life

Athena

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(So that it’s clear, the picture above is not Athena. We’re not allowed to post pictures of her online and, given that I’m changing her name for her privacy it would be shortsighted of me to post a picture of her even if it were allowed.)

As those of you who have read my previous posts as a foster father, I don’t give my childrens’ names on the blog as both a matter of protecting them (their story as much as their physical safety) and compliance with the requirements of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. So, my latest child, we’ll call “Athena.” I chose this name because, according to legend, Athena sprang to life as a fully-formed adult and my Athena, well, speaks so well that I forget I’m arguing with a three-year-old who has little sense of reason and an overblown sense of whimsy (may she never lose it!).

Athena fits right in with K and I. She’s extremely intelligent, very creative, and stubborn as all get out. She’s maybe a little weird sometimes, but definitely our kind of weird, so I see that as evidence she’s found the right parents and we’ve found the right daughter. She has no issues with confidence, cannot help but comport herself with a mixture of “main character energy” and pure sass.

In this short post, I wanted to share a few anecdotes about her to help you all get to know her.

Athena loves to pretend things are cell phones. She’ll do it with Duplo, with building blocks, with just about anything vaguely the right size. She’ll hold it up to her ear and tell us she’s calling us and we have to answer. Typically, she’ll then stand in silence for a few moments before making the motion of tapping the button to end the call without ever saying anything. If we ask questions, she might answer, but these answers are as likely to be non-sequiturs as anything else. She finds non-sequiturs hilarious.

In furtherance of this fascination, and something I’m sure we’ll never grow to regret, we got her a toy cell phone for her first Christmas with us. Not long after one evening, K and Athena are sitting at the dinner table. Athena is playing on with her cell phone toy and K tells her, “Athena, put down your phone. You don’t need your phone at the dinner table.” Athena looks up, sees K with her phone in her left hand, and says, “Mommy, do you need your phone at the dinner table?” She keeps us on our toes.

For some reason, Athena did not like, at least at first, the initial caseworker she had with DFPS. Athena is already queen of the side-eye, and there was no shortage of it when the caseworker came to visit. If the caseworker asked for a hug, Athena would turn her back on her. The caseworker would took take it in stride and reinforce her bodily autonomy and choice about whether she wants to give hugs or not. But it didn’t end at this. Once, while the caseworker is sitting on one of our living room couches talking with K and I, Athena brings her her shoes, places them in her lap, and then gently grabs her hand as if to lead her to the door. None too subtle, this one. Of course, we told her is wasn’t yet time for the caseworker to leave, so Athena returned to giving her the side-eye. When she did finally leave, Athena wanted to be the one to shut the door behind her. “Good riddance!” she seemed to say. Fortunately, Athena did finally warm up to her, but not long before a new caseworker was assigned.

Our child may be an “old soul.” For a while, she’d talk about her “grandson” in a way just clever enough to make us doubt that she was simply confused about the difference between grandsons and grandfathers. On several occasions, she talked about having done things we are almost certain she has never done–like the sensation of riding a motorcycle–and events we’re sure have not happened to her.

She may also be a wizard; I’m not sure what Hogwart’s tuition looks like these days. Once evening, again at the dinner table, she starts engaging in what can only be called glossolalia in a cadence somewhere between chanting and mumbling. After about thirty seconds of this, she pauses to throw her hands up in the air in a “V” of supplication while intoning the sort of “awwww” sound one typically associates with the appearance of the divine in comedic film. Continuing this for about ten seconds, she then returned to the glossolalia. K and I stared at each other in wonderment; one of us might have mouthed “WTF?” to the other.

K has a crooked index finger, which we call her “witch finger.” She likes to point it at me in the manner of hexing me when she’s playfully cross. Athena picked this up very quickly.

This past November, the church K and I grew up in had a pumpkin patch as a fundraiser. Someone brought an mid-twentieth-century tractor as a set piece to sit in the middle of the patch. Stairs were erected for visitors to easily climb to the seat for pictures. For whatever reason, Athena is fascinated by tractors. She spent most of the time we were there (on multiple occasions), sitting in the tractor seat and attempting to hotwire it. If I’d known the tractor was fully functional, which I only found out after the fact, I’d have been more concerned. As it was, I was mostly amused.

Athena has a good heart. She often apologizes when she bumps into inanimate objects. For a three-year-old, she learns the words to songs quickly, keeps melody well, and makes up her own songs. Best of all, she has good taste in music. Early in her stay with us, I played a Leo Moracchioli cover while in the car. If you’re not familiar with Leo, go look him up on Spotify or–better yet–on YouTube, where you can see his videos. He’s the owner of a recording studio in Norway called Frog Leap Studios, and he makes heavy metal covers of all kinds of songs. My first exposure was his version (with Mary Spender) of Dire Strait’s “Sultans of Swing,” one my all-time favorites. Leo has a deep grasp of the “tropes” of metal-style guitarwork and a gift for arrangements that introduce those tropes while preserving the core “feel” of a song. It was probably his version of “Sultans” that I’d decided to play, mostly for a lark. As the distortion kicks in, I hear a squeal from the back seat and turn to see her rocking out as much as she can while in the confines of a child-safety seat. I’m hoping I’ll have a drummer to drown me out while I poorly play guitar; she does seem to have a penchant for percussion.

Just yesterday, on the way home from picking her up from school, she asks for music. The quickest thing I can safely pull up at a stoplight is an EDM playlist on Spotify called “Cyberpunk Night Club.” We’re sitting at the next light, listening to one of the songs (me nodding along to the song), and she says, “This is my favorite song! I love this song.” She’d never heard it before, so, I’m thinking, “okay, kid,” but at least she likes the genre!

