The other day we purchased a Mac for my wife. On the following day I wanted to listen to some music, so I hit the eject button for the CD/DVD drive. A sharp little white icon appeared on the screen, but nothing else happened. I visited the “Applications” window, clicked on the eject button for the drive, and this time a dialogue box told me “Thanks for playing, but the CD drive is busy and cannot be stopped.”

So my wife’s Mac was too busy to eject a CD for me. I should have stopped there.

Of course I could not lose to the Mac, I wanted music. It’s not much to ask of a computer, but our Mac just couldn’t stop its important work to help me out.

Things escalated. While fearing that I would irretrievably ruin the computer, I tapped, deleted, and pushed everything that seemed like it could help. Squinting hard and looming large over the Mac, I tapped and clicked, tapped and clicked. If it wasn’t my wife’s computer I probably would have jabbed those keys a bit more.

My mind raced and my stomached tightened as I scrutinized the Mac and repeated my attacks, pleas, and scowls. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. It seemed like a referendum on my youthfulness, on my technological aptitude, and overall claim to being a young adult in our technologically advanced world. I had to win, but despair flashed on the screen over and over.

And then I remembered the simple mantra of all IT support wizards, “Reboot” “Reboot” “Reboot.” The simplest solution is always the last one you try.

I rebooted. I hit the eject button. The CD jumped out of the slot as if to say, “Ta da!” I won without having to call a more knowledgeable friend, and so it was a victory by the narrowest of margins, but a victory nonetheless.

“Crops” just sounds more serious, more permanent. But don’t take me wrong; I’d make a lousy farmer, the chief reason being I hate working on engines and just about anything mechanical. I still don’t know how our lawn mower will respond this spring after I did zip to prepare it for the winter.

Can you imagine if my livelihood depended on maintaining a large John Deer tractor?

My recent infatuation with dirt and planting stuff is most likely a mix of two things. The first is Barbara’s Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which documented her family’s heroic struggle to eat locally, and primarily home-grown food for an entire year. To be frank, I never gave much thought to where my food came from, so long as I could find a grocery store.

Thanks to Barbara I learned about the meat industry, the benefits of organic food, and the energy required to support our current food infrastructure. Of course it’s not as simple as “Eat local and you’ll save the world,” but in many circumstances it sure helps. If anything, I’ve learned to only buy certain foods if they are grown organically. For example, apples suck up the pesticides. Imagine drinking a shot glass of pesticides with that apple each day.

And then Barbara drove me to start shopping at local farm stands and farmers markets. While these aren’t the places to save a buck, I learned to pick up select items at these markets. Of course when you spend some time hanging around farmers and finding out how your food is grown, you start wondering if you should give it a try.

But really, why stop at growing a few crops such as tomatoes and lettuce? Having just purchased a plain ranch house surrounded by a sea of grass and two meager bushes, I decided it was time to start investing in some flowers. It began ever so modestly with a few pansies who sweltered in the summer heat. However, a few elderly women caught wind of my new home and started dropping off bags and bags of perennial flowers they had removed from their own gardens. Unfortunately I had no place for these offerings, and so the digging began.

It started with two flower beds in the back yard and one on the side of the house last year. The flowers thrived and are now springing up. Of course that spurred some further ambition that has now extended to the sparse front of our house. On a warm spring day I dug out a 20 foot by 3 foot flower bed, peeling back the grass and laying down some fresh top soil. I followed with the signature pansy mix. Under a fluorescent light in the guest room we have some cosmos, flocks, and bunny tails—yes, flowers called bunny tails—waiting to be added. It should be a very full flower bed by the time we’re done with it.

But why stop with a massive flower bed out front? We’re also working on tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, peppers, and lettuce for a brand new garden out back right next to the blueberry bushes we planted last year.

I think I have a problem.

I should be clear about this: I really never cared all that much about growing my own flowers or “crops” until last summer. Now I’m spending entire Sundays tearing away grass, dumping in dirt and mulch, and sticking a divider around the flower beds. What happened to me?

In my more romantic moments I tell myself that I’m reconnecting with the earth, with the way things have been until the industrial revolution or perhaps the interstate system forever changed the way we transport food. I feel like I’m not really doing anything all that novel or new, something that thousands of people do and have been doing, but somehow I’ve been missing. And perhaps this “missing out” is what drives me. I’ve been missing out on something so normal, so natural for a human being: working the earth, growing flowers, and tending his own food.

I can’t imagine what I used to do two springs ago.

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Storytelling is part of who we are as people. Who doesn’t have a reserve of lively tales to toss into the pot when a good conversation is brewing? I readily pull out my two tales involving unwanted bats in our house, or the time myself and a group of friends followed ambulances to Jerusalem’s temple mount and witnessed the beginning of the Intifada in the fall of 2000.

Fiction certainly has an untouchable place in the realm of the arts and humanities. A skillfully woven tale is a masterpiece to treasure. Nevertheless, our fascination with memoirs and personal essays of late reveal more than our society’s vanity. Through these genres we connect with strangers, enter their worlds, and share their experiences. It’s as if we are living in someone else’s skin.

There is no shortage of these interesting stories, only opportunities to share them. Even if a story is committed to paper and never published, the writer provides an incredibly personal gift for future generations to learn from and share.

Regardless of publishing prospects, every person who has lived has a duty to pass on history, stories, or dare I say memoirs to the future generations. If the story is particularly good and the opportunity presents itself, it may even be worth submitting to a magazine or anthology. Writing down our own stories may turn out to be one of our most important accomplishments while on earth.

If the mute button worked on people I would put it to good use in cafes, trains, planes, and other public places. Cell phone technology has advanced to the place where even people who shouldn’t have cell phones do. They treat the phone as an extension of their homes; as if holding a thin chunk of plastic with a chip in it brings a slice of home to wherever they are, enabling them to talk as loud as they please.

