Diary of the Blue Ridge

More wisdom from Peter Leithart, this time on the implications of our modern society's concept of romance.

On courtly love: The basic shift is from the ancient and early medieval view that eros sapped and vitiated virtus to a belief that eros was a condition of the possibility of virtus and valor. This is, as Lewis said, a seismic shift in our sensibility, and one that we still do not quite understand.

This change, as I understand it, is why biblical accounts of courting are incompatible for us. To find his son a wife, Abraham sent his manservant on a journey--the manservant is struck by Rebekah's kindness and believe God intends him for his master's son. So the servant bargins with Laban for his daughter, and Rebekah joyfully returns with him to Abraham's family; when they arrive, Isaac immediately takes her "into his tent and love[s] her." We moderns (including Christians) look at this story with sharply raised eyebrows; if it is not offensive, it is at least backwards and distasteful. How can Rebekah be joyful at being given to a man who lives far away, whom she has never met? This man could be anyone! He could be fat! He could be unable to understand Rebekah's complex needs! And what about this Isaac fellow? No one ever asks him what he wants, it's all Abraham, Abraham, Abraham.

The account of Isaac and Rebekah's marriage deeply violates our modern conception of love, which consist primarily of two tenets; first, love is based on whether a person sexually and emotionally excites you, second, love is neccessarily free. This philosophic shift in the understanding of romantic love has consequences, not just for the way we marry, but in all kinds of other areas of our lives. For instance, this, in large part, is why most American Christians' default understanding of the nature of their salvation is basically Arminian. For those who have adopted this modern notion of love, it is unimaginable to be able to love God without having the freedom to also not love him.

Here's a day late Sabbath poem, for my father, who continues to rise in the dark in faithfulness, laboring for the provision of his family and the glory of his Father. When I consider what it means to be a man who fears God, I look to my father. He is my paradigm not because of his perfection, but the opposite. I cannot imagine a better model for my life. In watching him I know that God is good, and keeps his covenant.

On time

At six am, Tuesday morning, February 17th,
it is still dark. My father is standing
in the shower: tired, awake. Soon he will eat
his quick, silent breakfast, lit by a single table
lamp. Raisin bran, coffee with milk,
a banana. In the next room, my mother begins
to stir. Lunch waits, packed
in the refrigerator. If he’s on time
the whole month long,
there’s four hours paid vacation.

Excerpted from an article by Douglas Wilson, in the latest issue of Credenda Agenda,

We have recently fought a war, and we have a twofold duty as we seek to understand it. The first is to reject all of forms of earthly partisanship in our thinking. We have an ultimate loyalty to the Lord Jesus, and not to America. But the second duty consists in remembering that political responsibilities and connections are not detached from the rule and realm of Jesus Christ. The gospel does have political ramifications, some of them direct. We must be like the men of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what Israel should do.

We are on the threshold of the establishment of an unbelieving American empire. This by itself does not exclude our involvment in it--think of Daniel, Joseph, the faithful centurion, and Erastus. The problem is caused by the fact that it is a militantly secularist and pragmatic empire and, as such, the pressure is already being applied to abandon its exclusivist claims concerning the Faith. The logic of such empires always insists upon the joint worship of various gods in the pantheon. This, above all else, places us at odds with the current religious climate.

So, from this point on, every Lord's Day, as you worship the Triune God only, remind yourself, remind your family, that we worship as exclusive Trinitarians. We pledge allegiance to one nation under Christ. We pledge allegiance to nothing under any idol, or under any generic and undefined deity.

Wilson hits on many important themes in this short excerpt, most importantly noting the fact that the United States of America is on (or over) the brink of imperialism, that its empire is a godless one, and that the danger to and responsibility of American Christians is great, and will only grow. The warning against partisanship is an important one; our Lord is not the acknowledged head of either major political party, and this fact has serious consequences--including the reality that they are essentially the same. As Francis Schaeffer wrote, "The basic problem of the Christians in this country in the last eighty years or so, in regard to society and in regard to government, is that they have seen thing in bits and pieces instead of totals." We must heed Schaeffer's words and realize that even when a political party gets a specific issue reasonably right, it does not mean they are on our side, or we on their's. For example, when a party rightly opposes killing babies (though, illogically, not in cases of rape or incest) or a party rightly opposes Iraq War II (though, illogically, not Iraq War I), we must understand that even blind squirrels stumble on acorns occasionally. It does not mean they know anything about surviving the winter, and certainly doesn't mean they should therefore get our vote for President. Above all, we must not fall prey to the crooning of the seductress Pragmatism, who promises the advancement of our goals with just a little compromise--until we discover she was lying on both counts.

For more thoughts on the American Empire, read Claes Ryn's insightful essay, The Ideology of American Empire. Make no mistake--our empire will neither be benevolent nor eternal. America will either be reformed, or it will crumble. The only independent variable in this equation is time. And godless democratic empires are just as totalitarian as godless dictator-led ones--they are just slightly less efficient.

Finally, Wilson reminds us of what the ultimate price of participation in the coming empire will likely be--a renunciation of Christ as the only path to salvation. Witness our current "Christian" President's beliefs about Islam and other religions, and the blind eye turned by most evangelicals to his posturing. Those Christians who hold to the exclusivist claims of Christ are sure to be pushed to the sidelines of national discussions; we will be isolated, and we may be persecuted. As in the days of the Roman empire, citizens will be allowed to believe anything they like as long as they worship Caesar--except in this day and age we prostrate before ideas instead of people, and the religion we will be asked to pledge allegiance to is democratic pluralism and tolerance. The lions will be just as real, though.

My copy of Poetry magazine that I first read this Charles Wright poem in is now all yellow and battered. I'd paid the thirty dollars to get a year subscription to try and see whether or not I could like poetry--Nine-panel Yaak River Screen is what convinced me I did. What I loved about Wright's lines were the occasional intersection of music and image...that wonderful moment of prosidaic beauty that is unique to the art of poetry. What I mean are lines like this; "Creek waters murmur on like the lamentation of women / For faded, forgotten things. / And always the black birds in the trees, / Always the ancient chambers thudding inside the heart." Wright's ideas are interesting, but they're not what makes me want to spend time reading his words--rather I read them because of the thick and pleasing sounds they make. Samuel Coleridge called it the "sense of musical delight"; and it's the first plank in my blueprint of poetics.

Nine-panal Yaak River Screen

by Charles Wright



Midmorning like a deserted room, apparition 

Of armoire and table weights,

Oblongs of flat light,

            the rosy eyelids of lovers

Raised in their ghostly insurrection,

Decay in the compassed corners beating its black wings,

Late June and the lilac just ajar.