Athena names her stuffies, like most children do, but her names are always in flux. Ask once what a stuffed animal’s name is, and she’ll give you one answer. Ask twenty minutes later, you get a different one. Some of these names are complete gibberish, sometimes they’re the names of children she goes to school with, sometimes, the name is “Taxi.” Why, “taxi?” I have no idea. The only constant name she consistently returns to is “Ellie.” Sometimes, all of her animals are named “Ellie” at the same time.

There are two things other people constantly tell us about Athena. The first is how beautiful she is. People literally stop us in the middle of the grocery store to tell us she’s beautiful, and forget the administrative staff and nurses when she goes to the doctor or the dentist. She knows how beautiful she is, and she’s already learning how to be cute to be manipulative. With her high intelligence (she had to go in for a state-required testing to see if she needed any developmental supports and the psychiatrist doing the review told us she was the smartest little girl she’d met) and good looks, she’s going to be dangerous indeed.

The second thing we’re told is how intelligent she is. Often, it’s suprise at just how articulate and eloquently she can speak. Since she really started talking at two, it’s been complete sentences with a large vocabulary. I thoroughly approve. She makes up stories. Simple ones, but they have basic structure and resolution. She learns things very quickly. We’ve been in the habit of saying the same prayer at dinner time before we eat. When it became clear that Athena was getting bored with the one we’d been doing, K suggested we start singing the Wesley Table Grace; she learned it and sang along on the third night after we started.

If it’s not obvious, I’m smitten. Unfortunately she knows it. In the parental chain, as much as K an I try to maintain solidarity and a unified front, Daddy’s the sucker and it’s no secret. I probably should have expected as much.

Back in the Saddle

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As I logged in this morning, I noticed that it’s now been more than two years since my last post. I feel a mix of nostalgia, excitement, and–honestly–embarrassment to get back to writing on the blog after so much time. But getting back into this habit is long overdue.

Where Have I Been?

Well, the last two years have been something of a blur. K and I have had a beautiful, brilliant, and exceptionally sassy little girl (now three-and-a-half) with us since February of 2024. Nothing is done until it’s done, as I’ve said before, but things are now looking as sure for adoption as they possibly could. We’re waiting for an appeal in her case to be resolved and then we should be able to finalize. I’ve had so many experiences with her (and she’s said so many hilarious things!) that it’s something of a travesty I’m only now starting to post about her.

K’s father passed away in November of 2024 as well. It has been, and continues to be difficult, both with the grief that necessarily accompanies such a change (he is the first of our parents to pass) and the additional responsibilities of familial support that come with these kinds of life changes.

As you need no one to tell you, the world, including America, has been in a state of turmoil since I last posted, and for so many unnecessary reasons. The state of government and justice–or the lack thereof–in our country is something that needs more voices calling out, and I intend to do so. I feel this responsibility especially deeply as the misunderstanding, often willful, and misuse of Christianity had been used to justify the daily erosion of democracy and human rights. It’s high time for me to turn my feeling the collective moral trauma of the present into something useful.

In August of last year, I went back to school! I’ve started attendance in the Master’s of Theological Studies program at United Theological Seminary. One semester down and I cannot tell you how much I have enjoyed a return to studying, attending classes (remotely; the program is entirely online, which is something I needed to make seminary work for me) and writing papers. Many new thoughts to share with about this experience and the further development of my theology.

Recent Projects

Between work, life events, and fatherhood, it’s been difficult to find as much time to devote to writing and creative pursuits as I’d like to. But I’m becoming better about managing and utilizing my free time for what is most meaningful rather than what is easiest, and returning to the blog is a part of that effort.

My novel continues in the rewrite. I’ve been working on replotting it for quite some time now, but I’m still not finished with this stage. That said, I’m proud of the progress made; it’s becoming more complex, more developed, and tighter in the story it presents. I’m thoroughly enjoying working on it in spite of how slow the progress has been. I’ll be sharing about some of my experiences and discoveries in the rewrite; I definitely feel I’ve learned a lot more about being a writer and the craft of writing fiction as I’ve been going back and reworking the story. My proficiency with Scriviner has expanded, and I’m excited to share some of that. As important, I’ve been able to turn one of the rooms in my home into a home office and, in addition to giving me a great place to work from home, serves very well for my creative endeavors!

As might be expected, I’ve been reading a lot of new books, recently adding those assigned for seminary. Before classes started, though, I read some works that had profound impact on how I “do” theology. Walter Brueggeman’s Prophetic Imagination has been a welcome inspiration on how Christianity might respond to current world events, and Amy-Jill Levine’s Short Stories by Jesus has drastically changed how I read the parables. Other books that I’ve enjoyed (both read with my Sunday school class) recently are Miroslav Volf’s Life Worth Living and E.P. Sander’s The Historical Figure of Jesus.

I’d, for a time, returned to working on a roleplaying game system of my own design, but I’ve again set that aside, at least for now in favor of using my creative time toward other endeavors. I’ve generally returned to the Fate system as what I intend to use for most games I’ve run, but I’m also trying to be intentional about trying out some new systems (new to me, at least) in the near future. My approach to Fate seems to have changed in the past few years; my desire to return a lot of crunch to the system has yielded to a more profound respect for the simplicity and flexibility of the core systems and an allowance for the narrative details to carry the nuance rather than needing mechanics to do so. Especially, I think I might have only recently realized how important the idea of “Aspects are always true,” is to the system’s ability to stay light and handle deep and complex narrative. Nevertheless, I’ve got some new systems I’m working on and will share–a system for cyberpunk-style human augmentation intended to capture Shadowrun-style complexity with Fate’s mechanical minimalism by relying on Transhumanity’s Fate‘s “traits” as sub-Aspects and the occasional use of Tachyon Squadron’s “min and max” dice; and a spaceship design system for a sci-fi game I’m worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding for a number of different settings continues sporadically, so look for comments on the process, the results, and some of the tools I’ve tried along the way: Nord Games’ Oracle and Elements of Inspiration decks and The Story Engine’s Story Engine, Deck of Worlds, and Lore Master’s Deck in particular.

