Dear Eugene

Dear Eugene, I don't play with my phone and last night I thought maybe I don't play with it enough: there must be something good, something better that I can do with it. So I found myself an app to identify plants, went into my photo album to do precisely that, surprised by how it actually worked, wasted 30 mins in sort of a good way. And I thought, Yeah, if I can do school all over again, this is the kind of thing that would interest me.  There are stuffs you put in your head because you need to use them, and there are others just for the joy and pleasure of their being revealed.  Somewhere in between exists a tenuous dance of the realistic and romantic, I suppose, if one doesn't mind the obscenity of such arbitrary sorting. Now I used the word "sort" twice already this morning, a word I don't often use.  There are 20 stand-ins lining up to deputize but I let the stranger stay.  I determined to do something I didn't even know the reason for an...

Dear Eugene, My daughter passed her driving road test yesterday. She is a cool cat, playing her guitar, singing, right before the test, song of trust, trusting God, I heard.  I hope I know how to stay chilled like her when it gets hot. During the one-year journey leading up to yesterday, this father was feeding on words of encouragement and wisdom from friends and family, even strangers.  Even the night before the test. I first got the idea of not putting her through formal driving class from a family, five kids, a father, a mother, all down-to-earth.  A few months before my daughter was ready for her written test, I asked this father, It must have cost you a fortune to put all your kids, one after one, behind the wheel?  He said No, I taught them all. There I saw a possibility that the rest of the world-- my little world--was insisting on its nonexistence.  So I followed the lead of this father, inspired to see new things, to try old ways. It w...

Dear Eugene, Yesterday I took a long bus ride, a Sabbath route new to me, to rest in the familiar bosom of Jesus. I ended up at the edge of water. The weather was good, everybody came out to play.  There was only one narrow street going along the seaside, on it a congested parade of beautiful people stuck in their beautiful cars going nowhere.  Apparently they still looked happy to have arrived, even before setting foot on the promised land. I went there to be alone and was not disappointed.  When you are on the beach no one bothers you, especially when you are looking down.  I try to pick one pebble to take home every time I go to a beach, a special enough chosen one. There was a time when my son was really into rocks and minerals.  A visit to our local gems store was a real treat then.  He chose a field guide on the topic from an independent book store not too far from where I was yesterday not too many years ago and I remember it was $12...

Dear Eugene, Growing up is as much about unlearning as learning. No one can survive without learning to preserve one's all-important self.  No one can truly live without dying continually in ways big and small to one's petty little self.  One doesn't need to trumpet a great religion or tall calling to know this much is true about life on earth. So what is the fine balance--if to speak of a balance is even a correct frame of mind to comprehend this contradiction?  Is there a scale to adjust how much I should choose to keep or lose myself?  A spectrum of just the right mix of give and take?  And based on what?  If I cheat the scale and did what I didn't mean to do, does it still count favorably to my humanity, or am I risking a deep-down rotting of heart that will one day produce a stench indisputable and inexcusable? Jesus said to his disciples, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For ...