Ah, corruption!

This is an interesting report on the revolving door between Congressional staffers and pharmaceutical lobbyists. Also interesting, the woman interviewed from the ProPublica group is my first cousin.


Watch CBS News Videos Online

Come on testosterone, work!

I'm trying so hard to grow a beard. Pray for me.

At last

The new door set up is completely installed. Check.

Megan asked if I felt manly. The answer is no...chauvinist.

I do know, where you go is where I want to be.

Megan,

Thanks for arguing religion, society, sex, and etiquette with me. I love you.

Pandora just popped up the DMB song that's referenced in this post's title and it occurred to me that I'm all over the map sometimes. How frustrating it must be sometimes to try to follow me, to try to talk with me, and to smile in the face of my twists and turns. I'm NEVER sure of anything else, but I've always been sure that where you are is where I want to be.

And since I love PDA, I thought I'd tell you on my blog.

Be well.

Are you looking for answers
to questions under the stars?
If along the way you are growing weary
you can rest with me until a brighter day,
and you’re OK.


I am no superman,
and I have no answers for you.
I am no hero, oh that’s for sure.
But I do know one thing:
Where you are, is where I belong.
I do know, where you go
Is where I want to be.

On redemption

Why would God offer us redemption? Humans clearly cannot handle, are not responsible enough to manage, a blameless life. Too easily this freedom leads to a life of judgment.

Unless it is true that there are only a chosen few.

Salvation theology seems to be about as unloving an idea as I can think of.

Return fire for the C-Ds

Just a taste of an incredible show

I'll probably search out a bunch of these posts and embed them.

I've finally figured it out.

It seems like I'm always telling other people how REALLY BIG their kids are!

Newsflash, hey genius...

We have small kids.

:)

:)

Be well.

On hell and justice

In hell, I sit in a mostly dark room while Maggie wails a crappy Miley Cyrus song at the top of her lungs while said song blares out of the stereo. All the while, Lennon struggles to play a baseball bat guitar while Rigby tries desperately to eat it; screaming ensues. After that, Maggie turns off the stereo to give a (pretty good) rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. Then she tells me how the Boy Scout down the street shed tears of joy when she performed it for him.

I'm in hell, right now.

So President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize today. He hasn't done anything measureable to earn it, but as the day has gone on two things have occured to me. First, I voted for him based on hope and potential when he didn't even have a full term in Congress by which he could be judged. I was good with that then, and I'm good with it now. So why should I begrudge an international body (or at least a Norwegian body) the opportunity to reward him for the same hope and potential. It's certainly not a bigger deal than electing him president.

Which led me to another conclusion. Why don't we value vision and potential more? I was recently passed over for a job (as most of you read earlier) that I had no experience in, despite having been told that my vision was "eloquent and inspirational." Much of the hoopla surrounding Obama's receipt of the prize is rooted in the question, "What has he ACTUALLY done?"

It occurs to me that you cannot measure hope or inspiration. You can't document how a simple change in mood can enable change and progress; or it can derail it. Empowerment and belief in doing are paramount! I don't know what America looks like to the rest of the world, but if they say that Obama has given them new hope in us then I'm not going to say differently.

So I hope that I can always be the type of person who rewards passion, who gives vision an opportunity to become reality. It's much more fulfilling to be moved to achieve than to be sized up for a box someone else has labeled "Success." Cheers Barack! And may this be a heavy burden on your leadership, to answer the call for continued hope, and continued peacemaking.

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world.
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one.
I hope someday you'll join us,
And the world will live as one.
--John Lennon

He lost his mind today...

That title is from a Guns 'n' Roses song. I think it's "Dust and Bones" but I'm not sure. Everyone gasp in unison. I can't remember the band, title and release date, but hey, it's been a long couple of weeks.

Here's all I want to say. Maggie's cousin straightened her hair this weekend. It looked super cute, but, suddenly my rough and tumble nine year old wants her hair done in the morning.

This is not okay.

Thanks for empathizing.

Be well.

A new song

I just finished this song tonight. I'll try to get a video performance up soon. It's called "America."

I found America, bleeding and dying
In an old dusty well by the side of the road.
Where lawyers and bankers'd tied on old rusty anchors
And left her for dead with their dollars in tow.

I found America, all out of breath
And blue in the face at the end of a rope.
A sign there did read, "Passers-by ye take heed,
The death on this rope once was our great hope.

