To that end, I’ve repaired the long-neglected site, johnandlaryssa.com. This involved an epic battle between Wordpress 2.9 requirements and my hosting company’s recalcitrance. The hosting company won, so I had to do a SQL dump of the database, create a new one, re-import the data from the old database. Then I could upgrade to Wordpress 2.9.1. This took a couple hours, but I think it will be worth it. My wife has a lot of great things stored in her heart to share.

I did the same database swap operation to this site, so now I am up-to-date. Now what is left a a bit of a redux and a few other changes. I’m going to add a few pages and redo (version 4) the About Me page. The links are going to be redone as I segregate my interests to separate websites. This will be my religious and non-fiction writing site. This site will also continue to be the central hub of my other websites. Sycarion will be my gaming website (it should also feature a co-author later this year I hope), johnandlaryssa.com will be my family/personal/random stuff site. Study Hall, Advocate, Lenga, and all other subsidiary sites will be shut down and removed.

At some point in the year, I hope to have two shorter study guides/books/expositions written. The first one will be the Book of Judges, the second one is undetermined. The second study guide/book/exposition will be determined by whatever is taught this spring. The church where I worship has no planned classes for Spring, Summer or Fall of next year. Three or four years ago, a bunch of us came up with a curriculum of sorts. I hope we can use it as it helps insure that every book of the Bible and major areas of life are covered in five year cycles. Then again, I hope to offer a bit of a technical class to cover things like E-Sword.

As an aside, I considered a complete overhaul to the site. I like fresh starts. I tend to think of God as the deity of perpetual new beginnings. It seemed like a good idea at the time. In the end, though, there’s no real way to do everything I want to do. Besides, I spent hours customizing this theme. I’m kind of used to it.

Lastly, I mostly interact with the online world through my sycarion identity.The only exception to this is Twitter. Still, if you do a Google search on either pinakidion or sycarion, the top 20 or 30 results point to me. I’m not hard to find. However, I mention sycarion because most of the sycarion entries in a Google search will point to things I’m doing now or in the near past.

So here’s to a continued great new year in 2010:

May the Lord stand between you and harm in all the empty places you must walk.

It’s been pretty easy as of late to be reflective and look forward to the new year. There’s a lot of snow on the ground and pretty cold temperatures — cold for even this area. I’ve had a lot of time to be home and enjoy all the wonders that being homebound entails.

It’s been great fun.

And so it is that, as in many years past, I begin to make plans for the coming year. Some of the plans are quite simple – enjoy the new house tax credit, fix the car, buy clothes that fit, invest in a snowblower, etc. See, you must have priorities in order. I’ve learned that of all the joys of home ownership, shoveling huge snowdrifts is not amongst them. I can say with tremendous accuracy that watching all the neighbors hum along and finish their driveways in half an hour is an experience that should only be endured for one winter. It is not good for the soul to willingly be so tormented by such envy and scorn for their fellow man. It’s not like they watched me shovel for four hours and then told me later that they were glad their shoveling days were over.

- But I digress. I’ve learned that with so much time to reflect, it is easy get lost in so many fond memories.

This evening marked the first men’s midweek at church this year. Our minister went to Moscow, Vladivostok and many points in-between at the end of last year. He shared stories and slides with us from his travels, teaching, and trials. It was good to see so many helped by he and Charlie as they traveled to build up several small congregations.

Some of the things he shared put Mainstream America’s materialism into proper perspective. Other tales encouraged us not so much to give more money, but to give to our own community. I hope that all of us, regardless of religious orientation, can do more to give to our communities in 2010.

After service, I talked to several friends about various things. I talked about playing Gloom, doing some dramatic work in worship, and many other topics both large and small. At the end of the night, our minister spoke to me about a small group that might best serve my family and two other couples. I appreciated the encouragement – it would help all of us with small children, especially as we live so close together.

As we turned to leave, I shared a struggle that I have lived with for most my life. I struggle to finish things. I have lots of ideas and great enthusiasm at the start only to burn out at the end. Despite years of learning how to plan, measure, seek council, etc, it is still a common thread in many areas of my life. A part of this comes from an ability to do just about anything I want to do. It feels like there are so many choices and so little time. Whereas Jesus did everything well (which I take to mean that he was good at many things, but not necessarily the ultimate in skill at many things) I do many things poorly. My son is hard of hearing and I don’t even sign all that well.