 

Where the deer trail sinks down through the shadows of

   blue spruce,

Reeds rustle and bow their heads,

Creek waters murmur on like the lamentation of women

For faded, forgotten things.

And always the black birds in the trees,

Always the ancient chambers thudding inside the heart.

 

-------



Swallow pure as a penknife

                  slick through the insected air.

Swallow poised on the housepost, beakful of mud and a

    short straw.

Swallow dun-orange, swallow blue,

                    mud purse and middle arch,

Home sweet home.

Swallow unceasing, swallow unstill

At sundown, the mother's shade over silver water.

 

At the edge of the forest, no sound in the grey stone,

No moan from the blue lupin.

The shadows of afternoon

               begin to gather their dark robes

And unlid their crystal eyes.

Minute by minute, step by slow step,

Like the small hand on a clock, we climb north, toward

   midnight.

 

------



I've made a small hole in the silence, a tiny one,

Just big enough for a word.

And when I rise from the dead, whenever that is, I'll say it.

I can't remember the word right now,

But it will come back to me when the northwest wind

                      blows down off Mt. Caribou

The day that I rise from the dead, whenever that is.

 

Sunlight, on one leg, limps out to the meadow and settles in.

Insects fall back inside their voices,

Little fanfares and muted repeats,

Inadequate language of sorrow,

                inadequate language of silted joy,

As ours is.

The birds join in. The sunlight opens her other leg.

 

-----



At times the world falls away from us

                        with all its disguises,

And we are left with ourselves

As though we were dead, or otherwised, our lips still

    moving,

The empty distance, the heart

Like a votive little-red-wagon on top of a child's grave,

Nothing touching, nothing close.

 

A long afternoon, and a long rain begins to fall.

In some other poem, angels emerge from their cold rooms,

Their wings blackened by somebody's dream.

The rain stops, the robin resumes his post.

                          A whisper

Out of the clouds and here comes the sun.

A long afternoon, the robin flying from post back to post.

 

------



The length of vowel sounds, by nature and by position,

Count out the morning's meters--

          bird song and squirrel bark, creek run,

The housefly's languor and murmurous incantation.

I put on my lavish robes

And walk at random among the day's

                      dactyls and anapests,

A widening caesura with each step.

 

I walk through my life as though I were a bookmark, a

     holder of place,

An overnight interruption

                   in somebody else's narrative.

What is it that causes this?

What is it that pulls my feet down, and keeps on keeping

   my eyes

        fixed to the ground?

Whatever the answer, it will start

          the wolf pack down from the mountain,

The raven down from the tree.

 

---------



Time gnaws on our necks like a dog

                gnaws on a stew bone.

It whittles us down with its white teeth,

It sends us packing, leaving no footprints on the dust-dour

    road.

That's one way of putting it.

Time, like a golden coin, lies on our tongue's another.

We slide it between our teeth on the black water,

            ready for what's next.





The white eyelids of dead boys, like flushed birds, flutter up

At the edge of the timber.

Domestic lupin Crayolas the yard. 

                     Slow lopes of tall grasses

Southbound in the meadow, hurled along by the wind.

In wingbeats and increments,

The disappeared come back to us, the soul returns to the

   tree.

 

-------   



The intermittent fugues of the creek,

                  saying yes, saying no,

Master music of sunlight

And black-green darkness under the spruce and tamaracks,

Lull us and take our breath away.

                     Our lips form fine words,

But nothing comes out.

Our lips are the messengers, but nothing can come out.

 

After a day of high winds, how beautiful is the stillness of

   dusk.

Enormous silence of stones.

Illusion, like an empty coffin, that something is missing.

Monotonous psalm of underbrush

                and smudged flowers.

After the twilight, darkness.

After the darkness, darkness, and then what follows that.

 

------



The unborn own all of this, what little we leave them,

St. Thomas's hand

        returning repeatedly to the wound,

Their half-formed mouths irrepressible in their half-sleep,

Asking for everything, and then some.

Already the melancholy of their arrival

Swells like a sunrise and daydream

                     over the eastern ridge line.





Inside the pyrite corridors of late afternoon,

Image follows image, clouds

Reveal themselves,

   and shadows, like angels, lie at the feet of all things.

Chambers of the afterlife open deep in the woods,

Their secret hieroglyphics suddenly readable

With one eye closed, then with the other.

 

-----



One star and a black voyage,

         drifting mists to wish on,

Bullbats and their lullabye--

Evening tightens like an elastic around the hills.

Small sounds and the close of day,

As if a corpse had risen from somewhere deep in the

    meadow

And walked in its shadows quietly.

 

The mouth inside me with its gold teeth

Begins to open.

No words appear on its lips,

             no syllables bubble along its tongue.

Night mouth, silent mouth.

Like drugged birds in the trees,

            angels with damp foreheads settle down.

Wind rises, clouds arrive, another night without stars.

I've just finished reading Franky Schaeffer's very enjoyable new novel, Zermatt, the second book in a promised trilogy of self-biographical books that represent a pioneering effort in the so-far-unmined genre of comic reformed Presbyterian coming-of-age literature. Zermatt flew by; though it's 250+ pages, I read most of it a single sitting, out in the sun on Saturday mid-morning--above all things, it was a delightful and entertaining read. The novel follows the misadventures of the Becker family, an American missionary family ministering among the Swiss during the 1960s and vacationing in their customary low-budget alpine ski hotel for a winter holiday from the Lord's Work. The novel is written as a first person narrative of the youngest son, Calvin Dort Becker. In case you haven't yet made the connection, Franky Schaeffer, son of the oft-knickered reformed theologian Francis Schaeffer, was also the youngest son of an American missionary family ministering to the Swiss in the 1960s. It's unclear how far the parallels continue after that, but the reader is left to draw their own conclusions.

Calvin's parents, Ralph and Elsa, are fundamentalists of the most fundamental sort; they do daily battle against the "papists" and wonder if there are any "Real Christians" left (even most other protestants don't count). They sigh at the other guests who smoke and take wine with their dinners, and panic when they discover that their low-budget hotel has acquired an electric guitar and drum set in the last year, leading, they rightly fear, to mixed dancing. As Calvin recounts, it's somewhat difficult to tell who's a "Real Christian," after all.

