themselves, but what good did it do anyone? Why didn’t they spend that day EATING WITH the hungry, rather than joining them in their lack?

But I have grown to understand that there are genuine benefits to symbolic gestures — like identification. This is something I never grasped as a child, growing up with leaders, teachers, coaches, and classmates who all looked like me, in a world run by my cultural and religious forebears. When everybody already resembles you, you don’t always grasp the desire to see yourself in symbols or politicians.

I am perfectly happy being different now, not only because of my personality or my loving home, but because in many ways I never chose, I already fit into my particular world. There are plenty of things I need to understand about those who don’t.

All this ran through my mind as Josh and I stepped onto a basketball court in Stapleton, N.Y., inner-city Staten Island. We were the only white people on the court. We were the only white people on the street. And we were, from the reaction of many around us, the only white people in the world. I looked to the side of the lane, and couldn’t help but laugh when I saw what lay there: two stomped crackers, smeared and crushed into the ground. Some metaphors are just too obvious to invent.

We weren’t in sufficient shape to play on the other court, so after we chased away the hordes of curious preadolescents, we took to running full-court with the JV squad: the slightly less athletic, slightly younger, slightly less motivated players from the neighborhood. We won the games, mostly because we really hate to lose, but the attention we drew focused more on what we represented than our status as teammates or opponents. When Josh stole the ball, when I blocked it, the crowd, including the recent losers from the main court, would erupt in hooting derision toward whatever player had been so unfortunate.

We were the Other, all the more so because this wasn’t even Josh’s usual court; no one knew us. In a very small way, I better understood, I grasped more powerfully, what it must be like outside my skin and culture. This might be the single most important benefit to diversity as a value: real empathy requires more than just knowledge. It takes feeling. Identification.

A few days before my trip, I played beach volleyball with an Indian friend. All the other players were Indian, some even speaking Hindi, and almost all of them were signficantly better than I was. I felt, on a small scale, the discomfort of exclusion, the pressure to measure up, and the burden of being, in some odd but tangible way, alone.

And I can’t help thinking it was just the type of awareness I needed.

PART SIX:
Josh delivered me to the Staten Island ferry terminal deep in the middle of the night. I walked up the stairs through a deserted station to the waiting area, where my two bags were reasonably sniff-searched by a friendly officer and his taciturn dog. The boat itself was near-empty, containing the usual suspects: sleeping homeless men bound down for the next in a series of 30-minute naps; a few Type A white collars, off to put an early chokehold on the workday; small groups of nocturnal young men in gold chains.

I remember the exceptions very well. A 40-something black woman comforting two young children. The occasional solitary young woman, with omnipresent iPod and steely, self-reliant New York eyes. The unkempt man who screamed nonsense at the top of his lungs: like many of us, very angry about something he couldn’t quite express.

On my quarter-mile walk to the subway station, I slung my carry-on around my neck and struggled to smoothly heft my suitcase. Rolling bags were not designed for those of two-meter height. Lumbering down the sidewalk, I was startled by a horn from the street. Ten feet away, a cab had stopped in the middle of the road. Its driver looked at me expectantly, eyes and mouth open wide, gesturing to the back seat like a taxicab Messiah. “Behold! Thy salvation cometh!”

I let him down as gently as I could and descended into the bowels of the city to catch the 4 train north. The crisp, cool harbor air quickly gave way to the humid, sinister dankness of the underground. I took out my voice recorder to both capture and fight off the eerie noir. I felt safe because the setting was so impossibly clichéd. True evil hides.

I switched to the JFK-bound A, boarding a car containing three other passengers, which seemed perfect. No large drunken groups, no danger from solitude. You may not always be able to count on help, but some chance beats none. If I’d been in the car with that hammerer, the story would have ended differently, one way or another. All it takes sometimes is one person who acts.

But if your troubles are more pedestrian, you may not want me in your car. We neared JFK and my closest neighbor was an elderly Chinese woman clutching a small suitcase. Both of us had been sleeping, but she had not awakened. I didn’t know if there was another JFK stop, or if she was headed elsewhere, or if she spoke English, or (God forbid) if she had died — so I took the cowardly middle ground, making as much noise as I possibly could without touching her. I slammed my bags, I cleared my throat, I even faked a sneeze. Nothing.

