Nell Videos

Two new videos up of our one-month-old Nell on our youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/dflashflan18?feature=mhum

Right On!

Below I'm going to paste a page of David Brazzeal's blog entitled "following". David and Sanan are the founders of our church community out here, Curieux, and now live in Paris. I found the following quite inspiring in its simple, balanced, straightforward reasoning.

I consider myself a follower of Jesus...
I follow him in a variety of ways…

I follow Jesus in his simplicity…

He lived a very simple life…didn’t own much, treaded gently on the earth…me, I’m trying to learn how to do that.

I follow Jesus in his creativity…

He was a creative story teller…he spoke in riddles and enigmas…He left people with something to ponder…He was practically a performance artist, knowing that walking into a room and washing feet was more powerful than a lecture on humility.

I follow Jesus in his compassion for the poor…the marginalized…the oppressed….

He seemed to prefer “hanging out” with this group much more than the rich or the spiritual leaders of the day. You can’t read the stories of Jesus w/out this jumping off the page. This is not natural for me (being a middle-class, middle-age, white, male) but I’m learning to follow him in this… by contributing to and volunteering with organizations that help the poor…by treating them like fellow human beings when I see them and by caring extra money to give to them. .

I follow Jesus as spiritual mystic…

Jesus spent long hours alone staying connected to his Father…he frequented gardens and hilltops to find a bit of solitude…So I’m learning to pull away from the distraction and make time to reconnect with him…to meditate…to give thanks…to contemplate…to intercede…to lament…to rejoice…to be silent.

I follow Jesus as someone who enjoyed life…

He had deep friendships…loved to journey together with them and talk on the road…he went to lots of parties…loved and cared deeply for people…So I am learning to be a companion to my friends on the journey…to enjoy long conversations at parties and to love and care for people.

Dispatch from the Northeastern Front...

Denny, here. Sorry for the war terminology in the title...but at times things do get a little intense with two kids on our hands. Our lovely Nell was born almost three weeks ago, and as our babymoon comes to an end, two young kids and winter set in simultaneously. C'mon, couldn't we have timed this a little better? What about a spring baby?...One that you can whisk away into the great outdoors without having to put fifteen extra layers on? And the D-man is smack dab in the middle of his twos--headstrong, determined, and creative as ever--reaching new heights (literally) most the time in our kitchen.

Okay, the italics rant was a little therapeutic venting. Sorry to expose you to such honesty. Anyone who's had children I'm sure will understand...? Needless to say, things are getting crazy and we're all learning some good lessons. I've recently started reading my first parenting book, Kids are worth it!, by Barbara Coloroso. In fact, it's been one of the most challenging, inspiring, immediately applicable books I've ever read (and I'm only through chapter three). I'll end this muddy blog post with a quote from that book that hits it on the head for me right now.

"Who of us is mature enough for offspring before the offspring themselves arrive? The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults."

-Peter de Vries

Amen, brotha!

Nell Lavender

So, it's been too, too long since our last blog. Here's a short one announcing the arrival of our lovely daughter Nell Lavender on Dec. 28th at 1:30 in the afternoon right in our bedroom.

The birth experience was amazing (although a bit longer than we anticipated!), our midwife was phenomenal, and Lauren especially was an all-star. It was a privelege to witness and be a part of such an intense, trying, wonderful birth. Welcome, Nell!