Dreams and Visions

I've found myself drawn to the "minor prophets" of the Old Testament of late. One of the things that God has been impressing on me is how often I look for verbal communication from Him but ignore other ways in which He may be trying to speak. In Joel 2:28 the Lord says, "I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions." The writings of the prophets contain visions and dreams aplenty and have caused me to rethink how I communicate with God.

I have always had the habit of praying for the Lord to "speak" to me, which has always had a more verbal connotation to it. I'm now finding myself praying for the Lord to reveal to me what He wants me to know, through the spoken or written word, dreams, visions or however else He would choose. I'm not sure that my dreams have been infused with meaning or that I've had any visions of late, but I am finding myself more alert to receive the messages that God intends for me.

Book Review

I finally finished reading Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, but Nobody Wants to Die: or (the eschatology of bluegrass) by David Crowder and Mike Hogan. I got the book for Christmas from Mom and Dad and couldn't wait to dive in. It seems strange to say that I was eager to start reading a book about death, but Crowder's writing is always interesting and I also knew that this book would deal, at least in part, with the death of his friend and pastor, Kyle Lake, which I had followed closely via several news outlets and Crowder's own writings online.

The main topics of discussion in the book were death (sprinkled throughout), the history of the soul (via the history of philosophy) and the history of bluegrass (in all its musicological glory). Sprinkled throughout was color commentary by the authors and discussions between the authors in the form of instant messages.

An interesting addition to a book of this type was the inclusion of story segments that served as interspersed parable about the universality of death. What I mean is that each of us are touched by death (either that of someone we know or the fear of our own) and there is an odd sort of comfort in that fact.

While the book doesn't go into great depth on the philosophical or musicological, it does serve as a primer for those that are interested in these topics without getting bogged down in a more academic approach. The more personal sections of the book also allow the reader to enter into the grief of the authors. More than once, something that was said about their mourning of a friend or family member touched on a memory of loss for me which allowed me to enter into their story in a communal way that only death can.

I would recommend this book to pretty much anybody, but especially to Crowder fans and those unafraid of creative communication around a common theme.

First Sales Meeting

The job change feels a bit more official after attending my first meeting for sales last night. I felt a little odd since I was running in a circle that I don't usually inhabit. I'm sure there was more than one person who saw me and wondered what I was doing there until they announced that I was moving out of the shop to manage bikes.

The big task of the evening was setting our individual sales goals for the year. Having no frame of reference, I relied on Bryan and Josiah to help me a great deal. Assuming everything goes well, I should have a much better idea of what to do next year, but I was pretty clueless last night. I based my figures off of a total goal for the year and then figured what percent of my sales were going to come from different months. Obviously, late spring and early summer should be good months for me in bikes, October will be a good month for me in youth cold weather coats and December should be strong with Christmas shopping.

It's still a bit surreal since I'm still putting in time in the shop, but the reality of the job change is slowly taking hold.

The Name Game

This is not meant as any kind of political commentary, but with our culture's penchant for combining the names of celebrity couples (Brangelina, Tomkat...), why has no one combined the names of anyone in the political arena.

Hillary + Bill = Hillbilly

This could catch on...

Morning routine

Xander is not a morning person. Xander gets rather cranky when you wake him up while it is still dark out and tell him to climb out of the warm, comforting womb of the bed and get dressed to go to school. One way that I combat that is to tell him jokes as soon as he's up. It's not much but his mood can hinge on the morning joke.

I need more jokes. Things of the "Why did the chicken cross the road?" and "What's black and white and red all over?" variety. While I continue to make jokes up on the fly, I'm finding it harder to play to the first grade audience and not go over his head. If you have jokes I could use, please leave a comment.

Moving on up

It's 2:30 am after a long work week, but I guess I'm too excited to sleep right now. I found out today that in about three weeks I will be moving out of the bike shop at work to manage the bike department in sales. It's been two weeks in the making, but the decision was made and I was offered the job today.

It started a couple of weeks ago when we sold a higher end Gary Fisher bike on a Tuesday evening. Less than two weeks prior to its sale, the bike had been hanging in our backstock area because there wasn't room for it on the floor. I had started re-stocking the floor any time that a bike sold, which would normally be the job of the person who is managing bikes, but said person had been neglecting that part of their duties. The obsessive compulsive in me needed to see those slots filled on the floor, so I started doing so. I had placed a few bikes that would probably be considered either specialty bikes or at least bikes with a narrow clientele and within two weeks three of them had sold including the aforementioned Gary Fisher.

Back to the Tuesday evening... Bryan (the assistant manager that oversees bikes) had helped get the customer set up with the Fisher and I told him later in the evening that I couldn't help but feel a little bit proud of the fact that I had been putting these bikes out there and they had been selling. He said, "Maybe you should move out to sales and manage bikes for me." His tone was somewhat ambiguous as to whether he was serious or not, so I just blew it off as a joke.

Later, I started thinking about it. I talked to Amy about it when I got home and did the typical "pros and cons" list so often associated with this type of a decision. I talked to Bryan on Thursday and told him that I wasn't sure if he'd been serious or not, but that he'd gotten me thinking and that I'd be interested in talking more about the possibility of managing bikes for him.

