Kugel and Jeremiah

For those of you who don’t know already, I grew up Jewish.  And while I did have a Bar Mitzvah and all of that, I was more of a culinary Jew than anything else.  I liked the food.  One of my favorites is a dish called kugel, which is a sweet noodle pudding.  It’s quite possibly one of the most unhealthy foods imaginable.  It’s made with butter, lots of eggs, cottage cheese, plus carbohydrates galore; sugar, noodles, sugar, raisins (which are basically black, wrinkled sugar) and, did I mention, noodles?  And then you put sour cream on top.  You might as well inject lard straight into your veins.  With all those tasty calories packed in there, I think it must have originated as a way to bulk up for cold Russian winters.  As you can tell, it’s one of my favorite things to eat.  That’s why we don’t make it that often.  If we did I would have a girth equivalent to that of a walrus….or a woolly mammoth.  Needless to say, the love of kugel is a trait my son Brehm has inherited.  Which brings me to the other night. 

Since Brehm is four, he spends a lot of time sitting in the “time out” corner.  People will spread all sorts of propaganda about the “twos” but they’re lying.  At two, they can’t talk well or reason.  By four they can give any attorney a run for their money.  So Brehm needs to take some time, periodically, to sit and think about what he’s done or said.  It’s not that he is a bad kid.  In fact, he’s a great kid.   He’s just really smart and has an Old Testament sense of justice.  Especially when it pertains to his little brother.  Anyway…I don’t even remember why he was in “time out” but there he was, crying and trying to bargain his way to freedom.  But this is the interesting part.  I was in the kitchen the whole time making kugel.  He’s in time out and I’m making his favorite food.  He can hear my voice telling him he needs to stay in  “time out” but he can’t see what I’m doing.  While he is experiencing my discipline, I’m preparing a future blessing for him.

That’s exactly what is going on in Jeremiah 29:11 when God declares, “ I know the plans I have for you.  Plans to prosper you and not to harm you.  Plans to give you hope and a future”.  That verse is often tossed around to make people feel better.  And it should make us feel better.  But not in the way the coffee mugs and throw-blankets emblazoned with that Scripture would have us believe.  The context of that verse makes it both richer and more beautiful but less warm and fuzzy to a modern American.  We like to think that this verse means God will remove all hardship.   Right now.  We want to think that His plan for us is involves bon-bons or endless fishing trips or checking accounts perpetually in the black.  However the context of the verse points to something very different.  Something more like kugel and “time outs”.  God is speaking through Jeremiah to Jews in exile.  Exile is just a fancy word for a National “Time Out”.  And not just any Jews in exile, but the ones who had a chance to return to the promised-land but didn’t.  I’m not sure why they didn’t go.  Maybe it was the fear of the unknown, maybe they we too comfortable where they were, or maybe they were simply being disobedient.  Regardless, they’d missed their chance and, more than likely, were hearing reports of how good it was for those who did risk everything to go back.  And so God speaks.  And, backing up a few verses, says (my paraphrase), “ get comfortable.  You’re not going anywhere for a while.  There are consequences for your decisions and you should put down roots here in exile.  Have families, build houses, and all that because you’re stuck here.”  In essence God is saying, “ You’re not done with your time out yet.”  And then, He gets to verse 11 and says “But”.  That is one of the most beautiful words.   It means “however”, “in spite of all that”.  And then He continues, “I’m making kugel you don’t even know about, yummy things that will make you happy and fat.  And even more than that, I’ll give you my Shalom., my peace and hope.”  Can you see why that is less comforting but more comforting all at the same time?  It’s a call to trust God, even as we are told to make our home in confusion and apparent (or literal) exile.  It’s a bold call to faith; to believe that there is a loving father, preparing spiritual kugel for us.  And His kugel….well…..it’s the best there is. 

