<– I’ve posted a full photo album to the left. She’s 7 pounds, 2 ounces and 20.5 inches. She’s healthy and seems pretty content. She’s also very loud in the moments she’s not content. Enjoy. Amy’s sister Stacy gets credit for all of these photos.

Ainsley joined us at 1:40 this afternoon, everything went very well, and everyone is great. I’ll post photos here later this evening.

Sometime within the next 300 or so hours, I will hold my second
daughter in my arms for the first time. This will be the third time I
watch my own flesh and blood emerge from the sanctuary of my wife’s
body, and it will be no less magical and soul-rattling than the first
time. I know that imagery creeps some of you out. My gentle, loving
words to you are: don’t be a dummy. I’m not asking you to come
watch; just appreciate the spellbinding miracle of life bursting forth just as the Creator intends. We could still be stuck with birth-by-rib-extraction, but
lucky for squeamish dudes everywhere, that scene only came down once.
We got this instead, and it’s not an inconvenient, weird biological
phenomenon. It’s the physical and visual emergence of new life; the
painful and astonishing appearance of another Eikon – an image-bearer of the One who creates and sustains life.

In the nearly six years since Amy became pregnant with Aiden, I’ve
given more thought to the notion of life than in my 26 or so years
prior. Our experiences with pregnancy, birth, and our own children have
certainly been the impetus for that, but I’ve also been profoundly
affected by the lives of folks around me. Seeing my brother
become a father, watching my other brother be dramatically changed by
his nephews and nieces, and experiencing the evolution of my parents
from Mom and Dad to Pops and Belle – these things have
all deepened my understanding of and appreciation for the indescribable
way that new life defines and redefines all of us.

The journeys of our friends who have adopted have inspired and
changed me in ways that are just as hard to convey. They meet their
kids under completely different circumstances than I’ve met mine, and the miracle
is just as staggering. The Eikon is delivered to them amid pain
and tears, and the beauty of a Redeemer who raises His image to life
over and over again is blinding. We discover that true Life both
emerges in the phenomenon of physical birth and is completely unbound by biology. We are all born. All adopted. All given life. And given life again. If we don’t know that or if we view any Eikon
or his or her arrival as some sort of consolation prize, we’ve come
under the spell of a tragic lie.

Celebrating life in this way is not the exercise in humanism that some would claim, because these wonderful mysteries point to Jesus Himself – the incarnation of Divine Life in flesh, yet unconfined by that humanity. The more we discover that image in ourselves and one another, the more we know the Source of the image. The more we know the Source of Life, the more we image, declare, and establish that Life in the world.

The creation of every child is
quite literally a supernatural gift. As the image of the Divine enters the
world over and over, day after day, we are indeed visited by The
Spirit of Life. It never stops showing up, and whenever and however it
enters our personal sphere, we find ourselves at the center of the
biggest storm of love, joy, and life that we’ve ever known; bigger than
any we’ve ever imagined. We insist that it can’t be surpassed by anyone else’s tale. And it can’t, because this is the gift of Life: when it finds you, there is nothing else; no challengers. Only Life.

To all my friends and rabid fans who have any inclination to trust my cinematic opinions: Please find a way to see this film. I prefer to avoid overselling, so I’ll try to withhold that long enough to afford some of you time to take in this little gem. Go.

Many of you know (or know of) my friend and co-pastor Ross King. His three year-old son, Sam, likes to play drums. No, really.

Enjoy some random bits of goodness produced by others.

First, there is The Miracles of Elijah, If Today. This is a can’t miss offering spilled from the outré brilliance of 3CT.

Then, there is the miracle of reinterpreted Kanye West. I believe there might be an f-bomb somewhere in there for those who like to be warned of such things.

Growing up, that’s what my friend Mark hated about church – Sunday mornings meant stiff pants from Sears, uncomfortable shoes, and a whole fairly rigorous routine that wasn’t replicated in any other part of life. And if you were a preacher’s kid, that routine and the pants that clothed it were unrelenting. Sunday morning. Sunday night. Wednesday night. Sunday School. Big church. Children’s choir. Training union. More big church. R.A.’s. Prayer meeting. More big church. Youth group. And on and on. It was predictable; never optional. Faking an illness was the standby strategy for interrupting the cycle, but it was, statistically speaking, a terribly ineffective strategy. Most weeks we went anyway, trying to maintain the diseased facade, purposed to enjoy church even less to "prove" that we should have been allowed to stay home.

This is a child’s memory of life as a PK, of course, and certainly not my adult perspective (well, not completely anyway). A few days ago, I
sat down and talked about that perspective with my youngest brother, Britt, my friend Mark, and Mark’s youngest brother Tim. We were all raised by preachers and preacher’s wives, and we’re all better and weirder because of it (as are our middle brothers, Will and Scott, who weren’t here for the conversation). Lucky for you, our friend Drew (who was a deacon’s kid, poor guy), was in the room with a tape recorder when we had this conversation. It now resides on the ComChurch website in two parts as the latest episode in an ongoing series of podcasts. Check it out (right click to download):

Part One
Part Two

You can also subscribe to the podcast through itunes.

[Part 1]

[Part 2]

… it just may work.