Real Christians were "Kindred Spirits," as opposed to "just nominal Christians." So many people who seemed at first like Real Christians turned out not to be. In fact, who was and who was not a Real Christian was something that had to be closely watched. Anything could get a person demoted from the A list to the B list, from being Kindred to being "merely saved," from being merely saved to "not even a Christian at all." A drink of alcohol, a mention of jazz or rock and roll in some causal way that betrayed an "overfamiliarity with the World," a "dubious theological opinion," even an "inappropriate joke" about the Things of the Lord, even what someone wore, what their wife wore, any kind of opinion that deviated from what the Lord had laid on Mom's heart concerning the "direction of the Lord's Work" and the "Lord's leading," all this and more could lead to a "break in fellowship."

Few were called and even less were chosen. Other than our family, God, in his wonderful plan for mankind, had apparently decided to save very few people.

Indeed. Needless to say, Calvin is not exactly enamored by his family's lifestyle or beliefs. Before the vacation, he spends hours searching newspapers for descriptions of recent movies so that he can pretend he has seen them, if asked by some "real people." He hides copies of MAD magazine in the attic, to furtively read in his more rebellious moments. And like most boys in the beginning throes of adolescence, he is mostly obsessed with only one thing. Girls.

No matter what I was doing, even while singing hymns in the Monday morning Bible study, I was thinking about the girls around me. I liked the smell of them, warm and sweet, something like melting butter and my pet cat's tummy back when she was a kitten. Girls loomed up in my mind a lot, or at least certain parts of them did. But the girls at the mission were not the sort who let you kiss them. They had come to learn about Jesus and were all much older than I was, mostly in their twenties, and mostly dressed in a godly way that hid everything I longed to get a better look at.

Calvin is a delightfully honest and sympathetic character--especially if you, like myself, grew up in somewhat (I here would like to emphasize somewhat) similar circumstances. His consuming sexual curiosity is not exactly innocent, but the blame for its dysfunctionalism largely rests on his parents' lack of parenting in this area. His only sexual instruction seems to have come from one conversation with his mother when she related the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, instructed Calvin to "reserve himself until after marriage" and to report to her if he ever thought of sex before then. Ralph and Calvin evidently never discuss the matter. Needless to say, Calvin's curiosity was not sated. One of the book's funnier moments comes when Elsa discovers Calvin spying out his sisters' laundered bras, which are hung to dry deep within a maze of sheets precisely so that he won't see them. Calvin attempts to talk himself out of trouble by explaining that he was eyeing the undergarments because he is curious about exactly how the Church is the "Bride of Christ," and positing that since God is sovereign over all things, it must have been his will for him to examine the underwear. "Calvin!" yelps his mother. "[It] sounds to me like you're being dreadfully levitous about the Things of the Lord!" "No, I'm not," the innocent Calvin answers. "I just wanted to ask about predestination and bras."

At first glance, Ralph and Elsa have a reasonably strong marriage and seem quite sure about their beliefs--but as the book goes on, it turns out aren't things aren't quite as peaceful as they seem; indeed, as Rachel, Calvin's truly angelic older sister confesses to him, "it's hard to be a Real Christian."

Elsa is often frustrated by her husband's poor table manners and lack of social graces, especially his "dreadfully working-class upbringing," and she doesn't hide it very well, by turns scolding and praying out loud for him. Ralph is a classic passive-aggressive husband--he quietly rolls his eyes at his wife's constant posturing, and when she begins talking of God's great blessings on their missionary life, he sarcastically remarks that the reason they're stationed in Switzerland instead of India or the Congo, "eating lice on a stick," is not the will of God but rather the fact that Elsa's uncle is on the mission board. After his wife leaves in a huff, Ralph tells the stunned children, "See, Elsa likes to pretend that everything is just so great, so special! But there's a real world out there and I get sick of all her pretending."

Much to Calvin's dismay, it turns out that there aren't any girls his age at the hotel this winter, but he quickly discovers the more mature charms of the thirty-five year old Swiss waitress, Eva. Their daily flirtations quickly become more serious, and the tensions in the Becker marriage come to a head when Calvin's sexual experimentations are discovered by his parents. While Elsa dissolves into righteous hysteria, Ralph suddenly realizes the superficiality and hypocrisy of the religious morality he's been living being by, and his son is (albeit sinfully) rebelling against. I won't spoil the ending for you, but suffice to say that things begin to get pretty crazy (in a fundamentalist sort of way) after that.

Schaeffer's novel succeeds because its characters are all effective caricatures of actual people, ones we likely almost know, but he is not content to leave them there. Instead of slipping into a mockery of conservative evangelicals, those caricatures become believable and sympathetic characters--ones we care about, and whose adventures instruct us. Zermatt also succeeds because it is genuinely funny--Schaeffer knows his subject, the tensions of modern Christianity, well, and it shows in his playful and witty treatment of it. Instead of the forced and contrived drama of most contemporary Christian literature, Zermatt dodges into the gritty realities of religious life and, through truly delightful comedy, helps us rediscover one of the essential paradoxes of our faith; the weakness of the vessels God has chosen to work through. That said, Zermatt does contain fairly explicit (though adolescently comic) depictions of sexuality, and is certainly an "adult" book. For better or worse, this fact, along with the brassiere-clad bosom that adorns the book's cover, will probably keep most conservative evangelicals from reading Zermatt. Which is a bit of a shame, because they're the ones who would probably most enjoy it.

Some piercing thoughts from Peter Leihart's blog on two models for Christian ministry--the prophets Moses and John the Baptist.

Moses is the matchmaker who brings the bride to a trysting place with her lover, Yahweh. He is the "friend of the bridegroom" who, like John the Baptist, prepares the bride for her husband. As such, Moses and John are models for all Christian ministry, which is also all about protecting the virgin bride, training and perfecting her, for the consummation of her wedding. Ultimately, this is a work of the Spirit, the divine matchmaker, but the Spirit works through human "friends."

I have often struggled to see evangelism as anything other than a great dumbing down of Christianity, a simplistic and patronizing message usually delivered with something of a mixture of self-satisfaction and guilt; but Leihart's words, along with the examples of others, have helped reform my thinking into seeing evangelism for what it truly is--a delightful and fathomless mystery, a participative welcoming in of the Kingdom of God.

With apologies to Red Sox fans everywhere who believe so desperately in the beauty of their own century long anti-Yankee angst, watching the Sox-Yank series was a bit like observing Hitler and Stalin duke it out on the Eastern front during World War II. Game 3 was where things began to turn for the worse; with Pedro and the Rocket pitching, the Saturday afternoon match-up had all the markings of a classic battle until it dissolved into an adolescent chicken fight. Trouble started brewing in the third, when Pedro nailed Karim Garica in the back and then got into a Spanish cursing match with Jorge Posada while jabbing his index finger at his head, communicating in a language that everyone involved could understand. Then, in the next inning, Manny Ramirez took loud exception to a high (not inside, just high) fastball from Clemons, and started out to the mound, bat in hand, to discuss it with him. Of course, both benches emptied, Don Zimmer forgot he was 72 and went after Pedro (who was the real culprit) and the game was delayed for at least 15 minutes before the umpires sorted everything out and decided, remarkably, not to eject anyone. From this point of view anyway, it's clear that Pedro and Manny were the root causes of the whole battle; Pedro for hitting Garcia and taunting Posada, Manny for going after Clemons for no reason than his own ego--if it were up to me, both would have been watching the rest of the game on TV (which probably would have been good for the Sox, since they lost anyway).