I’ve managed to keep up with my regular gaming group, so I’ll have some things to share from there. We’ve been playing through WFRP’s Enemy Within campaign and recent video games have been Jump Space, Space Marine 2, Ready or Not and Darktide and the recent Mechwarrior games. Over the past few years, I’ve managed solo plays through Alone in the Dark, Avowed, Clair Obscure: Expedition 33, Borderlands 4 and Dragon Age: Veilguard and have recently gone back to dabble with Fallout 4 and Starfield. I have thoughts.

And, of course, there’s this whole school thing. For my first semester, “Introduction to the New Testament” class, I wrote about the Parable of the Clever Steward; I’ll at least be posting my thoughts on the topic, but I’m considering posting the whole paper for anyone who is interested.

A Note about AI

It feels like, in this day and age, something has to be said about this. I will never use AI in writing on the blog (or anywhere else for that matter). I may use some art generated by AI (Midjourney, specifically) for post pictures, but will generally continue to resort to free stock art as I have above. While I definitely support the use of human artists whenever possible–and always in commercial ventures–I am less concerned about AI art in non-commercial contexts for small projects where the realistic alternative is someone like myself drawing stick figure art.

I acknowledge that AI can be a useful tool in some circumstances, but I’m highly concerned about how its developers are recklessly pushing it and how unquestioningly consumers are accepting it despite its many (many) failings. There’s a lot to be said about the ethics of AI use, so I expect that’s something I’ll take up at a point in the near future.

Conclusion

Remarkably, the blog has maintained a steady level of engagement despite my failure to provide new material. Viewing posts is not alone enough to say that people want more, but I’m hoping that’s the case! If you’ve read something on the blog that you’ve been hoping I’d say more about or revisit, shoot me a message and let me know!

Short Update

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I don’t know about you, but the present situation has me all discombobulated. I’m an introvert by nature (a “socially-capable” introvert as K likes to say), so I’m not suffering from the cabin fever that assails a lot of us (at least not in the most noticeable of ways), but this coronavirus stuff still has me off of my game.

With my work drastically slowed down, I have the benefit of having some downtime to work on my passion projects–writing Avar Narn, gaming, this blog. I’d anticipated having a lot more posts up by now, but obviously things have remained as erratic as ever for my blog schedule. I’ve got about half a dozen unfinished posts of varying degrees of readiness that will be completed and posted at some time in the not-so distant future. I’ve been spending a lot of time, though, on Avar Narn worldbuilding, some mapmaking (which I’ll perhaps put up soon) and some work on the novel–most of which isn’t ready to be shown to the public.

Hawkwood and Marshal have both been continuing to go to daycare, which has been a godsend given some very tough behaviors we’ve been dealing with with Hawkwood–a post for another time. With the church mostly shut down, K has also been working from home. Every day is played by ear, which makes it difficult to focus on creative work, especially to the extent that staying home with little professional work to do had promised. There’s much more to be said on this front (and again, I realized I haven’t been posting much on the Fatherhood portion of the site), but that will go in a future post.

That’s a quick update; I hope you are all well, staying safe, and effectively managing the stress and anxiety we are all facing.

I’ll have a follow-up post with some of my thoughts about playing Dungeons and Dragons later today, with some of my other half-finished (once completed) posts and additional items coming to you very soon!

Chasing the Spirit

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This will be a short post–probably. You all are aware of my proclivity to wax verbose.

Christmastime is my favorite time of the year. Or, that’s what I think every time it rolls around, even though I tend to think that springtime is my favorite time of year every Spring. The combination of nostalgia for past Christmases, the emotional response to the meaning of the season (even if we probably celebrate it in the wrong time of the year and all of that), the chance to see and spend time with family, and the chance to put work aside for a short while and just enjoy being human for a change all hits a sweet spot in my soul. But every year, I seem to complain that I haven’t been able to “get into the Christmas spirit.” At least not fully.

This may simply be the “can’t complain, probably still will,” mentality that tends to grip me in my curmudgeonliness (at least I recognize that, I suppose), but I feel that this year, I’m at least partly to blame. Yes, this has been a busy and hectic time. K is serving her first Christmas as a commissioned pastor in a new position (she put on a wonderful children’s Christmas service yesterday!)–which means, of course, she’s working crazy hours; we’ve got the kiddos to prepare Christmas for, and then there’s all that work to do, which has been busier than usual this December. There just hasn’t been that much time for enjoying Christmas.

But there’s been some, and when there has been, I haven’t availed myself of it unless forced to. I took Hawkwood to yesterday’s children’s service because of my husbandly obligation to attend and my fatherly duty to take my three-year-old. I found the service to be moving and to be one of the most enjoyable Christmas services I’ve attended in a long while, so I was exceedingly glad to have gone. But had I not felt obligated, I probably would’ve skipped it in favor of trying to catch some aseasonal relaxation–video games, writing, working on Frostgrave and RPG projects, watching the rest of the Witcher, etc.