I found America, witless and wandering,
Matted grey hair and a tattered old coat.
Once the strength of the people, the spire of the steeple,
But twisted by greed her own downfall she wrote.

You can hitchhike for four days from Seattle or Saginaw,
Board you a Greyhound for Tucson or Maine.
By plane or by train, it's all one and the same,
Of America's future only memories remain.

I found America, waving and smiling,
Her hair it was perfect, her smile nearly shone.
I drew back the curtain just to be certain
But her smile was for sale, her words not her own.

I found America, red, white and blue,
Lost in the distance between me and you.
Send your tired and your poor to her great golden door,
But remember, above all, to thine ownself be true.

I found America, hope for tomorrow
In the cycle of life, the cycle of sorrow.
Are the deep and dark eyes of my son and my daughter
The one saving grace of my mother and father?

A Good Question

"Superstar"

Every time I look at you I don't understand
Why you let the things you did get so out of hand
You'd have managed better if you'd had it planned
Now why'd you choose such a backward time and such a strange land?
If you'd come today you could have reached the whole nation
Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication

Don't you get me wrong
Only want to know

Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ
Who are you? What have you sacrificed?
Jesus Christ,Superstar
Do you think you're what they say you are?

Tell me what you think about your friends at the top.
Now who d'you think besides yourself was the pick of the crop?
Buddha was he where it's at? Is he where you are?
Could Mohamed move a mountain, or was that just PR?
Did you mean to die like that? Was that a mistake, or
did you know your messy death would be a record breaker?

Don't you get me wrong
Only want to know

Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ
Who are you? What have you sacrificed?

Jesus Christ, Superstar
Do you think you're what they say you are?

Lyrics by Tim Rice
from Jesus Christ Superstar
Music by Andrew Lloyd Weber


I know there are some fundamental problems with the way Rice poses this question (Jesus, Mohamed and Buddha are not religious analogues) but the spirit of the question has always resonated with me.

Be well.

Learning how to parent on the run

Tonight was interesting. At 5:30 I had a dinner for all of the former Bethel College board members, followed at 7:30 by the annual corporation meeting to handle the business of the college and inevitably to process the termination of our president that took place in August.

And I forgot to get a sitter.

Megan's show opens tonight (probably intermission-ish time as I type) and it's been on the calendar for months, so this was all on me. Maggie had a sleepover, so one kid down. In the process of rushing home on my scooter to figure out what to do with Lennon, my cellphone got soaked in a downpour. Ease of access to information/people? Gone.

I had some options but either didn't have my shit together enough to act or didn't have the will impose on others' plans.

So what did we do?

I took a deep breath and I acted on a thought that occured to me during my interview for the Director of Admissions. I was asked how I would manage the number of hours required for the job. In answering that I already work pretty much 24/7, I described the way my work environment would embrace families, embrace kids, and make work possible for people with families.

Lennon often tells me that he wants to work at Bethel with me when he gets big (a sure-fire melter for this daddy), so tonight I put him in a button-up, pulled a sweater vest over his head, stuck my extra nametag on him and we went to work!

He did great! Perfect? Not by a stretch. Were some people annoyed? I suppose they probably were. But Lennon and I did the dance of negotiation, communicated verbally and nonverbally, laughed quietly while important things were happening, and made it through. I walk away from this experience extremely proud of keeping my cool, breathing deep and keeping communication open with my son instead of allowing myself to lose patience at key moments. I hope we'll be better for it.

The meetings? Anticlimactic. I'll take it.

Isn't it strange...

...to know that every possible human experience is being lived through right now, somewhere?

First day back

I sit here watching "A Prairie Home Companion" the movie and I'm not yet overwhelmed by the enormity of the world. I successfully reached the point during our Walnut Valley vacation where I was several times unsure what day it was. Now I come riding full tilt in to my world where what day it is, and the time during that day, is of ultimate importance; an adjustment to be sure.

Today I did all morning meetings trying to figure out who talk to and when and how; I did confrontations with balls I dropped that turned into 8-balls I was behind; I did a little creativity; I did some listening, but more talking; I laughed a little and frowned too much; I did some parenting and far too little husbanding; I have no idea how to talk to my nine year old about school. Her soul is so light, I hate to burden it with the weight of often arbitrary expectations. I do my best but parental failure is in my DNA.