After the third game, Wakefield momentarily straightened things out by pitching splendidly again in Game Four, tying the series at two apiece. The teams split the next two, leaving them knotted at three wins and forcing a Game Seven that featured a rematch between Pedro and Clemons. The pitching matchup turned out to be slightly overrated, as Clemons was knocked out in the fourth and Pedro blew a three run lead in the eighth, enabling Mariano Rivera to come in and throw three sparkling innings and hold the Red Sox long enough for the Yankees to score the winning run in the 11th. Aaron Boone's homer off Tim Wakefield (who, incidentally would have had three wins in the series if the Sox had managed to score) was a lovely thing to watch, and was a wonderful example of the kind of drama only those sports not tied to a clock can offer. The pure joy on his face and in his pumping fist as he rounded the bases was a beautiful, blessed thing; for one moment, the million dollar salary didn't matter, he was just a man celebrating hard work done well.

As the scruffy Boone's hit soared into the upper deck of left field, I have to admit that, even though I'd pulled for the Red Sox the entire series, I wasn't that disappointed. As I watched the Yankees mob Boone at the plate, Derek Jeter jump at least three feet in the air for joy, and Mariano Riviera crumple to the ground in delight, it was clear that, for all their sins, the Yankees play, and win, with class. For a team of superstars, the Yankees are surprisingly quiet; much of this owed to the leadership of players like Jeter and Pettitte, but it's difficult to imagine a Yankee pulling the same kind of self-interested antics Pedro and Manny did last Saturday, and harder still to imagine any of them needing the same kind of ego-massaging that the Red Sox's stars seem to require on a regular basis. Case in point--Ramirez took himself out of a crucial weekend series with the Yanks in August because of an "ankle injury." After being caught by the media in a bar late Saturday night, Ramirez didn't even show up to the game on Sunday and was AWOL until sometime Monday morning. Incidentally, the Yankees, who are often accused of "buying championships" start six "home-grown" regulars in their everyday lineup (Johnson, Posada, Jeter, Soriano, Williams, Rivera), while the Red Sox have only three (Nixon, Garciaparra and Varitek).

In the end, curses withstanding, the series came down to this: Grady Little sticking with his ace and de facto team leader, Pedro Martinez in the eighth inning with a two run lead and runners at 2nd and 3rd with only one out. The batter, of course, was the same Jorge Posada who Pedro had threatened in Game Three, who now flared an inside fastball in-between the shortstop and centerfielder to score both runs and tie the game the Yankees would later win, sending Pedro to the showers. The three games the Red Sox won in this series were started by Tim Wakefield, Tim Wakefield and John Burkett. If Pedro had held only one of the leads he was given in Game Three and Game Seven (two run lead in Gm. 3, four run in Gm. 7), the Red Sox would be playing in the World Series. "Cowboy up," indeed.

One of the blessings of living in Scottsville is that Ami and I spend half an hour every morning and afternoon driving through some of the most beautiful landscapes in central Virginia--the eighteen mile stretch of Rt. 20 between Charlottesville and home. The rolling hills of the piedmont have an understated beauty; the morning mist that mixes in with the oaks and maples that line the road, the fields of baled hay rolled into massive round bundles that cast their dark shadows across the field in late afternoon as we drive home. The best thing about driving an hour in rural Virginia every day is that you get to see the seasons turn, slowly, one into another. Our summer is almost completely gone now; autumn is here, in all its cool and quiet splendor. This poem is actually more of a September than an October poem, but it'll do. I wrote it my first fall at UVA, struck by the loveliness of this particular road I would sometimes travel; now God has brought me back to travel it every day. He is good. A poem, for the Sabbath.

Driving stick-shift on Rt. 20

The fields are tainted by slanted sunlight
soaking the air yellow and tender, warm
like my grandmother's hand as she slept.

This summer is dying, also. Mailboxes
here are mostly hand-painted, simple
lasting names. The sky is a blue

upside down sea, empty as my backyard
back home at dinner time. This field
on my right holds hay-bales rolled

like giant marbles or boulders strewn
up and down the hills where workers stopped
work for the day. We are

constantly unaware. Orange and red
and gold are beginning to creep into these trees,
weightlessness into my heart.

All beauty begins with pleasure. Though it was beauty that I found in the tones of poetry on those early November mornings of my childhood, the avenue through which I encountered it was pleasure. At five or six years old, listening to that poem with a full stomach and looking forward to a day of playing in the woods with my cousins and brothers, I had no idea what beauty meant; but pleasure I understood, and drank it in. It seems there is an inherent relationship between beauty and pleasure, indeed, Webster (1913 edition) defines beauty as "an assemblage or graces or properties pleasing to the eye, the ear, the intellect, the aesthetic faculty, or the moral sense." That which brings us pleasure is beautiful.

The difficulty is that there is much in this world that seems pleasurable, but we know is not beautiful. The alcoholic and the adulterer and the rich young ruler are all pursuing their own brands of delight; but they are ugly, and lead only to death. They are perversions of pleasure, and so they are perversions of beauty. The trick, it seems, is finding an objective standard for pleasure and beauty beyond our own cravings. The ancients argued that that which is beautiful must also be true and good; in this way they established boundaries for deep pleasure, for drink and sex and wealth are all beautiful things when they are enjoyed in true and good ways. This is true, but it is not preached on much. For much of my life, I believed that following Christ meant that I had to give up pleasure--it made me hate God, for I saw him as my enemy, the One who threatened me with death and sought to keep me from finding the desires of my heart. I longed for a pleasure-filled life I believed I could never have, and I became bitter and angry because of it.

But God has mercy on whom He will have mercy. For I have learned that it is not pleasure He hates, but the perversion of pleasure. And when I cloak myself in his righteousness and submit to his definitions of truth and goodness, I have not less pleasure in drink and sex and wealth, but rather more. I envy the pagan no more; for my delight is far deeper than his.