I’m wrestling with that. Honestly, my attendance in church is something I regularly struggle with, and that’s just writ large at Christmastime. I always am glad to have gone to a church service–it helps center me, returns me to a remembrance of what is important, reminds me of how grateful I ought to be for the many blessings I’ve received. But it’s not the place where I feel closest to God. Church music is fine, but it doesn’t fill and inspire me like it does for others. I am fascinated by the ritual and liturgy of a church service, but not particularly moved by it. The sermon is typically the part of a service I enjoy most, but it’s not what I need from church attendance. I spend plenty of time reveling in the intellectualism and mystery of theology–it’s the emotional connection and the existential, mystic experience I don’t get enough of.

There’s the crux of it, I suppose. I’m not putting the effort into really seeking that elusive Christmas feeling, but lamenting not having it all the same. Maybe you feel the same way. If so, you’re in luck–there’s still time and grace for both of us.

Nano-Update: Final!

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It is finished.

Last week, both of the kids had the flu, so between trying to get work done and staying home with them, it became difficult to put all of the time into writing that I had hoped to. Neither K and I seemed to have caught it (thank God!), but I think we’re both still feeling a bit exhausted in scrambling to make sure they were comfortable while meeting work deadlines and trying to plan for the holidays.

Nevertheless, while I didn’t write as much as I’d wanted to, I did get enough in to hit my 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo. Yay! I win! Although, I have to admit that I don’t actually feel much at all about hitting that deadline. The things I feel good about–a constant schedule of writing, feeling productive and creative while writing, reaping the benefits of the massive amount I’ve time I put into plotting the novel–really don’t have much to do with the event itself. And, given that the novel is looking more and more like it’s going to be right at 150,000 words when complete, 50,000 doesn’t feel like quite the big milestone it might be. I realize that this kind of treatment of NaNoWriMo might make me an asshole (I feel like it does given that completing NaNoWriMo is a significant achievement on the way to finishing a novel for aspiring writers such as myself). But, as they say with unassailable logic, “It is what it is.”

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’m trying to finish (the first draft of) the whole thing by the end of the year; while I’ve previously been optimistic about this, the events of this past week especially have made me wonder whether I’ll be able to keep that up in light of all of life’s competing demands (though I do now believe that, if I didn’t have to work a “day” job, I could be a prolific writer). In order not to stress myself out overmuch, while I will continue to try to get the draft done by the end of the year, I’m going to focus more on making time to constantly work on it until it gets finished than worry too much about the deadline. We’ll see how it goes.

I’ve got a few side projects that will make their way to the blog in the near future. One, a set of optional rules for cybernetics and human augmentation in the Fate RPG system, should be out in a week or so.

Another (which I’m quite proud of) is an Excel spreadsheet to make adjusting Fate’s “dials” easy for planning new settings and campaigns in the system. There is a single-page Fate worksheet for this, but the dials it includes are relatively basic and do not account for many innovative rules mods that have been added by the many books that have been published since Fate Core first released. This spreadsheet will incorporate (by reference only–I’m avoiding any copyright issues by providing explanations of the rules referenced) sources from the Fate Toolkits to the Fate Plus and Fate Codex periodicals to rules from various published settings (like Transhumanity’s Fate, Tachyon Squadron, Interface Zero 2.0, etc.)

“Dials” will include variables such as number of character aspects, general category each aspect should fit, special aspects rules, whether you’re using Approaches or Skills (or both!), what your skill list will be (from options I’ve developed for my own games), what starting Refresh will be, how magic, gear, weapons, armor and human augmentation will be treated (if they need to have special rules at all), how many and what type of stress tracks you’ll use (and how they’ll be calculated), whether you’ll be using rules for Resources and Contacts, how consequences will be factored, how recovery will work, how character advancement will work and much more. It makes me excited to plan out different potential settings and games, and I hope to share that excitement with you. It is certainly possible to do all of this planning without the kind of tool I’m working on, but the spreadsheet (I think) allows you to look at the “big picture” and think about various rules mods you’re going to use will all fit together. I know one of my issues with the customization of the Fate system is that I get tempted to do too much when simpler methods can often accomplish the same results (or similar enough) while better keeping to the elegance and efficiency of the system altogether.

Spreadsheets with automatic referencing and drop-down menus is about the closest I get to computer programming, but I do enjoy it when I need something a bit more rote and that doesn’t take too much brain power to work on. This has been a little respite for those times when I’m too tired to write creatively but not ready to sit still and passively watch TV or something (at least not without multitasking, a bad habit of mine).

All of this is to say that I’ll be returned to doing some more regular posting on the blog in addition to trying to keep up with the novel’s progress. More to come soon!

Fatherhood Update

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I haven’t written much about the kiddos in a little while, so I’m putting up a brief update on this front.

We’re just past the three months mark with them living with us. I’ve been having a little bit of an existential “crisis” around that benchmark, though it seems I’m pulling out of it now. The series of questions with which that “crisis” was concerned are the most fundamental about kids: Do I really want to be a father? Does it really make sense for me to have kids? What about the opportunity cost with the other things about which I’m passionate–like my writing (I’m getting a lot less time for that to be sure)?

To add to this, Hawkwood’s been having some behavior issues. Nothing too serious, particularly for a toddler who’s just gone through the trauma of a family separation. But it’s given me a constant low level of frustration with him that’s sometimes hard to shake, giving me the unrealistic but still daunting question–is it always going to be like this?

Of course it won’t. Hawkwood will be starting with a play therapist soon, so hopefully that will help. So will time. And me keeping it together, letting go of my frustration with him, and sticking to TBRI. Of course, that’s much easier said than done, and perhaps the reminders that I’m not always as unflappable or possessed of completed self-control as I like to think I am–and the crisis of identity that goes with that–is part of the turbulence.