I got off alone. I watched the subway slide down the tracks; it still held the woman, who, still, held her suitcase. The sun was rising, and before the workday ended, I would be in California. I hope she got where she was meant to be.

PART SEVEN:
A pleasant woman from American Airlines stopped me as I handed her my boarding pass. “You won’t be very comfortable in this seat. Are you okay with moving to an exit row?” You bet I was, all six and a half feet of me! A sign of smooth travel ahead, I hoped, and I enjoyed the extra legroom all the way to Dallas, where I landed to a voicemail from Josh Tate — who told me he and his family had just left the house, and might be a little late picking me up.

But I wasn’t supposed to land for another six hours.

I called back and got his wife, who couldn’t stop laughing once we figured out that they had read the time of my East Coast departure as the time of my West Coast arrival. They would simply make a day of it in Palm Springs; it was a welcome opportunity to come down the mountain and enjoy civilization.

While they waited in the desert heat, I took off from Dallas strapped into a over-the-wing window seat, behind a fully reclined snorer, beside two of the sort of teenage girls who buy three glossy fashion magazines, then find something to loudly discuss on every perfume-scented page. It felt right somehow when the plane started shaking. I was probably shaking too.

Turned out some of those important flying-type parts weren’t working quite the way they should, so almost two hours into the flight, the pilot announced that although he could still fly the plane just fine for the time being, it might be best for everyone if we landed early, you know, while we still had the choice. But not in Palm Springs (we were almost halfway there), and not in Albuquerque (just a slight diversion north). Back in Dallas. Meanwhile, the girl next to me took out a preschool “Fun Book” and a Ziploc bag full of crayons, and proceeded to meticulously color a smiling fish. I began to seriously wonder if I was still asleep on the subway.

We waited for the plane to be “repaired,” but when I heard the gate agent give out the toll-free reservation change number, I dialed immediately. A wise move, as I beat the loudspeaker announcement by enough time to get my choice of California flights — none of which, I quickly learned, were headed to Palm Springs. LAX it was, ultimately making the Tates’ journey both ill-timed and unnecessary.

My lucky luggage, on the other hand, was already on its way to Palm Springs; no one was certain, but chances were good that it managed to sneak aboard a flight with no empty seats, but plenty of room in the cargo hold. I asked around, but I did not have the same option.

I was nearly picked up in Los Angeles by Lisa and the Barrs, who were in the neighborhood, but lacked a sixth seatbelt. It was probably for the best — my skill at meeting people is hard to understate, even on days when my plane doesn’t almost crash. And so instead I met the longsuffering Josh at the airport and dined with him at In-N-Out; after a 2-hour drive to collect my wayward luggage (temperature: 99) and a 1-hour drive back up the mountain (temperature: 72), the day was finally, mercifully, done.

PART EIGHT:
To me, California has always existed in a sort of hazy myth. Crowded, temperate, and seismic; home of heroic, half-remembered President Reagan; it was as far removed from my marooned and icy New York youth as ancient Ur.

As a boy, I spent hours planning cross-country road trips, following the example of my father, who crossed the continent at 18 and has the unpaid San Francisco parking ticket to prove it (although, he quickly reminds me, it wasn’t his car). Not many years later, the state was home to my first requited crush, a kind girl from Napa who, it turned out, was by far my wiser. And after my college graduation, my first plane ride was there, courtesy of my grandmother, who gave me a week out West with several close friends, where we climbed Tahquitz and strung up Chinese lanterns in preparation for a wedding.

Seven years later, those not-so-newlyweds had three children, and visiting their home would not only allow me to see them all and return to the California of lore, but also to meet the only Bweinh!tributor I did not yet personally know — the delightfully rational Kaitlin. All told, easily sufficient motivation to weather a return itinerary that would wing me from LA to New York to Phoenix in just under 36 hours.

Have you ever returned to a place you loved, only to find that the utopian glow of nostalgia had made it only a modest imitation of the splendor you remembered?

Me too. But this wasn’t like that at all.