What then is beautiful? It is what gives those who fear God pleasure. It is the fresh apples I peeled and sliced, the ones my wife rolled in cinnamon and ginger and sugar before piling them into in the pie she made with her hands and we shared with friends. It is my wife herself. It is the moment the sledgehammer hangs in the air before pounding into the wedge to split the logs we'll soon burn in our fire. It's Tristan, who is my charge for an hour every Sabbath, who is four and always walks on his tip-toes, who thinks grass is "mighty tasty" and tells me I have freckles when I'm trying to make him be quiet and listen to the teacher. It's grown men flailing at a slow, floating knuckleball, and Aaron Boone leaping for joy down the third-base line, and onto home plate when he finally hit it hard. Of course, it is also realities like absolute sovereignty of God, His consuming passion for His glory, and His particular and relentless love in my life. But while there is much pleasure to be found in those deep theological truths, that pleasure is inseparable from delight in the concrete and physical reality of our lives. For the theme of the gospel is not to turn our backs on the pleasures of this life; it is to truly enjoy them.

In contrast to the American league, this year's NLCS featured two teams that few would have predicted in April--the Marlins lost 83 games last season, the Cubs 95. But now, after seven breathless games that ended with exactly 26 happy human beings in Chicago (one very old manager and 25 mostly young players), I don't think anyone would have rather seen the Braves and Giants.

The series began with two teams peaking at the right time; the Marlins had beaten the Giants in three straight close games to upset the defending National League Champions, while the Cubs outlasted the Atlanta Braves in a tight, five-game series, winning almostly entirely on the pitching of their two fine young starters, Kerry Wood and Mark Prior. Game One featured Josh Beckett against Carlos Zambrano, but the drama came after both starters had hit the showers; down two runs, Slammin' Sammy Sosa hit one high and deep with one man on and two outs in the bottom of the 9th. As the ball floated into a crowd of raucous Cubs fans, one could feel nearly a century of angst being stripped away in one moment--the Cubs were playing for the pennant, and their favorite slugger had come through in with the game on the line. Mike Lowell eventually won the game for the Marlins with a home run of his own in the 11th, but the Cubs took the momentum from their near come-back and turned it into three straight wins, blasting the Marlins 12-3 in Game Two, winning another close, extra-inning marathon 5-4 in Game Three, and cruising again in Game Four to an 8-3 victory. The Cubs couldn't have planned it better--they would have to lose three consecutive games to miss the World Series; two of those games would be started by Prior and Wood, and both would be at Wrigley. It seemed impossible for them to lose. Not so, not so, Chicago.

The collapse began innocently enough. Josh Beckett, the young Marlins ace pitched the game of his life in game five, beating a weary Carlos Zambrano. No problem. The Cubs had Wrigley, Prior and Wood, and Beckett seemed done for the series. Game Six followed the script perfectly, Prior pitching his usual excellent game and the Cubs getting a run early and adding to the margin again in the 6th and 7th innings. Mike Mordecai ground to third to start the 8th, and the Cubs were five outs from history. Next up, Juan Pierre doubled to the gap, bringing up Luis Castillo, who worked a full count and then hit a high, foul, pop fly to left field, seemingly giving the Cubs their second out of the inning. But when Moises Alou leaped into the first rows of the seats to catch Castillo's ball he found himself competing with an oblivious clump of Chicago fans, every one regaled in sweatshirts and hats of the team they were dooming by their (understandable) enthusiasm. The ball fell harmlessly to the ground. Alou and Prior both yelled obscenities, Castillo walked on the next pitch, and the floodgate opened. After a string of singles, doubles, walks and errors, the Marlins found themselves ahead 8 runs to 3, and 39,577 fans ready to riot in the streets sat in stunned silence.

Much has been made of the fan's interference with Alou's attempted catch, but the blame truly must rest on the Cubs. If Mark Prior makes a good next pitch to Castillo on that 3-2 count, biting the corner with his curve, say, or blowing his fastball by him, everyone forgets about the fan's play and the Cubs mostly likely get to the World Series. But Prior, in striking contrast to Josh Beckett, showed his youth by not even coming close to the plate with his next pitch and then giving up a series of hard-hit balls. The Cubs unraveled when they had to keep their composure, and they lost the series because of it.

Game seven was an anti-climatic affair; the Cubs went up 5-3 in the 3rd, but after the Marlins scored three times in the 6th, the Cubs never mounted anything at all like a rally, meekly allowing Josh Beckett to shut them down the rest of way. Beckett was pitching on only two day's rest and further confirmed his new ace status by tossing four innings of one-hit ball, even though he obviously was tired and didn't have his best stuff. Then, in the 9th, when Paul Bako's soft fly to left landed in Jeff Conine's glove, pandemonium broke loose--hugs and high-fives and pounding mobs of players dancing on the infield. Jack McKeon, who at 72 had given up coaching his grandson's little league team in May to take over the floundering Marlins was thrilled, in a grandfatherly way--he had waited a long time for this moment, too. It would be his first World Series. And so, Florida was going to play for a World Championship for the second time in its decade long history. Chicago had failed to win the pennant for the 59th straight season. There were tears at Wrigley, but not of joy.

As I noted earlier, much will be made of "the play" in the months to come. It is likely that Moises Alou's failed catch will be placed in the same sacred area of memory as Bill Buckner's muffed groundball. Regardless of all that, it is certain that the best team won this series. The Florida Marlins found themselves on the brink of elimination in three consecutive games and won all three, coming from behind in two of them. When all conventional logic said that this was the Cubs' year, that they were destined to win, the Marlins simply put their heads down and kept playing, scratching out runs on singles and doubles, pitching well on two day's rest, never believing that the games were over until they'd had their last say. In contrast, the Cubs lost one out on an unfortunate play and still couldn't win a game they still led 3-0 with only five outs to go--and then were so shell-shocked in the next game that they couldn't mount even a whimper of a rally against a twenty-three year old throwing on short rest. After the events of the last 48 hours, it is abundantly clear that that most intangible of baseball qualities, heart, does in fact exist, and only the Marlins had it. Whoever wins tonight's game between the Red Sox and Yankees will be heavily favored to bring home the Series crown, but they will overlook the Marlins at their own peril. Indeed, they had better prepare for a war, and a team that doesn't know when they're beat, because that is what they will get.

For me, poetry first happened at church. Every year, since long before I was born, my family has attended an early morning Thanksgiving service at Fairfield Presbyterian Church in Mechanicsville, Virginia.