These cranked up conversations cover any number of inane topics that exhibit the listlessness and lack of creativity so rampant in our society. With so much drama, tragedy, and comedy in our world, we have to find better topics when using cell phones. Sadly, these conversations begin with a description of the caller’s location, since it’s so novel to use a phone from somewhere other than home, and then naming some poor excuse of a reason for calling.

A typical conversation usually goes something like this: “Hey Jane, I’m on an airplane right now surrounded by people so I thought this would be the perfect time to call you and speak up very loudly. Our plane won’t come down for 3 hours so I can talk about anything I want, such as our plans to meet for lunch two weeks from now, while everyone around me plugs their ears and casts mean looks in my general direction for no particular reason that I can discern since everyone uses cell phones these days and the captain himself said that it’s now safe to talk on cell phones, and I just love to use this wonderful new technology since I grew up with one rotary phone per house on the block and we sometimes had to walk a mile in the snow for days on end, swapping our last piece of cheese just to dial a single number on the phone unless you were willing to give up a week’s worth of pay in order to call a distant relative who always forgot your name because they didn’t have caller I.D. or cell phones back then.”

Now imagine the same person on a plane, but this time you sit behind him with a remote control that works on people tucked away in your carry on luggage. You hear the bleeping of the cell phone to the tune of some has-been top forty pop song and scramble for your remote. Your neighbor gladly takes your book because he knows the importance of your task for the common good of humanity.

You hear the person flip his cell phone open and imagine him surveying the number displayed on the screen. You paw through your carry on bag with books, magazines, an extra pair of underwear, and even toss your tooth brush on the floor just to grasp the remote in time to punch the mute button and cut off the deadly dialogue that is sure to begin.

Peeking through the seats, you observe hands flapping and a jaw moving up and down, opening and closing. Palms are up-stretched and sweat beads on a worried brow. The phone lies helplessly open in the passenger’s lap. The muted passenger looks to the woman to the left, but she is unconcerned and unsympathetic, refusing to be roused from her magazine. The passenger bows in resignation and punches the end button. A series of taps indicates this person is text messaging the would-be caller to explain this strange scenario.

Beaming with pride you hoist the remote control above your seat to the delight of the smiling, grateful masses on the plane who gaze on in awe and rally to your standard for you have stopped a cell phone conversation in a public place.

Our new home had a nice location, but everything else was either cheap plywood, smelled of smoke, or broken. I exaggerate, but point made nonetheless. While most of the appliances were either satisfactory or in good shape, the sellers passed along a little cash to purchase a new dishwasher. During our first weekend in the home we left our mounds of boxes to seek out the beloved appliance of dish washing husbands.

Carting off a mid-range dishwasher from the store, we hauled it into the house and let it become acquainted with the new environment—much like a goldfish adjusting to new water. After a week of staring at the hefty box and consulting an adequate number of plumbing professionals and handymen, I decided that the dishwasher was ready for a change of location.

Things never went well, according to plan, or smoothly. Pick your cliché for ease and simplicity, and I guarantee it did not apply. I needed help disconnecting the old dishwasher, had to buy an adequate wrench, didn’t have the right kind of hose, lacked a long enough electrical cord, and then broke all kinds of pipes under the sink.

I don’t really know how much stuff broke, only that open water lines filled up our buckets pretty fast. The antiquated faucet sent spindling metal roots below the sink, weaving and curling around so that I was never quite sure where each line began or ended.

For a solid week I returned home from the office, put on my work clothes, and laid under the sink to bang, clang, and fight off profanity. Each line seemed to have a leak, and every nut on a pipe was in an impossible location for my petite wrench. Even after I found the leak, it became clear that the pipe could not be replaced: we needed a new faucet. That meant every single connection had to be undone.

I can’t remember being so angry at an inanimate object before. I wanted to punch something or pull out an aluminum bat and beat up an old piece of machinery. Using my bare hands to tear the faucet out in one growling roar seemed plausible. I was a lost cause. Even with half of the sinks lines removed, a stubborn bunch held out at the top, daring me to wedge my wrench into their stronghold. Persisting with my personal war, I substituted deep “Ugh’s” and pointed “Agh’s” for the words scrolling through my mind.

And then my wife asked, “Can I have a try at it?” I wasn’t going to stand in her way. Prowling around the kitchen like a wild beast, I listened to her efficient cranks with the wrench. Metal clanked down inside the cabinet and within twenty minutes she popped out with a smile. “I’m all done. That was kind of fun.”

With her book and cup of tea she settled on the couch, the picture of domestic tranquility. I stared at my handily slain adversary in disbelief. For whatever reason I told myself this was a private battle, a bout of perseverance I had to win at any cost, even if I lost myself in anger, stewing in the worst thoughts I could dredge from my spirit. We all need help. If only we asked for it.

Nevertheless, I spent a bit of time on my research and determined that if it didn’t make the cut, I would at least make it available for free to all who are interested in reading an analysis of the impact of Stan Grenz on Christians who blog. The title is: Christian Blogs: Fulfilling Grenz’s Communal Vision for Theology.

As you probably have figured out by now, the article was returned. So, in keeping with my original intention, I have loaded the article below.
You may read it here: Stanley Grenz and Blogs

Among the many mourners of Stanley Grenz’s passing was a large, faceless group who rarely, if ever appeared in the news headlines. Most did not attend the funeral, take a class with him, or even meet him. Their names, if you can find them, are not recognizable to many in the theological community and carry little authoritative weight when cited.  And yet this faceless group that operates under the radar was profoundly impacted by the work of Stanley Grenz and carries on his legacy in a subtle, yet very real manner. This group is the online community of Christian bloggers.