I would like to do one or two things well. I want to make a meaningful contribution to the people around me (even the ones with snowblowers) and to God. At middle age, I am wrestling with the big question I’ve wrestled with since I was a teenager – God, what exactly do you want me to do?

I don’t think God is particularly upset or angry or anxious. This isn’t coming from a place of shame or guilt. I just want to do something.

As I said earlier, I shared this with the minister. I believe that I will take his advice to heart. He told me that I should focus on teaching and some dramatic work. This wasn’t just for the church where I worship, though people enjoy my classes. It was a focus on talents that will serve people in many situations.

One thing to be clear about: this doesn’t mean that this site will be a way for me to do the impact-the-world-for-Jesus-thing. I don’t believe that I have cornered the market on any amount of wisdom enough to say that I want to have a teaching website. This will remain a place to share about my life. A large part of my life is my relationship with God. As many of my friends know, this relationship spans the gamut of emotions and circumstances.

What is does mean, is that I will have more confidence to teach at the congregation where my family worships together. It also means that I feel a need to finish some writing about the Bible, faith, and other areas of religious experience. Most importantly, it means a deliberate plan of teaching for my family – my biggest fans of all. The children are curious about God. They pray at night and ask about all the pure-hearted things a child ponders. I want them to know God, regardless of their choices later in life.

It’s hard to resist the temptation to make concrete goals and talk about posting schedules. Instead, I will simply say, that I hope this year will be a thoughtful and somewhat wordy year for pinakidion.* Let’s just see where this Jacob’s Ladder/rabbit hole will go.

Tonight, my daughter and my wife are taking part in a sleep study. My daughter snores worse than I do and most of it is due to the as-of-yet-unamed OAV disorder she, my son, and I share. As many of you know, she had seven surgeries to open the airway behind her nose. What you may not know is that the ceiling of her central sinus cavity prevented the airway from being any wider.

While she is awake, she breathes very well. She runs around like any other two year old. When she is asleep, however, she makes sounds that would just break your heart. It’s not just snoring, but I actually can hear her stop breathing at times. My wife and I take turns sitting in the rocking chair next to her bed most nights.

I didn’t intend to share all of this, but suffice it to say that all of us are glad that she is finally in a sleep study tonight. Just as an FYI, those of you with sleep apnea may wonder what the treatment is for a small child. It’s not a CPAP unless there is no other recourse. After tonight, when they discover her apnea, she will have her tonsils removed. After that, we discuss a variety of options with our pediatrician.

Anyway, because the house is empty and my son is asleep, I have some rare time to think through and write some extended thoughts. I felt it important to share something I learned this past Sunday that I think can encourage many.

At the church I attend, children under 4 are in Sunday School all morning. They have a lesson when the rest of us attend class, but they have free play while the rest of us attend worship service. For my wife, Bible class means attending our son’s class and signing everything for him. Our son is pretty verbal and really smart. He could get by without her there. Its just that every other part of his life is signed, so it is important to us that he learn about God through sign as well.

For many of our other friends with deaf/hard of hearing children, the issue consisted of finding churches that sign or have a sign interpreter available. Every once in a while, we attend a church with sign interpreters for the benefit of our son. (It’s for us, too. It’s beautiful to see a hymn performed in ASL.) Still, this is the community where we choose to raise our children. This is the community that I pledged my heart and family to when we dedicated our children almost two years ago. It’s true that I teach our family doctrine at home, but I really want this group of people to be the ‘village’ that helps raise our children.

When money is tight like it is currently, some families throughout the US ask for interpreters and are told no. The main reason cited is cost. Families like this then face a very painful decision. You see, under the American with Disabilities Act, if you ask any place of business or worship to provide an deaf interpreter, they are legally required to provide one. (They are a very few exceptions to this law. Those exceptions are based on the size of the business or congregation.) But what family wants to use the law of the land against their home church? What heartache must exist for those families that felt they had no other recourse?

Personally, I believe that using the ADA to force the church I attend to provide an interpreter violates the spirit of 1 Co 6:1-11 and 2 Cor 10:3. Until now, we’ve been happy to do it, but for the church to really invest in the spiritual future of our son, something else needed to happen. We want others to be a part of his spiritual life. More than that, my wife needs to attend Bible class for her spiritual life as well. It’s tempting to do things the ‘American’ way and demand our rights, but events unfolded very differently. I think it is a testament to my wife’s great hope, perseverance, and hard work that events turned out as they did.