The service starts at seven in the morning, and there are hymns, prayers, a short sermon on some variation of the importance of giving thanks and the pilgrims and Squanto and jokes about how much turkey we’ll eat. After the sermon, the entire congregation files over to the fellowship hall, where there waits a huge country breakfast, prepared by the Men’s Sunday School—the reason people come back every year. It wasn’t until the last couple of years that I began to realize the men probably orchestrated the whole breakfast part because it got them out of hearing a sermon so early in the morning on a holiday, but the meal is always a truly glorious affair; scrambled eggs, sausage, biscuits, grits, and fried apples on Styrofoam plates, milk, coffee, or juice in your cup, and always more for the asking.

Then, when everyone’s finished, and I’m eating my sister’s leftover sausage, and the grown-ups are drinking coffee and hoping for a nap before lunch, my Great-Uncle’s brother, Murrell, goes to the front and everyone quiets down as he reads aloud James Whitcomb Riley’s poem, When the Frost is on the Punkin. I know now that the poem is overly sentimental and hardly qualifies as a great piece of writing, but those two minutes every year when Murrell Nuckles would read that poem are my single best memory of childhood. My belly was full, my cousins were in town, and this white-haired man with a beautiful, 1930s Richmond accent was making music telling a wonderful story of thanksgiving. I've recorded the poem here, but you should know that, for full effect, it must be read out loud.

"When the frost is on the punkin"
- James Whitcomb Riley

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock,
And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin' turkey-cock,
And the clackin' of the guineys, and the cluckin' of the hens,
And the rooster's hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;
O, it's then the time a feller is a-feelin' at his best,
With the risin' sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,
As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere
When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here—
Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the trees,
And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees;
But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze
Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days
Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock—
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,
And the raspin' of the tangled leaves as golden as the morn;
The stubble in the furries—kindo' lonesome-like, but still
A-preachin' sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill;
The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed;
The hosses in theyr stalls below—the clover overhead!—
O, it sets my hart a-clickin' like the tickin' of a clock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps
Is poured around the cellar-floor in red and yaller heaps;
And your cider-makin's over, and your wimmern-folks is through
With theyr mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and sausage too!...
I don't know how to tell it—but ef such a thing could be
As the angels wantin' boardin', and they'd call around on me—
I'd want to 'commodate 'em—all the whole-indurin' flock—
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

It wasn’t the story I remembered, or loved. Rather, it was that mellow voice repeating the enchanting sounds, the rhythm and the cadence of those rhymed lines. I would drink in the pleasure of it, trying to freeze the music, the feeling, and hating when it was over. It was like a live performance of your favorite song by your favorite singer – a moment you could never recreate, regardless of how hard you tried. Poetry is many things; most of all, it is an encounter with beauty--and those sleepy November mornings were the first time I ever saw it.

With their backs against the wall on Sunday, down three games to one, the Marlins pinned their hopes on Josh Beckett. Born May 15, 1980, Beckett is some six weeks older than I am, and has been mostly inconsistent over his two year major league career, with a record of 17-17, though his ERA is better than that, at 3.32. His main calling card is a fastball that tops out around 98 mph, "high heat," as they say. But as with most power pitchers, Beckett is effective when he can rely on his other pitches, too--a big, overhand curve and a developing changeup.

I missed the first four innings hiking in the Shenandoah Park with Ami and Aaron and Nicole, but we heard the rest of the game on the radio driving home, and then caught the last few innings on TV. When we started listening in the bottom of the fourth, it was clear that there was a first-class pitchers' duel going on--both Beckett and Zambrano were throwing well, the score was 0-0, and it was clear that whoever blinked first would probably lose. Zambrano had been in some tight spots, but had pitched out of them, while Beckett had yet to give up a hit.

The turning point of the game came in the top of the fifth, when Aramis Ramirez, who had already homered three times in the series, got into a dramatic showdown with Beckett leading off the inning, fouling off pitch after pitch on a 3-2 count until, on the eleventh pitch of the at-bat, Ramirez lined a high hard one down the left-field line, with only about 18 inches keeping it on the wrong side of being a homerun. It's hard to overstate the importance of this at-bat to the game; you've got two young starters facing each other in their most important game ever--the score's knotted at 0, and one the other team's best just smacked your best pitch, only barely missing a home run. And so, with all the naivete and stubbornness of youth, Beckett rears back and throws him the same exact pitch; a high, hard fastball--but this time, Ramirez swings and misses. Game over. The Marlins score twice in the bottom of the inning, and the Cubs don't come close to threatening again.

And the end of the game, Beckett's stat line was indeed impressive; nine innings (his first career complete game), two hits, zero runs, one walk, eleven strikeouts, only 115 pitches, and remarkably, only five balls hit out of the infield. But what I'll remember about that game is that one moment in the 5th inning, driving back from the mountains and hearing Josh Beckett give Aramis Ramirez exactly the pitch he wanted; and striking him out anyway.

It's autumn in the Blue Ridge, and we're gathering ourselves for the explosion of color that's coming in the next few weeks. I heard on NPR the other day that because of all the rain this summer the trees are supposed to be even more beatuiful this fall than most years. I'm hoping for that. Truly, the trees teach us to worship, as they clap their hands in joy at the goodness of creation and celebrate the turning of the seasons that mark us another year closer to its consummation. They know we must die to live; they put on their best clothes to do it. A poem, for the Sabbath.

Moseley, Virginia

At the old house, each October
we raked walnuts into the drive,
where car tires would roll them over
all month long--bruising and splitting
their hulls, staining our tires in long
splotches, stripping the skin from the meat.

Later, after the leaves had all fallen,
the four of us piled them into lines,
building houses. We each laid out
our own room, and built long halls
between; quiet, colder afternoons
waiting to be called for dinner.

-----------------------------

That fall, Gramps made each of us
eat a persimmon before the frost,
"the only way you won't forget."
The unripe fruit unfolded our mouths
and knotted them again. My brothers and I
spat behind the bushes, remembering.

A week later, the grass turned
green thatched ice, Gramps sat on the porch
and, on newspaper, peeled three
brown persimmons with his pocketknife.
That morning, they seemed
the only undead things in sight.

---------------------------

In January, snow's soft weight
broke in the roof of the old cattle barn.
My father went, with his axe and me,
to fill a wheelbarrow with boards.
Inside, you could sit in the stalls

and see the sky. He split the wall
and roof, legs spread to swing, and
I filled. I asked him to explain
"momentum," a word I'd seen in a book.
The barn lasted all that winter and the next.

After splitting the first two games in the Bronx, the Yankees and Red Sox are heading to Beantown, and a Saturday showdown between two future Hall-of-Famers--the Pedro and the Rocket. I watched both of the opening games, which were a near mirror of each other, score-wise, with the Sox winning 5-2 on Tuesday, and the Yanks coming back to claim a 6-2 victory last night. Both were well-played, but lacked the drama and intensity of the five game opening round series set, and I watched them that way; drinking coffee and reading and talking to Ami at the kitchen table as we watched.