Since the kids had never been in any kind of school or daycare before, we’re also going through the rounds of all of the commonest communicable diseases–we’ve had bouts of croup, hand/foot/mouth, stomach bugs, and the like. K’s still got her teacher immunities, but even she’s succumbed, at least partially, to one of the waves of pestilence that’s passed through the house. This too shall pass, but assaults on my immune system aren’t helping my calm.

The sweet moments with Hawkwood are there, to be sure, and Marshall, though he’s getting a bit more stubborn and demanding about some things (and on the very verge of walking!) has been relatively easy. It seems to me (though it may be merely a matter of perspective) that Hawkwood’s behavior is somewhat better with K. I’m sure that this in part that K has both formal education and years of experience in working with children, but she tells me that it’s also probably that Hawkwood has especially bonded with me and so feels more comfortable acting out and expressing himself around me. Don’t tell her, but I don’t know her to be often wrong.

We’ve been told that all foster parents go through the “maybe I should quit” phase at about this time, so that knowledge has been somewhat comforting to us–when you have thoughts like this, it’s easy to wonder if you’re just a terrible person or severely broken. Jury’s still out on that, I guess, but nothing good comes from ignoring the way you feel, so we’re confronting everything head on.

At this point, we still don’t know what the kids’ long-term situation will be. CPS has been reticent and we get only snippets of information without any details or explanation from those with more knowledge than us. That’s par for the course, but frustrating nonetheless. All the signs we are getting, however, are pointing to a likelihood that the kiddos will be available for adoption. Whether that’s really the case, and what any timeline on that might be, is beyond us at the moment.

It seems especially that time has been short for anything other than work and the kids lately, so I’m falling behind on my passion projects (which also stresses me out!). I’m still hoping to have my novel fully plotted by the end of the month so that I can get a good start on the first draft for NaNoWriMo. I’m running short sessions of a Shadowrun campaign over a Discord server on Sunday evenings, which so far has been quite enjoyable. On the other hand, I’ve fallen behind on my Frostgrave work and I’ve been really wanting to spend some time further refining and adding to the Avar Narn setting aside from what I need for the novel but, when I can find a few minutes for it, I’m often too tired to focus!

This whole parenting thing is still early, and I know it will continue to get easier (and I’ll therefore be able to turn more attention to writing again).

 

Sanity Check!!!!

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The children have gone to church with K. I’m taking a more “authentic” sabbath and keeping a day of rest–and writing (conveniently, the sermon being preached today is entitled “You need the rest,” and concerns the fourth commandment).

There’s so much I want to do in this ephemeral freedom, so many easy distractions with which to sate superficial needs and truly kill time. But I’m exerting some self-discipline and spending the time doing what I love best–and what will truly restore some much-needed energy and sense of value. Writing. This post is the warm-up to returning to some work in writing the finer plot details for my novel as preparation for writing proper. If I hit a block on that, I suspect that there may be further blog posts later this morning.

Two sorry-not-sorry apologies to begin. If you clicked on this post hoping for something gaming-related (and who could blame you), you’re going to be disappointed–this is a post about raising children. If you have no idea what a “sanity check” is or who H.P. Lovecraft is, you may need to open Wikipedia and/or do some independent research for all of this to make sense. If you are a gamer parent, or a gamer who expects to have kids one day, I expect that this post will be especially enjoyable.

It occurred to me that I have some subconscious association between having kids and H.P. Lovecraft. When we had our first placement (three years and one day before this one), I reread all of Lovecraft’s corpus. This time, I find myself drawn to the recently-released Call of Cthulhu and Sinking City games (though I have no time for them at present and thus have not purchased them). A psychologist would have a field day, and we’ll delve into that deeper in a moment, I suppose.

But first, the two boys who are with us need some names for blogging purposes. Our first two were, by sheer randomness, Abe and Bess. This time, I’m having more trouble deciding. There’s Cain and Abel, but that didn’t work out so well. Jacob and Esau, but that too isn’t the best of relationships. Joseph and–nope, that one’s not going to work either. Has anyone else noticed how many dysfunctional family relationships are in the Old Testament? There’s some great theology to be had there, or as my pastor friends would say, “That’ll preach.” Someone remind me to do a post to delve into that, it’s a topic for another time.

That still leaves me with no names, though. How about Hawkwood and Marshal? Two famous English mercenary captains. They’ve been waging a concerted war against me, I’m sure, so it seems to fit in my own mind. We’ll make Hawkwood the older boy, three in October, leaving Marshal for the younger, of course, one in October.

Now that we’ve got some names, some fun ones, I hope (and if you don’t enjoy them as much as I do, that’s too bad–I’m a nerd and I’m the one writing!), let’s get to the point.

Why is it that I’ve got this link between Lovecraft and raising children in my mind? I pride myself on being especially self-aware, particularly able to look at myself in a somewhat objective light and get to the bottom of my psyche without assistance; let’s see if it works this time.

Lovecraft wrote a different kind of horror, not entirely free of historical influences and bindings, of course, being especially mired in the nihilistic thought and existential philosophy that developed over the course of the 19th century. We can associate some of the classic tropes of horror with Lovecraft–body horror, Otherness, fear of mortality, societal and psychological anxieties, etc. But Lovecraft went further with his Cthulhu mythos, which is why we call his genre of horror cosmic. Lovecraft’s deepest form of horror is existential–that the universe has no overarching and benevolent structure or meaning, that suffering is inevitable, constant, and without redeeming value, and that entropy and despair are the ultimate fates of all things. That’s the type of horror that sticks with a person long after the sudden shocks and momentary frights, after the monsters have gone back under the bed or into the closet and the ghosts have been exorcised for a while.