My wife and I prayed quite a bit. We decided to ask for a meeting of everyone teaching our son when he graduates to the 4 and 5 year olds. The leader of the children’s ministry also wanted to be there. We set a time and everyone came over to our home. Previous efforts to get help seemed to fizzle over time and I must admit that I was praying that we would get at least 50% support.

We all prayed together and then my wife laid out the basic needs and issues facing our son. We expressed our gratitude that everyone came over and got to business. I have to say that everyone listened very intently. We explained quite a few practicals and even covered some signs. By the end of our meeting, we got everything we asked for and a couple that would learn sign just to be able to teach the Sunday School lesson to our son.

We were very encouraged. Once again, I think it speaks volumes about the amount of love this little congregation has in its heart. We look forward to the future with a lot of hope and joy. Praise be to God whose spirit is working through the hearts of so many.

The provide some detail, here’s a partial list of practical things our son needs:

• He needs someone to sign for him in class during lessons.
• No one can walk or sit between him and the interpreter.
• Songs have to be sung at the speed the interpreter can sign them. (This is change when he’s older.)
• Even with the hearing aid, directional hearing is difficult. Everyone must look directly at his face before providing *any* direction.
• The class needs to understand that our son talks with his mouth and his hands.
• The hearing aid cannot be near any liquids, it costs thousands to replace and is not covered by any insurance.
• The classroom has to be as quiet as possible or any benefit from his hearing aid is lost.
• The interpreter needs to have the lesson ahead of time to learn the proper sign.
• The Bible stories have to be determined word for word ahead of time so that the sign matches the story. (This is because of the type of sign he learns in school.)
• Memory verses are a special challenge, how can this be addressed without making him the odd duck?

As you can see, some of these are no easy task. A class of 4-5 year olds being quiet for an hour? Yet, these and all the others were heartily embraced. Again, thanks be to God for his love shown through his people.

I am way behind in every area of my life, so it may be a while. MRI tomorrow on my knee. There may be ligament damage, which could require surgery to repair.

Never a dull moment.

Finally removed all traces of bugaboos. Google no longer sees me as an attack site. Twelve hours of work to clean it from my site and all the others.

So, next up, the Judges class.

As my friends already know, when I start going on esoteric rants like this, it usually means that I am not feeling well. It’s true. I am having a combination insomnia and fever meets sick children plus sick spouse. I originally stayed home today to take care of them, but my wife ended up taking care of me later in the day when I started to get delirious.

Always scares me when I get delirious. I enjoy being a bit random and pulling out really weird trivia from out of nowhere. The difference is, that when I’m delirious, there is no control. It all rushes out like a flood. Fortunately, it is harmless. Many people don’t notice too much of a difference except the occasional “did he say what I just thought he said”?

Anyway, I’m on the tail end of this one. I should be okay in a couple days. Needless to say, this has delayed any posting here, on sycarion, Facebook (haven’t even played FARKLE), Nevermet Press, or Basic Fantasy RPG.

Still will write about the great class we shared on Judges. I hope to have something up by the weekend.

PS: In family news, my son tested average development against *hearing* peers. In one area, reading, he scored well above average. I am very proud of him. As noted in the study, he is a very hard-working boy.

Still, to prepare for the rather lengthy post to follow, here is the outline of the first class I handed out to everyone. It’s been edited to include other information included in class.

I plan to cover more in the posts than we covered in class. We had a lot of fun in this class and learned quite a bit thanks to everyone’s contributions, not just mine. In fact, a major point was brought up by someone else that completely steered the class in a great direction.

Until some lengthy posts come out of editing, here is the handout.

Introduction to Judges

Because someone asked, UPC 2.0?

Making it shorter doesn’t change that it is a contract. I believe a contract is inappropriate for a church community unless it wishes to be a denomination. Being a denomination is not necessarily a bad thing, what is a bad thing is trying to be a non-denomination with the rules of a denomination. Make up your mind, get comfortable with the term, move on. For a temporary agreement, it never seems to go away.

The new document is a summary, that means despite intent, 1.0 is in effect. Wishing it otherwise does not make it so. Changing the agreement means that the 1.0 ratifiers or affirmers need to re-affirm 2.0. Calling it summary gets around this, but as stated earlier means that 1.0 is in effect. As such, this is really a supplemental to the UPC, not a separate document.