In game one the Yankees were thought to have a decided advantage, with their ace, Mike "Moose" Mussina pitching on six days rest, while the Red Sox, because of the five game showdown with the A's, were forced to start only their third best hurler, Tim Wakefield. Of course, "hurler," usually a quite good descriptive noun for major league pitchers, is a misnomer for the 37 year old Florida native, who never throws the ball harder than 80 miles an hour, and most often throws a knuckleball that floats in at around the mid-sixties. "Tosser" would be more accurate.

The knuckleball really is a truly ridiculous pitch, slowly arching toward the plate like something you'd throw your eight year old son (pitchers throw sixty-five mph in the Little League World Series) before it dances up, down or sideways. Hitting a knuckleball is like "trying to hit a bumblebee with a boat paddle" I heard someone say one time; and I think what they meant is that it's difficult to do, and even harder to do very well. That was certainly the case for the Yankees on Tuesday, who were usually able to hit the ball, only striking out twice against Wakefield, but very rarely hit it hard, managing only two hits in six innings. The Red Sox got three home runs from their much ballyhooed and muscular lineup, but the game, and night, belonged to the knuckleballer.

Wakefield's pitching career is something of an accident; he was drafted in 1988 by Pittsburgh, after four record setting seasons as a first baseman at his alma mater, Florida Tech. But after a season or two in the minors it became clear that Wakefield wasn't big league material; until, presumably in a moment of desperation, the young, weak-hitting first baseman realized he could throw a knuckleball. Throwing the knuckler is truly a gift, a special vocation; like most things with the pitch, the ease with which it appears to be delivered is deceiving. Roger Angell writes about the pitch in his book, Once More Around the Park,

The mystery of the knuckleball is ancient and honored. Its practitioners cheerfully admit that they do not understand why the pitch behaves the way it does; nor do they know, or care much, which particular lepidopteran path it will follow on its way past the batter's infuriated swipe. They merely prop the ball on their fingertips (not, in actual fact, on the knuckles) and launch it more or less in the fashion of a paper airplane, and then, most of the time, finish the delivery with a faceward motion of the glove, thus hiding a grin.

There's something deeply biblical about the absurdity of the knuckleballer; like David, he strides confidently to the mound armed with only a few pebbles to use against his much stronger and more athletic opponents' swords and spears--and on Tuesday, he got Goliath squarely between the eyes.

Last night's game two was dominated by the starting pitcher, as well, but this time it was the one on the opposing side. Just as in the opening series against Minnesota, Andy Pettitte was called upon to start the second game for the Yankees in somewhat desperate circumstances; if the Bombers had lost last night they would have headed for Fenway down two games to none, and knowing they'd have to beat Pedro to keep it from being a three-game margin, which no team has ever recovered from. The tall, lanky Texan is the quietest Yankee pitcher; surrounded by Mussina, Clemens and Wells, he's easily forgotten--though on most teams he'd be a left-handed ace, with his good fastball, changeup and sinker, along with a nasty pickoff move to first (even when Pettitte's not actually picking runners off, he's impacting the game; last night Gabe Kapler got such a bad break when he tried to steal second in the first inning that he was out by five feet, saving at least one run). Rumor is that Andy--who is engaging, though soft-spoken, in person (or at least on TV), had a lot to do with that other Texan taking to Yankees clubhouse the way he has.

Even though he gave up six hits in the first two innings last night, Pettitte allowed only one run, courtesy of two double plays and good situational pitching. Then, after the second frame, the lefthander got in a zone, pulling down the brim of his cap and holding up his black glove as he read Jorge Posada's signs, so that all you could see was were his two dark eyes peering out before he went into his delivery. Ami was especially struck by the intentionality of his windup, the way he slowly and deliberately raised his leg and then placed it down as he followed-through with his long left arm, and said so. He was working quickly, and well. By the sixth inning, the score was 4-2, and there wasn't even a hint of a BoSox comeback brewing; and with Jose Contreras, the rookie Cuban, and Mariano Rivera coming on in relief, the Yankees never even allowed them to consider it.

So now it's the best of five. One gets the feeling that this could be historic series, and if the Red Sox can only exorcise this demon, winning the World Series will certainly follow--after all, it is the curse of the Babe, so it would seem fitting that the Sox would have to beat his team in order to end it. On to Fenway, and destiny.

I was reading an essay today by Roger Angell about the 2002 World Series, the first all-wild card affair (which could happen this year, too), and stumbled across this bit about Ted Williams. The Splendid Splinter died last year, and Angell, the poet laureate of baseball, does a beautiful job memorializing him. One of the best parts of baseball is its history, and one of the best parts of its history is the batting stance and smooth swing of Ted Williams.

The picture of Ted batting is burned deep into the collective New England memory: the youthful, intelligent gaze switching from his bat to the pitcher and back again; the loosening shrug he gave his limbs and shoulders as he stepped in; the lightly bent knees and tilted head; and the bat held well up behind, completing a tall vertical line at plate-side--from foot to knee to elbow to chin to bat tip--that defined for the pitcher the dimensions of the chilling task at hand. His right-front shoulder drooped as the pitcher's motion began (he batted left, of course), putting the bat still farther back, but your attention now swerved to his lead hip, which had cocked and turned even as he strode forward, so that his body, now moving swiftly toward the pitch, simultaneously coiled and twisted away. The extended swing (if he chose to swing) would start a fraction late but then catch up, reaching full power as his hands and arms drove through the ball. But that hip-cock was the whole trick: it made you smile even as you drew in your breath. It kept him loose--there was a touch of cha-cha-cha there--and it provided that extra beat of time which hitters call the prime ingredient of a sound swing. He'd given himself a chance.

He never sounded lofty about hitting, despite a lifetime .344 average, five hundred and twenty-one homers, and a .482 lifetime on-base percentage (the best ever), plus the ghostly speculative numbers that could be tacked onto his totals had he not missed the better part of five seasons while in service as a fighter pilot. He appeared to remember baseball at first hand, without sadness or sentimentality. I recall a mid-eighties Florida conversation of his with the eminent outfielder slugger Gary Matthews, then with the Phillies, who wanted to know the best response for a batter to a pitcher's backup slider after two fastballs up and in. "Why, take that pitch, then!" Ted cried. "Just let it go by. Don't be so critical of yourself. Don't try to be a .600 hitter all the time. Don't you know how hard this all is?"