Crumbs

Brehm is a picky eater.  Elijah is the Tasmanian Devil.  Brehm fusses over every bite.  Elijah has tried to eat the support columns at our local Target store.  I’m not kidding.  Brehm didn’t used to be that way.  There was a time when he would eat anything we put in front of him.  Fruit?  He’d eat it.  Mustard?  He’d make funny faces….but he’d eat it.  Now….he has very specific things that he likes and, much to our chagrin, those things change from day to day.  Some of you may recall a previous newsletter where I mentioned that he loved a dish called kugel.  Much like computer technology, that essay was obsolete as soon as I wrote it.  Our doctor tells us that it’s normal for his age.  He said that he’s known of kids who eat only Cheerios for a year and turn out normal.  Somehow I think that he’s lying to me but the lie makes me feel better. 

 

So, for right now, his favorite lunchtime treat is peanut butter and grape jelly on wheat bread.  It’s healthy for him and so we are happy to oblige.  Lately that is what we send in for his lunch along with apple slices and small thing of yogurt with a picture of Diego on it (if you have to ask…you don’t have kids).  “Not Dora,” he said, “that’s for girls!”   OK then. 

 

The other day, while I was still on Cape Cod, Laura (aka Superwoman) had managed to wrangle all three kids, make a fresh breakfast, prepare lunches, got them dressed and out the door, all by 7:45 AM.  I can barely tie my shoes by 7:45 AM.   I married up.  So anyway….the lunch she had made was Brehm’s favorite; peanut butter and jelly on wheat bread.  It’s what he likes and it’s good for him so everything should be OK.  Right?  Wrong. 

The scenario I’m about to describe took place while I was up on The Cape for Easter so I’ll tell it as best I can based on the accounts I’ve heard.  At our kid’s daycare, they all take naps.  This is only partially because the kids need them.  I think the teachers need the break too.  They have little blue cots, which appear to be far more comfortable than the squares of rug-sample I tossed and turned on when I was a kid.  They have it so easy now.  They even get pillows.

 

 Well…..after lunch it was time for nap and Brehm, despite his insistence that he loves PB&J, had not eaten his lunch.  His teacher had given him more than enough time but he had decided to goof off instead.  So they put the children on their cots, dimmed the lights, and put on some quiet music.  But this is where it gets weird.  Brehm would not stay on his cot.  That is not the strange part.  He can’t sit in a chair for more than a second and a half either.  What was unusual was what he was doing.  He was finding crumbs from lunch that were still on the floor and eating those.  Our son, who had a good lunch, lovingly made, was eating crumbs off the floor!  When I heard this, my “father’s heart” hurt.  My son, who I love, should not be eating crumbs!  I know it was his choice (both to eat the crumbs and NOT eat his lunch).  I know that he doesn’t yet understand that the crumbs are dirty and could make him sick (the floor we are talking about is, after all, a daycare floor).  But all I wanted to do was to be back in Tennessee and be in that daycare so I could tell him that my son should not eat scraps from a dirty floor.  And, as is often the case, God reminded me that He is a father too.  That He has prepared a table for me.  One that is set even in the presence of my enemies. He reminded me that by His grace, I am made His son and invited to dine there.  To eat with my father, The King, instead of scrounging for crumbs.  Despite knowing this in my head, I think I often choose to goof off and ignore the feast God offers.  Then I scramble for scraps later.  I trade what is good for me and lovingly prepared for what is dirty and can make me sick.  I think we all do that.  And so God, with the love of His Father’s Heart, DID come to Tennessee, and Massachusetts, and Galilee, and, and, and.  And He tells us, “No child of mine should eat crumbs.”  So come, Children of the King, let us dine.

Adjustments

I have a friend named Rob.  Rob has two Grammys. When Rob tells me how to make my recording projects sound better…I listen.  You see, Rob is a mixing engineer and his job is to take what people like me record, and make it sound good.  He has a great set of ears.  I’ve never actually seen his ears; since his hair often covers them, but I know that he hears things I don’t hear.   Kind of like a bat.