Right now I'm avoiding the laundry and my church responsibilities, pondering my love of ambiguity in a world that requires certainty, pondering my certainties in a world that could use more ambiguity.









































There you have the bipolar Tyner kids and their breakneck penchant for changing moods. Yay. I think Maggie really appreciated me taking photos of her indignation.

Be well.

Winfield 2009

That one stings a little

For two weeks, I've been working very hard to position myself to get the job of Director of Admissions for Bethel College, where I already work as a fundraiser. I didn't get it, but I received high compliments from all of the highest of high Bethel royalty, for which I'm thankful and humbled.

I will support the decision and move on, because any other choice would be a failure. I think the thing that stings the most is knowing that I could do this job so well, but knowing that no one wants to take a risk on someone whose experience is not documentable. Most people that I know will resign themselves to this fact and tell me, "Hey, that just makes sense." I, on the other hand, have seen people do what their paper, or their genes, said they couldn't; and so, I do wish deep in my darkest soul that it could have been me.

But I move on; it's what I've always done.

The Butcher's Hour

Okay, so I had to perform a snippit of a song today for our opening convocation and I butchered it up good. That stinks. Now, there was some technical difficulty that I think I handled well and all responses are consistent with that thought. But still, I butchered the song. That hurts. Ah well, at least now I've said it out loud and I can begin moving on. Embarrassment is a part of life. Next.

Be well...

God by numbers

God can never be proven or disproven, there is only what is perceived. Any attempt to claim a definitive knowledge of or against God is a childish claim to supremacy and omnipotence.

Any claim to perceive God should come with the allowance for different perceptions of the same God, just like two observers of stars in different hemispheres must allow that each are studying the same sky.

Any claim that no god exists must be accompanied by the allowance that there is no way to disprove a concept that is unknowable at its source. The same two stargazers must recognize that their reality is only their own, and only that reality can be theirs. The reality of another is unknowable at its source.

All attempts to prove or disprove God are only born out of the need to know what can never be known; the seemingly genetic desire of humans to assert an individual and collective will on all things, leaving no thing unreachable, unconquerable, or unknowable.

As one may know God via experience while another knows just as powerfully that there is no god, so too do many points exist between A and B. Some know God as just, others as jealous; some as loving, still others as taskmaster. Some know God as Christ, some as Vishnu, some as singular, and some as plural.

There is no knowledge where God is discussed, there is only comfort, searching and discerning. Never should there be a wall, nor a statement. God's existance is not knowable, because God as a concept is beyond full comprehension, just as I cannot look at the ground and see the whole earth. Neither can I see the sphere of Earth from space and understand the blade of grass.

Our Summer in Photos - minus the significant portion of the summer during which our camera was lost, an event to remember in and of itself (or Deus)

We went to Vegas where, via Cirque du Soleil, the Beatles are being introduced and celebrated in a whole new exciting way. Here I am standing outside theater (we didn't see the show) wherein Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr sat during the premier. Sweet!



















We got stuck in Denver for an extra day. Here we are lamenting our delay in Vegas.
















A summer storm tested my 2/3 built fence by dropping three 6" branches on it. We lost one picket. Pretty good, I'd say!
















I dragged the family out in the van and wandered around the dirt roads of Chase County until we found the site of the farm I lived on as a small child and the first church I ever knew, Wonsevu Christian.
































Some of us began to look much, much older than we used to.

















We continued to get to know Rigby, our now 10 month old puppy. He's a digger. But he's a cuddler, too! Now I just need to remember to buy doggy nail trimmers.
















Lennon had his fourth birthday. Most of the pics are on Grandma's camera. I think this is from Maggie's birthday. It was shortly after Lennon's birthday party that we found the camera at church. Thank God! *chortle*

















But no worries, as Lennon enjoyed Maggie's ninth birthday plenty!




For the kids' birthdays this year we took them on their very own dinner with Mom & Dad and then on a shopping trip. We set a spending limit in our heads and steered the kids in particular directions. We all enjoyed the experiences. Below is Maggie being pretty jazzed about her Build-a-Bear monkey. The shoes on the rack behind could shod an entire third-world country.
















The fence was completed, though the gate (not pictured) still needs attention. We've had a lot of good chances to enjoy our new space and to let Rigby run and dig incredibly dangerous holes.







I also fixed our broken John Deere riding mower, which has been handy.

We enjoyed sharing our summer with friends and family and are looking forward to Winfield!

Be well.