No, instead, returning was all the more wonderful. I had the autonomy to do whatever I liked (including a few trips to a sturdy swing set, as well as buying and devouring a surprisingly readable translation of Don Quixote) and repeated opportunities to help my hosts, which I particularly welcomed, since my entire July had begun to feel like one unending impingement on the kindness of others. I even had the good fortune to witness a late-night thunderstorm, rumbling down from the mountains in a pyrotechnic volley.

As always, the people were the highlight, full of grace and good humor whether we were slinging trash bags into the dump or playing games around a kitchen table. I have never yet regretted a day spent with a Tate (that winter evening we slept on the floor of the unheated lakehouse is another story), Lisa and I defied predictions of a heated melee, and Kaitlin proved even more engaging than her well-crafted (if sadly rare, on these pages) prose. Watching the four sisters interact was eerily like being with my three brothers, with only slightly more talk about fashion.

Before I flew out Sunday evening, the Tates took me to Sarah’s childhood home, where her mother treated us to a delicious dinner, then watched the kids while we headed to the beach. We walked the Santa Monica Pier, past the carousels to the very end, where the brisk sea breeze whistled through the lines of the men and boys fishing for halibut off the side.

And as the sun set into the endless blue Pacific, I ran through the sand and leapt into the crashing surf, plunging beneath the warm ocean, no longer just a legend. A few hours later, as I climbed aboard the plane back to my homeland, I could feel in my brow, taste on my lips, the salty dross the sea had left behind.

I taste it still. I will feel it again.

PART NINE:
Most airports are on the outskirts of large cities, surrounded by squat tracts of industrial zoning, often abutting the discolored shores of the local lake or ocean. Flying into Ithaca was a revelation. Gliding down amid the undulating hills and rolling, cow-choked pastures, all I could see were forests and farmhouses, until suddenly, the trees opened up on a tiny stretch of asphalt: this traveler’s version of the Great Valley, with marginally fewer pterodactyls.

Tom’s car had died shortly before our trip began, and so he picked me up in mine, the ever-reliable Purpletrator. From the tiny airport, we went to his laboratory, where I donned a lab coat and posed for several pictures holding beakers, pouring liquids, and doing several other things I am manifestly unqualified for. He left me at his apartment, where I showered and laundered; once his neighbor cut off his wireless signal, I gladly succumbed to the call of the nap.

For there wouldn’t be much time to sleep. 25-cent wings were on the agenda, followed by Monday trivia at a downtown bar. When I was planning my flights, I chose Ithaca over Rochester solely for the chance to join Tom and his team. Although we fell oh-so-short of victory, my trip was not totally in vain — my evening in Ithaca led, in part, to the flowering of Tom’s nascent relationship with his triviamate. Had I not met her that night, chances are very good that I would not have given insistent pro-Lindsey advice a month down the road. The evening was also memorable for an odd phone call that found me wandering around the downtown Commons, holding my phone at arm’s length while a friend spent five solid minutes laughing at me.

It had turned to Tuesday when I drove up to Rochester, Tom asleep in the passenger seat. He then drove right back to Ithaca while I packed my suitcase to go back west — this time New Mexico, via Phoenix.

Will you mind if I don’t tell you about my week there?

Were I disciplined enough to have written all this in August, I would have recounted in detail the scenic drives, hidden lakes, pleasant dinners — even the herd of mighty elk that thundered across the mountain pass in front of us. But instead it is October: three months since that week with Chloe; six weeks since we broke up. What can I say about the trip now? I had a lovely time. She and her family are wonderful people.

As time passes, actions and feelings piling up in its wake, our memories change in a way we cannot control. The past is seen only through the lens of the inevitable present. A delightful Christmas morning is tinged with sorrow after a sudden death, the valleys of a roller-coaster year are forgotten under the ether of nostalgia. What actually happened is not as important as how it is remembered, because only the second can ever change. Only the second makes a difference now.

The happiest moments, the perfect times, the days and nights you are surest of your fate and future: the joy they bring, though great, is never eternal, or immutable. And so the challenge of life is to risk the pain, to accept our transience and uncertainty, yet still choose to live — and love — with the abandon of the One who not only laid down His life for His friends, but commanded us to do the same.