 

Because I know that he has great ears, and he has two gold gramophones on his mixing console to prove it, when he gives me advice about recording, gear, etc… I try to take it. Recently he sent me to a web site that explained all about acoustics in a mixing environment.  It was for smart people.  I had to look up a lot of words.  Basically, what the site said was that there are rules about how sound bounces around a room and interacts with the walls, sofas, and other bouncing sound waves.  All of that effects what you hear when you listen.  This is important when you mix a record because you need to hear everything.  I don’t know who had the time to figure all this out, but one of the rules was called the “38% rule”.  What it says is that the ideal listening spot in a room is usually about 1/3 into the room (38% to be exact).  Well…since Rob had sent me to that site, and I listen to Rob, I got out a tape measurer to find out where I should be sitting when I listen to stuff in my studio.  I was close but I was about 6 inches off from where that site told me I should be sitting.  So I moved my desk 6 inches.  Not a big adjustment.  I skeptically sat down to listen to something I had been working on, and WOW! I felt like I had just got a new set of monitors!  I could hear things that I hadn’t heard before.

 

The purpose of studio monitors is to tell the truth.  Not to sound pretty.  If they were humans, they would be prophets.  They would say things like, “Repent or God is coming to smite you, sinner.  Oh…and by the way…your recording sounds like garbage.”  So, if the speakers tell the truth and, by making a small adjustment, I could hear them better, this is both good and bad.  It’s good because I can hear it clearly.  It’s bad because I may not like what I hear.  That means I need to fix things, and fixing things takes work and work is…..well…..work.  And I’m lazy.

 

So I have a choice. Fix my mix or move my monitors back to where they were so I can’t hear the truth.  I have the same choice with God.  Make adjustments when He reveals things to me and go further toward intimacy with Him knowing that each step of trust and obedience helps me hear Him better.  Or I can pretend I never heard Him and keep on doing what I was doing.  Seems like an easy decision.  I wish I could say that I always chose the better of these two options.

 

The flip side to all this is that I might hear things I like too.  My mix might be better than I thought and making the adjustments might actually encourage me.  To continue the analogy, I might hear, “Well done!  I’m so proud of you!  Keep fighting.  I’m crazy in love with you and will not rest until I see you face to face. I love you, not what you do for me. I’m faithful.”, and lots of other stuff that absolutely thrills my soul.

 

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”

                                                                                    John 10:27

Pumpkin Pie and Judges

This past Thanksgiving my wife Laura and I decided to try something different.  We decided that we would take the pumpkins from Halloween and try to turn them into pies.  The thought wasn’t purely spontaneous (since we had bought “pie” pumpkins back in October) but it was more of an inspired decision after watching Ratatouille, a movie about a cooking rat.  If a rat can whip up gourmet French cuisine, then surely I can make a pie out of a pumpkin.  So, we made the pumpkin puree, we made the pies and then put them in the fridge for the coming holiday. 

 

Well, Thanksgiving comes and, after a full day in the kitchen basting, roasting, and whipping, we sit down for our feast.  And we’re truly thankful.  The amount of food could feed the better part of Mainland China.  We are a blessed family.  We have healthy and happy kids, and they have happy and healthy parents who think nothing of slaving in the kitchen all day so that they can have a special holiday experience.  You see where this is going, don’t you?  So, when our eldest looks at his plate full of yummy food and declares, “I don’t like it” without even a taste, I tried to let it roll of my back.  After all, he’s only four and most kids, myself included, don’t cross from selfish to gratitude until they are twenty at least.  He does eventually eat some of his food but, at this point, he has made no small secret of the fact that he wants some pumpkin pie.  He’s antsy at the table so we use the pie as leverage and he sits still.  He gets sassy with my wife.  He gets punished.  We use the pie as bribery.  We like to call it a “reward” but who are we kidding.  Overall, he doesn’t do a very good job eating his meal or listening to his parents.  We tell him that he doesn’t deserve the pie but, since it’s a holiday, we’ll still give it to him.  Plus, I think, patting myself on the back, I’ve just given a good object lesson on Grace.  Getting what you don’t deserve.  He asks for whipped cream and I, being a benevolent father, oblige.  As I write, I’m reminded of a saying.  Pride cometh before a great fall. 