Again, what does this have to do with children? A few things, actually. Sanity being one of them. Not in the broad sense of a person’s mental health, but in the localized sense of those little insanities that sometimes overtake each of us when we lose our cool and the concomitant ability to act rationally. These are my moral and personal failings–but a two-year-old sure has the fast track to bringing them out in me. Just as I had to deal with them with Bess (see Just Give Her the Damn Goldfish!), I’m still letting myself get out of my own head with desires to achieve some modicum of control over situations where control doesn’t matter. Since two-year-olds often say one thing and then do another, or change their mind about what they want or don’t want in milliseconds, opportunities abound.

As (I think) I’ve mentioned, Hawkwood is extremely intelligent. His vocabulary is astounding, he bent our Alexa to his will within two days (we’ve listened to Toto’s “Africa 57,432,001 times now. I used to like that song.), he can help with laundry, dishes and cooking. But between two and three is when children begin to learn to consciously manipulate to get what they want. This is developmentally appropriate, it is the early stages of learning important social and relational skills. But since Hawkwood is so intelligent, his attempts at manipulation are especially infuriating. A few examples: Hawkwood asks questions (often random, but always associated with something or someone nearby) whenever he wants to change the subject and avoid something he’s being asked to do; he phrases what he wants as questions: “Do you want milk?”; he parcels out affection when it is calculated to achieve his ends. Don’t get me wrong; he’s a sweet boy and I’ve quickly become quite fond of him. He’s also a little booger.

It’s that the above combines with his inability to rationalize or employ logic (although it’s possible he’s just using non-Euclidean geometries in his logic) that has a tendency to make me lose my head. You can’t bargain with a child who’s not ready to evaluate cost and benefit. You can’t reason with a child for whom cause and effect are not entirely real, such that consequences–particularly those that are minutes or hours down the line–carry any real sense of urgency.

As you know, I am a lawyer in my day-to-day career. There are a few things I’ve learned well in that profession: (1) You cannot make someone do something they don’t want to do without coercive force; this is never a positive experience and always has consequences. (2) For those people (and it’s certainly not everyone), with the ability and desire to act rationally, they must be able to reasonably calculate costs and benefits in order to be persuaded. (3) For those who cannot or will not be subject to reason, you can only achieve compliance by playing into their pre-existing beliefs, weaknesses and expectations (something our current president does all too well).

All of these things remain true of a two-year-old, except that they cannot be expected to act according to reason and do not yet have any pre-existing beliefs and expectations (other than selfishness) to use to advantage. That leaves me–someone who is typically quite persuasive and (I think) very good at working through conflicts–powerless when it comes to Hawkwood. And I hate being powerless.

Add to this sleep-deprivation, a schedule that currently revolves entirely around meeting the needs of the children and helping them to adapt in what is a very difficult situation for them, and putting aside the semblance of frustration (as much as possible) to help them to bond to you, and you quickly lose sight of the idea that this is a phase that will pass. Once the children are in daycare and I’m back to working, the days will be far easier and life will return to something that feels manageable. In the meantime, the horror feels existential. Cue Lovecraft.

But Lovecraft was an atheist, and that left him little respite from his nihilistic despair. I am a man of faith, and one possessing a powerful will at that. So, regardless of the similarities between the terror of children and the cosmic terror of otherworldly beings, the differences are greater, and the ending is not the same. I will not succumb to despair, and my present situation will not acquiesce to tragedy or insanity. We will make meaning out of chaos and thereby dispel the lurkers at threshold.

Maybe that puts us closer to August Derleth’s much-maligned “posthumous collaborations” with Lovecraft, in which Derleth’s own Christian view superseded Lovecraft’s atheistic nihilism in the stories of the Cthulhu mythos the two wrote “together.” Maybe that’s what I should pick up next, to read while Hawkwood is slowly drifting off to sleep at night after I pick him up and rock him, play the classical music on his night-time CD, and sit with him in the bed until slumber takes him.

More to come.

 

Day One

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It’s 6:30 on Wednesday morning; K is trying to put the infant back to sleep as I write this (bless her!). It wasn’t as long a night as we’d expected, but it was a long day yesterday.

Two precious little boys, eight months and about two-and-a-half, arrived in our home yesterday morning. The older boy is talkative, curious, intelligent and very busy. We were told that he was hyperactive, but that doesn’t seem to be the case–he’s just a normal, active two-year-old. The infant is already full of personality–smiling often, but also very stubborn and opinionated! And about as food-motivated as Berwyn (our dog) is!

Yesterday was a typical first day, filling out paperwork, learning as much as we can, trying to get back into parenting routines. All of this brings with it a lot of stress and exhaustion, but only the situation itself was the cause–the kids themselves are fairly easy-going.

As expected, everything came to a head at bed-time, at least for the two-year-old. That’s when the realization that this isn’t a fun daytrip sets in. I’m extremely thankful for having attended the Empowered-to-Connect conference stream a few months back (see my TBRI post); it was fascinating to watch our little boy as he went into “survival mode” and exhibited exactly the sorts of behaviors expected of him. This understanding allowed me to remain calm and centered rather than becoming frustrated–I could easily remind myself that this was not a matter of willful disobedience or obstinance, but simply a child experiencing very understandable trauma trying to regulate himself. And, from that place of understanding, however limited and abstract it may be, I could respond with compassion, using the same techniques I’ve learned through TBRI trainings and the ETC conference in particular.

In this case, this meant picking up the toddler and holding him until he was able to regulate himself and calm down some. This took about an hour, and I began to doubt my ability–my physical ability to stand up and rock a thirty-pound child after a day already filled with a lot of physical exertion–but we made it through. After that hour, I was able to lay him in the bed, awake but much calmer, and we gradually dimmed the lights and moved him toward sleep.