Because the original UPC is still in effect, it’s still a bad deal.

I could pepper and salt this with verses, but that is not really necessary. There’s no need to convince anyone, their minds are already made up. Will there be a 3.0? Only if the churches in Atlanta do not affirm this agreement. If churches in Georgia affirm (and it’s their prerogative to do so), I really believe that this will finally go away.

Why Gerogia? If Douglas Jacoby and Sam Laing are part of official UPC congregations, then one or both can be part of the club again. If not, neither can chair a committee, only serve on it. Personally, I would love both of them to chair a few committees, just to demonstrate the lack of utility the UPC holds.

No, I believe that the situation is more complicated than whether or not Georgia (USA) is part of a UPC congregations. There are churches in Europe, mostly smaller ones, that did not affirm. I’m sure the intent of the UPC and its supplemental summary is to also strengthen regional groups all over the world.

It would appear from the summary that regions need to be able to enforce doctrine and determine membership in the UPC. I do not agree that they have this need, I believe they should serve the same function as the ‘big’ committees that meet at the ILC. Why does there need to be someone or some group outside of a local congregation that has the power to vote a church in or out?

I do not believe there is a great conspiracy at work, only a tremendous resistance to change. That inertia will likely become our undoing in the end. This inertia is at work in other areas as well but that is outside the scope of this sidetrack. All I will say is that change is inevitable. It happened in the first century church. It happens in every area of God’s creation.

Perhaps it was vanity to answer here instead of return email. If so, forgive me. I think a part of it was seeing an old friend at church today that I really miss. I know that they are searching for peace with God and in search of a community of believers. I know that the answer is not inside the ICoC, even a congregation that is progressive in some ways like the one I attend. I pray that his or her struggle will end very soon.

As I was saying earlier before I so rudely interrupted myself, see you next time with an exposition of Judges.

So there is some inspiration to add to the blog here. I am teaching at church again. I’m happy to start a six week class on the book of Judges.

For everyone else, here’s where I’ve been.

I am now a writer for NevermetPress. It is a role-playing game site that provides systemless game material for free. Right now, the focus is a major villain, and then a bunch of stuff that goes with it. I’ve written a few pieces and I hope to provide a few more over time. It is actually a paying gig.

I don’t plan on putting gaming stuff here. My gaming stuff will be on my sister site, Sycarion. (Pronounced sik-a-REE-uhn)

I’ve also been working on the new house. We’ll just about ready to actually have a ton of people over. My wife is running a play group for deaf/hard of hearing children 0 to 5 starting in September. Our camera is broken, so no picutres, sorry.

I’m also the librarian at our church. The minister has more obscure books than I do. There is no room for the research computer, but I’m working on that. I have 2.5 days of vacation that I will be required to use before August. I think I’ll spend a day there organizaing.

I’m working on fundraisers for my son’s hearing aid. His old one is worn out and we have a loaner until September. One fundraiser will hopefully be sponsored by a local resturant. They like to do 10% nights and even allow you to do raffles in the resturant. Another is a spaghetti dinner at the church building. We have a small grant from a local charity and we have asked folks from all over.

The goal is $3500. We have almost one-third of it now, I am hoping that the fundraisers will make up most of the rest. Got any ideas? I’m all ears.

Lastly, I’ve also decidedly moved away from ICoC issues. I think I’m down to 2 times a week at the forums, and very little involvement after that. I’ve made some decision in that regards and it has freed up a lot of energy for other things.

I have resolved:

• I am a part of the Omaha Church of Christ and will remain so as long as I can. (This hasn’t changed at all, just stating it for completeness.)
• I won’t send my children to ICoC regional camps, nor will I attend any ICoC conferences.
• I am just as concerned as I have always been about certain people that wield power within the ICoC, however, I will leave it to God to administer justice on earth and in Heaven. I have done all I can do.
• I will continue to resist and rebuff certain expected ICoC doctrines and practices, especially those around childrearing, the culture of compulsion, and a host of other smaller yet significant issues.
• I will continue to grow in community involvement locally. This ranges from deaf/hard of hearing issues to games to educational initiatives.
• Life is short. Get over it.

So that’s about it from here. Next post will be something about Jduges and the Cycle of Sin.

For Kurt, I have to say that reading Judges feels like a pulp superhero book sometimes. He uses a farmer’s tool to smite 600, She is a prophet AND a general: Shamgar and Deborah, they fight CRIME!