 

So my son scrapes the whipped cream off the pie, eats that, and then after a mere nibble of the pie, brings the plate to the sink and dumps it.  The “handmade-from-Halloween-pumpkins” pumpkin pie!  The pie of Grace!  Dumped.  So I loose my cool.  On a scale of serenity to total apoplectic fit, I’m heavy on the apoplexy.  How can he take this thing that I’ve made for his pleasure, to bless him, and dump it after only eating the fluffy, store bought junk on top?  I tried not to let it show too much because, after all, he is only four and I’m thirty-one and I’m supposed to be mature.  But I was pretty mad.  He got a lecture about gratitude and Thanksgiving.  He’ll share this story with a therapist one day.

 

A few days later I sit down in my favorite chair, our house now decorated for Christmas, and I start to read the book of Judges.  Not the normal Advent reading, but I felt like that was where I was supposed to be.  The book starts out with the Israelites finally arriving in the Promised Land and beginning to settle there.  It’s pretty R-rated due to violence.  People’s thumbs get cut off and such.  But what happens is that the Israelites don’t do what God told them to do.  They don’t wipe everyone out.  It’s too hard.  So they settle with the people God told them to get rid of and God gets angry.  How can they take what He has offered them as a blessing and “dump it” by not obeying?  As I start to get filled with “righteous indignation” at the foolishness of the Israelites, I look up and see my Christmas tree.  And I’m convicted.  Here I am, celebrating the biggest gift, given at the greatest cost, offered with unfathomable Grace, and so often I “dump it” because I’ve eaten the fluffy, easy junk and considered that enough.  I take the simple, the immature, the pre-packaged, and the lite instead of feasting on the rich, ineffable, substantial, deep, and the joyous.  I’ve heard it said that what annoys you most in other people is often the very things that you do.  Maybe that’s why my son’s reaction to the pie bothered me so much. He was a reflection of my own faults.  Maybe that’s why God chose the Israelites.  Perhaps it’s because they exhibit so many of our weaknesses.  They are undeniably human.  Since conviction is supposed to fuel repentance (unlike condemnation which brings shame) I spend some time asking God for forgiveness and then go have another piece of pie.  No whipped cream added.

Nerds

This past Halloween, my kids and I went out trick-or-treating.  I don’t know where you all stand on Halloween.  I’m not sure where I stand on it either.  I just know that my kids looked really cute as a train and a sheriff and people were willing to give us free stuff. And I love free stuff.  Plus it’s a great time to see the neighbors we never see.  I wanted to go and knock on the door of the house that always has a strange blue glow coming from behind the curtained windows.  The list of what that light could be grows long in my imagination.  Is it a home tanning bed and is their skin all dark and leathery like a purse from the hours of compulsive tanning?  It doesn’t flicker so it’s not the TV.  Maybe they are gardeners and they are gingerly tending their baby tomatoes under grow lights.  Or they’re growing drugs.  Needless to say, Laura wouldn’t let me knock.  I was disappointed. 

 

So we get home, and the kids unload their sugary bounty and we tell them that they can only have two pieces tonight or else their heads will spin around and pop off.  Or they’ll throw up.  It’ll be one or the other.  Both boys picked a candy bar and a box of “Nerds”.  For anyone who doesn’t know, “Nerds” are little, colored, sour candies that look like shrunken head versions of a Sweet Tart.  Anyway, we dumped the little candies into bowls for the boys.  Brehm had purple ones and Elijah had pink.  Then it began. 

 

“Mom.  I want a pink one!”

“No son.  You have your own”

“Mom.   Brehm took mine!”

We look and find pink Nerds in Brehm’s purple Nerd bowl. 

“Son, did you take those from your brother?”  
“No.”

“Go sit in time-out for lying and we are giving some of your Nerds to Elijah.”

 

We wait for the time-out to be over.  Meanwhile, ninjas and princesses are ringing our doorbell begging for treats and threatening retribution, or “tricks” if said treats are not dispensed.  You gotta love a holiday based on extortion.