Here’s the deal, boys. I am not making assertions about the cause or potential implications of global warming one way or the other. The fact that my unwillingness to take a side is disturbing to people is, well, a little confounding to me. I’m not a Republican, a fan of corporations, or a Halliburton stock holder. I am for us doing whatever we can do to be better stewards of the earth as long as doing so doesn’t injure other humans (a post for another day).

I’m just a skeptic, kids. I’m not convinced people are this smart or this objective or this in command of the past, present, and future trends of our planet. If history and science prove one thing about our ability to know with any certainty what’s going on, it’s that we’re almost always wrong the first, second, and third time around, at least with regard to some significant part of our conclusions. There has been scientific consensus about warming before. And cooling. And warming. And cooling. And that’s just in the last hundred years or so.

The very fact that everyone sneers and scoffs at anyone who would suggest we don’t know for certain that warming is real, catastrophic, and clearly anthropogenic makes me even more suspicious. There are very few better reasons (for me) to question the certainty of something than having everyone smirk and say, "Everyone knows that…" I assume I don’t need to start listing the various "everyone knows" statements that time and new science have proven to be utterly laughable.

But wait, we’re talking about science. The vast majority of scientists agree that we’re all responsible for overheating the earth. Ah yes, science. What does science say about the existence of a creating, active deity? What do the overwhelming majority of scientists believe about my claim the Spirit of this all knowing, all powerful God lives inside me? About miracles? About immaculate conceptions? Physical resurrections?

Science is useful, but my trust in it is incomplete and conditional. I even believe we can and should see some re-merging of faith and science. Bring it on. Just please don’t shake your head at me pitifully when I don’t acquiesce to the majority of scientists or to popular consensus.

There’s something at work here that I have to mention, but which I do not intend as an accusation toward anyone in particular, certainly not anyone posting here. That something is this: the failure of the religious establishment to take good care of people or the planet does not obligate those of us who consider ourselves more progressive followers of Jesus to pledge ourselves to popular political, environmental, or charitable causes. In fact, we must not do so until and unless we have tested those agendas with discernment in the Spirit, asking whether they manifest the Kingdom and whether they make good sense (the first, frankly, being more important than the second). Determining that they do not does not make us heartless or indifferent to the real world. It makes us more able to actually follow Jesus as He brings love, justice, and healing to that real world, and less prone to accepting meager substitutes for that all-consuming invasion of redemption.

Once again, I am not shaking that stick at anyone accusingly, at least no more than I’m shaking at myself. I am concerned that we all (author included) are tempted to settle for what appears good, even if it’s not our actual calling. And, lest there be any doubt, I do not condone or encourage individual indifference or religious blindness on these issues. This cuts both ways.

As for the science and reality of warming, my intent is not to suggest that I believe those who promote or believe the consensus view are wrong; only that they are capable of being wrong. It’s a scandalous suggestion, I know, and it is both unpopular and, in the religion of popular opinion, heretical. If you believe they are correct, I have no problem with you. I simply encourage everyone to season their belief in either direction with a healthy portion of "this is our current best guess." And at the risk of offending, I wonder if being easily taken aback by those who question or oppose popular opinion might mean you haven’t done that; that you have, instead, made absolute and incontrovertible fact out of current consensus. I think it’s also fair to note that, in the finer print, most of the scientific theory supporting the consensus doesn’t even express that degree of certainty and instead uses words like "strong evidence" rather than "absolute proof" or "very likely" rather than "conclusively." Of course, no one is under any obligation to take my advice.

I post the following at the risk of starting precisely what I do not wish to start here, and I warn you that I will spam anyone who goes down the road of trying to "out-peer-review" someone else on my blog. My intent here is to make the very mild and factual point that it’s not just me, Dick Cheney, Homer Simpson, and a handful of crack addicts who don’t embrace the prevailing viewpoints without caveat or question.

• Wikipedia listing on scientists opposing the mainstream assessment of global warming
• A list of some of the skeptics

Please note that home anywhere does not endorse any of these people or their opinions. We do not assert that they are correct; merely that they exist. Again, please do not occupy the space below trying to controvert any of these people. That is unnecessary as it is not my point to promote any particular agendas or scientific conclusions. These scientists and their ideas are subject to the same skepticism and ability to be wrong as the others. It just seems en vogue to pretend these folks either don’t exist or that they work for big oil. Everyone who exists deserves, at least, to be acknowledged as actually existing. So call me an activist for actual existence.

…is here.

We are spending a few days with my family (parents, brothers, and various spouses, girlfriends, and offspring) this week at my parents’ house. Yesterday Ella Grace turned two, and we had a little party for her and Jessie Rose, Will’s oldest who will also be two in a few weeks.

One of Aiden’s favorite parts of coming here is that my parents have saved boxes of my (and my brothers’) old toys. The second we pile out of the car, he’s headed straight for "Daddy’s toys." A few minutes ago, I looked up and saw this:

Notice the players in this scene: Luke and unmasked Darth Vader/Anakin (these are Aiden’s new toys, even though they would seem to fit in the previous generation of toys also represented here), hairless Playmobil guy with gun, Polly Pockets (one of Ella’s birthday presents), and a Fisher Price jet in the background. Apparently Polly had committed some treasonous act (being a girl, I suspect), and the others were there to haul her off to the clink.