It didn’t take long after the kids went down that I went to sleep myself–I know that when they’re asleep is my only chance to get some rest! I slept soundly, though K informs me that she had a rough night doubting that the baby monitor was working. It was, as it proudly (and loudly) informed us at 5:45 this morning.

So here I sit with my computer and my coffee in the calm before day two. As promised, this part of the blog will come alive as I share my experiences, joys and frustrations of parenting–and “co-parenting with the state” as they say.

I’ll be turning now to continue working on my novel for as long as I can before the kiddos wake again. More to come soon!

Temptation

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This post is something of a confession; prepare yourself. It’s nothing so tantalizing as a comment about the temptation of drugs or sex; it’s about another insidious temptation with which society often plies us. Lately, I’m feeling its pull more strongly, it seems.

That temptation is the one of comparison. You know the one. It’s the one that gnaws at your soul a little, whispers doubts in the back of your mind, every time you open up a social media platform. You see people living their “best lives” and–even though you consciously know that 99% of what you see posted is manufactured and exaggerated, conveniently glossing over those problems, dilemmas, failures and weaknesses that everyone has and no one really wants to share–you still wonder, “Am I not doing as well as everyone else?” “Am I just not as good?”

I’m no exception, and lately I’m thinking about this much more than I’d like to. Part of it is a function of age: I’m thirty-five, fast closing in on thirty-six. But I can’t really lay the blame on that, because it’s just another measure I’m using for comparison.

I, like many people from upper-middle-class suburban backgrounds, was raised on a steady regimen of the importance of achievement. Explicitly or not, I was taught to weigh value based on achievements reached, things accomplished. To add to that, I fell into the belief (though I can’t, admittedly, say that anyone drilled it into me) that real achievers achieve things early and often.

This was an easy thing to satisfy when I was younger and in school. I maintained consistently high grades, took all of the advanced placement classes available to me and entered my first semester of college with forty-seven hours of credit already under my belt. I spent the next decade or so earning degrees, tangible (kind-of) certifications of achievement.

Now I’m much farther removed from academia, and I’ve become much more responsible for intrinsically maintaining my sense of self-worth.

And therein lies the battle. I have very consciously chosen certain ideals and values to live by, ideals and values inspired by my faith and my idealism, ideals and values about which I am convicted and passionate.

Sometimes, those values are counter-cultural. A significant point of my personality is the value I place on my independence. Combined with my moral compass, that’s very much influenced my career path as a lawyer. Those choices are not without consequences. One of my wisest friends once said, “you’re only as free as you’re willing to accept the consequences of your actions.” Fulfilling that statement is truly living without fear, and it’s something that has resonated with me ever since I first heard it.

So–most of the time–I’m perfectly content with the career choices I’ve made. I work in a small firm with two partners who are like family, I have great independence in how I do my work and for whom I work. This has given me a lifestyle balance that truly fits with who I am, and I often tell people that I wouldn’t be happy lawyering if I was working for someone else.

But it also means that there are consequences. Balancing my broader life goals against my career and placing my moral values first when working mean that I sometimes turn down work that might be lucrative or that I perform my work in ways that place income as a secondary concern. I don’t take on new clients when I don’t believe that I can achieve anything for them; I don’t bill my clients for every little thing; and I don’t charge the exorbitant fees I sometimes see other attorneys charging.

I feel those choices every time I look at my bank account. Don’t get me wrong, I make a decent living and my practice grows with each passing year–it turns out that being honest and capable actually is a good business model! I’m happy to accept the consequences of those choices; I’ve found in the past few years that I need far fewer material things to be happy than I thought I did, and I have mostly disdain for the pursuit of wealth, power and status.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I was scrolling through Facebook over the weekend and happened across a post by a couple I went to law school with and felt a pang of jealousy. Here’s the strangest part: my jealousy was about the background of the picture, about their kitchen. I’ll be very excited to see K’s reaction when she reads this, because she knows me well and knows how little stock I typically put in the size and fanciness of a person’s home.

Of course, my feelings weren’t really about the kitchen. They were the result of the doubting my own adequacy in light of the financial success this couple presumably enjoys. These feelings were really about me asking myself if I’m really good enough, according to a standard I don’t believe in and actually reject!

I don’t want a house like theirs. I don’t want the type of life consequences that are attached to such a choice (which is not intended to be a judgment of their choices, simply a statement that that is not the path for me). But it doesn’t matter who you are, that temptation will reach its ugly tendrils into each of us at some point, if not regularly.

When it comes down to it, though, career achievement is the place where the temptation of comparison to others is easiest for me to bear. I’m very proud of how I conduct my business and uphold my values; that I try to practice the Christian ideals I so often discuss on this site. Again, that’s not intended to be a judgment on others, just a matter of trying to keep my own hypocrisy to a minimum.

The two other temptations I frequently feel to compare with others hit closer to home. The first of these is about parenthood; the second: my writing.

Those of you who have followed this blog for some time, or perused it in depth, or who know me personally, know that K and I plan to foster to adopt, and that we’re again waiting for a placement of kids. That’s difficult enough as it is, but we’re quickly approaching a time where it seems that we’re the only ones without children. One of my partners at the law firm has two; the other is expecting his first this Fall. My (younger) sister is pregnant with her first (and I am very happy about this and excited for her!) and I’ve got several siblings and cousins–many of whom are younger than me–who already have children as well.