Game 5 of the Red Sox/A's series was Monday night, and it was even more enjoyable than the Cubs game...because it was a better game, and because my wife stayed up to watch it with me. I'm amazed at the effort she's putting into understanding baseball, how it demonstrates her love for me, and how she's beginning to find pleasure in it, too. Ami's parents and sister also came over for dinner before the game-I grilled hamburgers and hotdogs on the deck and talked to her dad about seminary while the girls were inside. We all ate out there and afterwards sat in the growing dark, listening to Simon and Garfunkel and the woods and not talking much. It's times like that I'm glad we live in the country.

Oh, and the game: it started out with two of the major's best pitchers, Pedro Martinez and Barry Zito cruising through the first five innings or so without breaking a sweat. Martinez is widely acknowledge to be baseball's best when he's on, and he was on Monday, with his hard, moving, two-seam fastball, good slider and paralyzing changeup. However, as dominant as Pedro was, Zito was better, dropping his big, sweeping overhand curve in for strikes, which left the Red Sox batters to choose between trying to flail at the ball as it dropped or hoping, usually in vain, that the pitch would miss the strike zone. 1-0 Oakland, after five.

Then, in the sixth inning, Zito inexplicably lost his control, and Manny Ramirez finally hit a ball hard, pulling it far over the leftfield wall for a three run homer, giving the Sox a 4-1 lead. At that point, the game should have been over...a three run lead, late in the game, Pedro on the mound. But these are the Red Sox.

And so it was that, after a scary moment in the 8th, when Johnny Damon and Damien Jackson collided with each other in the outfield, stunning both fielders and seemingly everyone in the stadium except for Nomar Garciaparra, who reached between his prone teammates, found the ball and nailed the Oakland batter at second to end the inning, the Sox found themselves in a jam in the bottom of the 9th with Oakland runners at 2nd and 3rd, one out, and a scanty one run lead. Enter Derek Lowe, the passionate sinkerballer who started his career as a closer but is now Boston's 2nd best starter. Lowe struck out the first batter, walked the second to load the bases, and then, with his team's season riding on every pitch, threw a backdoor sinker that caught the inside part of the plate, striking Terrence Long out looking and winning the series for the Sox. As Ami said to me, it was almost too much to watch. Too beautiful. God is good for making a game like this.

Well, after a long, tv-less summer, Ami and I decided to invest in an antenna in order to watch the baseball postseason. I won't pretend it was her idea.

So far, the investment has more than paid off--this October has all the markings of a classic, with two decisive games in the opening round, and the Red Sox and Cubs both winning. I watched both games - the first pitted the offensively dominant Braves, who were baseball's best team most of the summer, against the historically hapless Cubbies, who won the Central division this year largely based on a young starting rotation that is the envy of every team in the league excepting Oakland. Kerry Wood, who is only the Cubs' second-best starter, was brilliant through eight innings, mixing a high 90's rising fastball with knee-buckling curves.

The only time the Braves really mounted anything like a challenge to the imposing Wood was in the seventh inning, when they put men on first and second with no one out, and slugger Gary Sheffield coming to bat.
Sheffield's batting stance is all violent, tensed-up energy--he stands against in the pitcher and wags his bat back in forth in the air constantly until the very last moment when he swings. The unorthodox batting style might help put him in the Hall of Fame one day, though, and this season it helped him to probably the third best offensive marks in the National League, behind the god-like Barry Bonds and quietly explosive Albert Pujols. Cubs fans everywhere had to be imagining the worst - a three run homer.

Their fears proved to be foolish, however, when Sheffield hit a hard, sinking liner to center, which Cubs outfielder Kenny Lofton appeared to trap as he caught the ball. Replays would later show that Lofton actually did catch the ball without the help of the outfield grass, but the umpire said he didn't catch it, much to the confusion of Braves baserunner Marcus Giles, who was forced out at second after he retreated to first base, thinking the ball had been caught. When it was all over, Sheffield was safe at first, and one run was in, and still only one out; but Chipper Jones could only manage a hard grounder to short off of a Woods breaking ball, and the consequent 6-4-3 double play ended the inning.

After that brief flirtation with offensive effectiveness, the Braves hitters quickly reverted back to their early habits of striking out on high, hard fastballs or swinging at curves in the dirt, and the game ended without anymore drama, 5-1. The Cubs seemed to take a brief moment after the last Brave made the last out before they began celebrating, as though they were still expecting the home team to somehow mount a last minute rally and dash their World Series hopes. But when your team hasn't won a pennant in 58 years or a chamionship in 95, a little disbelief seems appropriate. Once the final score registered, though, the Cubs were giddy with delight--Moises Alou and Sammy Sosa hopping to slap gloves in the air, Kenny Loften grinning hysterically as he charged in from center, threading through the pack of Cubs fans who had made the trek to Atlanta and were now running on the field.

The Cubs, of course, have a long way to go--the Marlins team they'll face in the National League Championship Series will be a tough match, especially with their youthful exuberance and 60,000 screaming fans who only lately remembered there was actually a baseball team in Florida--but, for now, Wrigleyville is happier than it's been in a long, long time--and even this diehard Cardinal fan can't begrudge them that.

I'm posting the text of an email I sent recently to family and friends, since those are the only people I anticipate visiting here.

Dear all,

Just wanted to update you on some articles I've recently written for my employer, oldSpeak. So now you'll have something to do if find yourself with a few minutes of internet surfing to spare.

My editorial on the legacy of September 11th.

My article on the new, super-cool teen Bible called Revolve.

And if you missed it the first time, my article on the "Christianity" of Dubya.

Ami and I are coming up on 5 months of marriage, and continue to find ourselves suprised and grateful at God's goodness in bringing us into covenant together. Not that there haven't been difficult weeks/months, but santification is a slow process at best, and there is good in that, too. Tempatures are dropping in our part of Virginia, and it's been cold enough the last few nights to light a fire in the woodstove--with varying degrees of success. Last night I managed to literally fill the whole house with smoke before I could get a real fire going. But my wife (my wife!) is patient. We recently bought an antenna to be able to pick up the baseball playoffs from a tv station in Richmond...which means our summer evening ritual of sitting on the deck and playing dominoes has been replaced with sitting in the living room and watching the Red Sox and Braves. We're also continuing to consider the possibility of attending seminary in St. Louis next fall, and I've begun to take formal steps at Trinity toward that goal. Pray for us with that. But life is quiet, and good--in the best senses of those words. Hope that each of you are doing well. Give us a call if you're in the Charlottesville/Scotsville area--we'd love to have you come over for dinner and enjoy the woodstove with us.