PART TEN:

By the time I made it to the basketball camp that would serve as the final stop on my four-week sojourn, it was already mid-Thursday. It was the first time in four years or so that I hadn’t been around for the whole week, and I immediately noticed a problem: the college-age coaches were officiating.

I didn’t care that they weren’t very good, or that they were lazy. The problem was that by starting the week responsible for officiating, they had gotten the idea that they knew what they were doing. And what’s more dangerous than people who think they know what they’re doing?

High school basketball is like prison. Lots of rules to follow, big guys tend to dominate — and everyone’s innocent. Just ask them.

Officiating is a good job for me. I love justice, I hate mistakes, and I have a thorough confidence in my judgment. Most importantly for my mental health, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, I don’t care what you think.

Officials are never popular. When you notice an official, you’re probably disagreeing with him or her. And when you disagree, you’re probably wrong. Not always — I certainly make mistakes — but probably. See, I studied the rules for three months, scored 98 on the test when the average fan would be lucky to break 50, and am never more than a few feet away from the play. I know what I’m talking about, and I don’t want to hear you loudly display your ignorance — especially when I’m volunteering at a church camp.

And so I ate alone.

Friday night brought more complications. Awakened by a hallway ruckus, I opened the door and leapt out to grab . . . my sister, running in formation through the guys’ dorm at the strict Bible school she hoped to attend in a month. I ordered the ladies to leave, only to be yelled at in the manner which had quickly become the norm from some coaches. I was not at my best and aptly, if inappropriately, returned fire.

I soon learned that the worst on-court offender (a tattooed, tank-topped ex-jock I’ll call “the Diva” for his foot-stomping tantrums) had actually helped incite the girls’ invasion. Back in my room, I heard the guys next door recount how the “doofy” ref had “flipped out” on the girls before they heroically told him off. At least they had the excuse of youth. Where were the adults? Who were the adults?

The championship game was Saturday, and it pit the Diva’s team, undefeated but with a great player missing, against a team with only one loss. As the game stayed tight down the stretch, tensions rose. I called a foul against the Diva’s team and awarded two free throws.

Suddenly there he was, storming down the sideline, foaming at the mouth, demanding an audience. I briefly listened to him rant, but then told him he couldn’t do it again unless he wanted a technical. The next time he wanted to talk to me, he would have to call time out.

After a timing error was corrected in the Diva’s favor, allowing his team to force overtime, his opponents took the lead. His point guard brought the ball down the right side of the court with his head down and plowed through an opponent who had slid into position in front of him.

Charging.

The Diva went ballistic. He called time out, then followed me out on the court to argue. He complained to the camp director (my co-official) that the call had not been mine to make, then commenced attacking my integrity, at one point actually calling me a liar. I am not known for extraordinary restraint. Only respect for the director and the players on the Diva’s team kept me from issuing a technical foul.

The game came down to the last play — the Diva’s squad down two with seven seconds to go. One of his best players brought the ball down the floor, drove down the right side of the lane, and leaped into traffic in an attempt to draw a foul as he shot. He was not fouled. He missed the shot.

The teams shook hands and I thanked the coaches. The Diva scoffed at me. “You screwed us,” he told me.

Turning his back, he called out to the director: “You should have known better than to get a lawyer as a ref. Thanks a lot.” I sat through the awards ceremony, overlooked by the directors in the “Thank you” portion of the remarks, then loaded my car for the ride home. My vacation was clearly over.

But I was glad. It was time to return to reality, with all its disappointments, disillusionments, misunderstandings, and monotonies. Life is not lived in a series of joyous reunions, stays so brief that the surface remains blissfully unbroken. It’s in the 2 a.m. screaming match; it’s in the response to passionate, competitive anger; it’s in the constant reminders that we were not made to be fulfilled on this earth.

And I obviously had — have — much more yet to learn.

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2. Four Weeks (Part Ten) Read the saga in parts: 1 | 2 | 3...
3. Four Weeks (Part Three) Read the series in parts: 1 | 2 | 3...

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Or read the complete, uninterrupted series here.