 

With the time-out over, Brehm goes back to his bowl and the first thing he notices is that some of his purple Nerds are now in Elijah’s bowl.  In fact, it’s the only thing he notices.  It consumes his mind.  He dances and cries and insists that he wants purple Nerds.  All the time, he has a full bowl of purple Nerds sitting there.  They, apparently, are invisible. The only thing he cares about are the, literally, five Nerds in his brother’s bowl that “should have been his”.  Finally the Nerds get taken away and they get nothing.  Parental justice.  Look out.  He missed what was his because he wanted what his brother had.

 

I don’t know about you, but I’ve done that.  I’ve missed what God had for me, all because I was too busy desiring what God was doing in someone else’s life.  Basically I wanted God’s timing and plan for their life and not what He had for me.  I’ve been so focused on the “Nerds” in someone else’s bowl, that I’ve ignored the bowl full of Nerds in front of me.  It all boils down to trust and gratitude.  Do I trust that what God has for me is the best for me?  Do I trust that His timing is perfect?  Am I grateful for all He has given me already? Some of the biggest mistakes in the history of Israel were made because they wanted something other than what God had for them.  They wanted the “idol nerds” of their neighbors, or their “king nerds” and forgot about the whole bowl of “chosen people nerds” right in front of them. 

 

Sometimes I think I need to read Psalm 145 everyday.  It says, “The Lord sustains all who fall and raises up all who are bowed down.  The eyes of all look to You, and You give them their food at the proper time.  You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.”  I need to remember that the part that says “…every living thing.” includes me.  And it includes you.

Red Day, Green Day

My son’s daycare is great.  Maybe it’s because we were the first family to sign up with them when they opened, but they’ve always treated us, and our kids, well.  That being said, they need to keep order.  Order and control are two really important things when you are responsible for two hundred kids under the age of five.  So, for the older kids, they have a system.  If you have a “green day” it means you have had your “listening ears” on, you’ve “played well with your friends”, and you haven’t been “ugly” (ugly being an attitude not unfortunate genetics).  I think more adults need to have green days.  A “green day” is indicated by a green smiley face on their behavior chart.  Some times they even get a sticker. 

 

The next step down from a “green day” is a  “yellow day”, indicated by a yellow straight face.  No smile.  Yellow means their “listening ears” were broken part of the time and they may have talked back to the teacher.  Then there is a “red day”.  This means that they got sent to see the principal and they were acting more like a rabid wolverine than a human child.  “Black day” means that there was gnashing of teeth and they had to call the National Guard.  All this is just the introduction.  Here’s the story.

 

The other day I picked up Brehm from school and, before I got him from the playground, I checked his behavior chart.  Sure enough, he had had a green day.  He even had a sticker of a ladybug that said “super”.  But this is where it got strange.  When I picked him up, and we got in the car, he insisted that he had a “red” day.  I mean he really insisted.  I told him that I had checked his chart and that it said he had done great. 

“No, Daddy, I had a bad day.  I can’t have strawberry milk,” he said referencing our reward for a “green day”. 

“Sure you can, Buddy!  I saw your chart and you had a green day.”

“No I didn’t!  It was red!”

And this went on for most of the ride home until I was finally able to convince him that he had a “green day”.  It amazed me that I had to try so hard to get him to believe his innocence.  As his dad, it broke my heart.  And, as is often the case in situations like that, God gently reminded me that He’s a dad too. 

 

He reminded me that anyone who claims to be sin-free is a liar.  But Its also true that when I repent and God declares me innocent but I continue to wallow in my shame and condemnation, I’m doing what Brehm did.  I’m not trusting my Daddy.  And it breaks His heart, because His forgiveness is complete and He tells us over and over again.  That’s why Jesus said, “It’s finished”.  Done.  Case closed. We get a “green day” on the behavior chart.   Our sin gets put as far as the East is from the West.  I’m glad God didn’t say North and South.  If you sailed North far enough you would eventually start heading South.  They meet at the poles.  But if I went East……Even if I got back to where I started from, I would still be heading East.  East Never becomes West.  Ever.  And so, for anyone with a broken and repentant heart, the “behavior chart” called the Bible declares, “Green days” for all of us.  And we have a Father who just can’t wait to give us strawberry milk.