Several more conversations and much prayer later, I get to start my new responsibilities on February 15th. It will mean more pay with better income potential (since commission is a part of the game, there's really no telling exactly what I'll be making) and not too many more hours. It will be another new challenge, but at least I know the environment and the people. The fact that I just keep getting more passionate about cycling doesn't hurt matters either.

Oh, and I can still build bikes during my time off for a little extra income and to keep my hands dirty. What's the good of being around bikes all the time if you can't play with them every now and then?

A long overdue thanks to Mom and Dad

Dear Mom and Dad,

I would like to (belatedly) thank you for all of the thankless jobs that you did when I was a kid that I either resented or simply took no notice of including, but not limited to, the following:

-getting me food and drink at meals, snack times and any other times to simply get me to stop whining
-dressing me in clothing appropriate to the weather even when I wanted to wear something else
-waking me up in the morning in order to get me to school
-putting me to bed at a reasonable time, even when I fought it
-combing my hair and making me take a bath
-listening to my endless "insights" about Star Wars and any other obsession I happened to pursue

The list could go on, but suffice it to say that life with two and seven year old kids makes you realize a bit more how ungrateful you must have been.

You're the best and I love you both!

Matt

When it rains...

We've had an eventful couple of days with cars, family illness and Indiana house stuff. The ball started rolling (for us anyway) when Amy hit a deer with the Aztek leaving her mom's (Marilyn's) place in Yankton on Monday night. Amy and the kids had gone down for the day to hang out while I was at work and were only a few miles on their way back when a deer ran onto the road leaving Amy no time to react. The passenger headlight, front quarter panel, hood and other externals took the brunt of it and Amy turned around and headed back to Marilyn's where they spent the night, all unscathed. We took the car into the shop this morning to have the damage assessed for insurance. Since we've only made three payments on it to date, we'd like it to still look like a new car, so I'm sure we'll pony up the deductible and watch our insurance rates go up.

Marilyn said that she meant to tell Amy to watch for deer as it's mating season and they seem to be everywhere down by their place right now. I think it would have done more good to tell the deer to watch for cars.

Since I was home alone and without a phone, I decided to email my folks in lieu of our usual weekly phone conversation. I told them I hoped that their week had either been uneventful or eventful in good ways. Unfortunately, it was eventful as Dad came down with a case of the shingles. He'd had some minor symptoms for a few days before heading to Fort Dodge to celebrate Christmas with the rest of the Morrison clan on New Year's Eve. When they sat down to dinner, Mom noticed that Dad's face was breaking out. Since Dad's had this before, they knew what they were dealing with.

What they didn't know until Monday was that the particular brand of shingles that Dad has can cause blindness if not treated early. A doctor friend in Sheldon told Dad to see an eye doctor right away and the guy that they got to come in on the holiday was able to determine that it hadn't effected the cornea and gave him some drops and a prescription that he needed to get started on as soon as possible. Unfortunately, with the holiday, there wasn't a single pharmacy open between Sheldon and Spencer (about a 35 mile stretch) and Dad had to wait until the next morning to get his meds. He's probably going to be miserable for a few days, but hopefully the delay won't effect his vision (which is an important thing to a visual artist).

As a nice bookend to the events of the last few days, I was on my way home from work last night and was sitting at a red light when I got hit from behind. I just sat there in disbelief for a few seconds as I muttered, "Okay. Sure. Why not?" I got out of the car and walked around to the back to see that the worst that the collision appeared to do was dent both of our license plates. The lady that hit me was very apologetic and I told her it was no big deal.

On the house front, our friends, Adam and Rhonda Myers, may wind up occupying our house for a few months because their house is falling down around them. They had a home built for them by a community foundation several years ago in inner city Marion where they have a great ministry with youth and families in the neighborhood. It's not uncommon to see a ton of kids at the house for Bible study, homework assistance or just to grab a meal. Unfortunately, this hub of ministry was built on a faulty foundation (the house, not the ministry) and the place is literally falling apart. Every organization, foundation and contractor that was involved in the project has ceased to exist and they have no legal recourse to reclaim any of the value of the house.

The church community has been raising money to help them rebuild, but they have known that the time would come where the house was simply unsafe for them to occupy. Things have gotten progressively worse recently and the time is quickly approaching where they'll need to vacate. Our place is still empty, so we've offered it as a temporary residence until they are able to rebuild. On the plus side, we would be able to provide a place for a great family who we love very much in their time of need. On the downside, it isn't in the same neighborhood and will make their ministry a little more difficult to carry out in the day to day that they are used to.

There is also a rumor that a young couple that we know in Marion may be interested in buying the house this summer, but we've seen too many things fall through to get our hopes up too much. On the positive side, the wife used to be a student of Amy's that took voice at the house, knows the house and is still interested. We'll see what happens.

Here's hoping that our run of bad luck is over and that our inauspicious start to 2007 is not an omen of things to come.