By the time I made it to the basketball camp that would serve as the final stop on my four-week sojourn, it was already mid-Thursday. It was the first time in four years or so that I hadn’t been around for the whole week, and I immediately noticed a problem: the college-age coaches were officiating.

I didn’t care that they weren’t very good, or that they were lazy. The problem was that by starting the week responsible for officiating, they had gotten the idea that they knew what they were doing. And what’s more dangerous than people who think they know what they’re doing?

High school basketball is like prison. Lots of rules to follow, big guys tend to dominate — and everyone’s innocent. Just ask them.

Officiating is a good job for me. I love justice, I hate mistakes, and I have a thorough confidence in my judgment. Most importantly for my mental health, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, I don’t care what you think.

Officials are never popular. When you notice an official, you’re probably disagreeing with him or her. And when you disagree, you’re probably wrong. Not always — I certainly make mistakes — but probably. See, I studied the rules for three months, scored 98 on the test when the average fan would be lucky to break 50, and am never more than a few feet away from the play. I know what I’m talking about, and I don’t want to hear you loudly display your ignorance — especially when I’m volunteering at a church camp.

And so I ate alone.

Friday night brought more complications. Awakened by a hallway ruckus, I opened the door and leapt out to grab . . . my sister, running in formation through the guys’ dorm at the strict Bible school she hoped to attend in a month. I ordered the ladies to leave, only to be yelled at in the manner which had quickly become the norm from some coaches. I was not at my best and aptly, if inappropriately, returned fire.

I soon learned that the worst on-court offender (a tattooed, tank-topped ex-jock I’ll call “the Diva” for his foot-stomping tantrums) had actually helped incite the girls’ invasion. Back in my room, I heard the guys next door recount how the “doofy” ref had “flipped out” on the girls before they heroically told him off. At least they had the excuse of youth. Where were the adults? Who were the adults?

The championship game was Saturday, and it pit the Diva’s team, undefeated but with a great player missing, against a team with only one loss. As the game stayed tight down the stretch, tensions rose. I called a foul against the Diva’s team and awarded two free throws.

Suddenly there he was, storming down the sideline, foaming at the mouth, demanding an audience. I briefly listened to him rant, but then told him he couldn’t do it again unless he wanted a technical. The next time he wanted to talk to me, he would have to call time out.

After a timing error was corrected in the Diva’s favor, allowing his team to force overtime, his opponents took the lead. His point guard brought the ball down the right side of the court with his head down and plowed through an opponent who had slid into position in front of him.

Charging.

The Diva went ballistic. He called time out, then followed me out on the court to argue. He complained to the camp director (my co-official) that the call had not been mine to make, then commenced attacking my integrity, at one point actually calling me a liar. I am not known for extraordinary restraint. Only respect for the director and the players on the Diva’s team kept me from issuing a technical foul.

The game came down to the last play — the Diva’s squad down two with seven seconds to go. One of his best players brought the ball down the floor, drove down the right side of the lane, and leaped into traffic in an attempt to draw a foul as he shot. He was not fouled. He missed the shot.

The teams shook hands and I thanked the coaches. The Diva scoffed at me. “You screwed us,” he told me.

Turning his back, he called out to the director: “You should have known better than to get a lawyer as a ref. Thanks a lot.” I sat through the awards ceremony, overlooked by the directors in the “Thank you” portion of the remarks, then loaded my car for the ride home. My vacation was clearly over.

But I was glad. It was time to return to reality, with all its disappointments, disillusionments, misunderstandings, and monotonies. Life is not lived in a series of joyous reunions, stays so brief that the surface remains blissfully unbroken. It’s in the 2 a.m. screaming match; it’s in the response to passionate, competitive anger; it’s in the constant reminders that we were not made to be fulfilled on this earth.

And I obviously had — have — much more yet to learn.

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Much to their relief, she smiled and said: “Well, you missed a quiz today, so take your seats and take out a piece of paper.”

Still smiling, she waited for them to sit down, then said, “First question: Which tire was flat?”

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By Freyja’s cat-drawn chariot!
Holy Odin on a pogo stick! (Hat tip: Djere)
Oh, Frigg!
Sweet goats