I know better than to think of having children as a matter of achievement, really I do. But the fact that I have to write that here is revelatory in and of itself, is it not? And I know that K and I are not the only ones to deal with such comparisons with others–not by a long shot.

For me, my writing is where this temptation cuts deepest. If I can discern any sort of divine calling for myself, it lies in writing fiction and theology. If there is a personal pursuit about which I am truly passionate,  it is in writing. If there is a single most-powerful, non-divine source of my sense of self-worth, it is in my writing.

I’ll make a true confession by way of example, so get ready for some vulnerability on my part: This past weekend Rachel Held Evans died. She was an outspoken writer for progressive Christian values and, even in her short life, accomplished much in service of Christian faith and demonstrating to the unchurched (and perhaps millennials in particular) a Christianity that rejects fundamentalism, embraces the Gospel truth of love and reminds us that Christ calls us to pursue an agenda of social justice that does not rely on identity politics, a rejection of immigrants, or fear. (Here is one article with some information if you’re not familiar with her).

To my shame, I have to admit that, in addition to the sincere sorrow I feel at her passing, I was awash in a sense of unreasonable jealousy. She was only a little older than me and already had five published books! Obviously, my feelings of inadequacy have nothing to do with her; they’re really about me questioning myself, worrying that maybe I just don’t have what it takes.

I told myself that I’d get my first major work published before I turned 40. As that time slips ever closer, I find myself often looking up other author’s ages when they were first published. I can say that I understand that their life isn’t mine, nor should it be. I can write that I know that the value of a writing originates in the writing itself, not how old the author was at the time of creation.

And that knowledge, I think, is where the truth will out. Particularly in my theology, I talk about the importance and beauty of ambiguity. I also admit the difficulty we naturally have with the ambiguous. And let this post be evidence that I don’t stand above that difficulty; I’m not free from that struggle.

There are no easy ways to judge the value of a writing, whether fiction or non-fiction. Style is so highly varied and individual, the myriad ways in which a story might be told so dependent upon the consciousness in control of the tale, that there can be no single measuring stick. And yet, we humans like to have some certainty, even if that certainty is artificial and illusory.  For me, I can find some tangible standard of measure by looking at age at time of publication as a meaningful comparison (though I know in my heart it is not).

Again, the craziest part about falling into self-doubt by making such comparisons is that I intellectually do not value them! In my fiction, I follow after Joss Whedon: “I’d rather make a show that 100 people need to see than one 1,000 people want to see.” At this point in my writing, I’m not sure that I can do either, yet, but the point is that I’m more interested in deep connections with a smaller group of people than broadly appealing in a commercially-viable way. The same goes for my theology–I’d rather write something that resonates deeply and inspires just a few people to legitimate faith, that gives even a single person permission to practice Christianity in a way that isn’t “one-size-fits-all,” than to establish some great presence in the history of theology.

As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, I’m not even sure that I’m interested in traditional publication avenues right now. I’d love to be able to make a living writing, to devote all of my time to it, but not at the cost of having to cater to publishers or what will be successful on the current literary market to do it. My self-comparisons with published authors, though, makes me wonder if all of this idealism is simply cover for the fear of failing. “Know thyself,” the oracle says. “I’m trying!” I complain in response.

Ultimately, the temptation to compare ourselves comes from a positive place–we want to be meaningful, to be creators of meaning and to live lives where others can easily recognize meaning. That is a natural and divine thing. It’s where we let society tell us that meaning must look a certain way that we go wrong, where we try to make someone else’s meaning our own that we lose ourselves. Perhaps that is what Jesus means when he warns us about the temptation of the world, what Paul is alluding to when he warns us not to be “conformed to this world.”

What I do know is that I am passion about writing, and in particular I’m passionate about writing speculative fiction and easily-accessible theology. I’m working on the discipline to match that passion, and with every passing day I’m probably coming to understand the art and craft of writing just a little bit better–no that anyone truly ever masters it. Those things need no comparisons to be true, to be inspiring, to be fulfilling. So why look beyond them? As with so many things, easier to know what to do than to actually do it.

How do you cope with such temptations? Having read the blogs of some of my dear readers, I know that there is insight out there, meaningful stories to share. If you’ve got one, comment, or post a link to a post on your blog, or send me a message!

Post Script: Maybe in talking about my struggles writing, it would be useful to give a short update on where that writing stands:
(1) Children of God: This is the tentative title of my first theological book. I’ve had finished about 75% of a first-draft for several years now, but it needs a rewrite from the beginning and I need set aside the time to do that.
(2) Wilderlands: This is the first Avar Narn novel I’ve seriously set to working on. The first draft is about 40%-50% complete. I’m starting to feel an itch to return to the story; I’m not sure whether I’ll do that soon or wait until NaNoWriMo this year (which is how it started). It needs to be finished and then needs some significant rewrites in the portion already written.
(3) Unnamed Story of Indeterminate Length: This is an almost-noir-style story set in Avar Narn and what I’ve been working on most recently. I had envisioned it as a short-story, but it’s already swelled to 16,000 words and I’m not finished. I’ll be sending to some volunteers for review and advice on whether it should be left as a novella, cut down significantly, or expanded into a novel. I’ve got several other “short stories” in mind with the same major character, so this could end up being a novella set, a collection of short stories, or a novel series. I’ve also got an unfinished novella-length story with the same character I may return to while this one is under review. If you’d like to be a reader, send me a message.
(4) Other Avar Narn Short Stories: I’ve got several other short story ideas I’m toying around with, but I’m trying not to add too many other projects before I make substantial progress on the above.
(5) Avar Narn RPG: I have a list of games to spend some time with and potentially steal from for the rules here, but I’m mostly waiting to get some more fiction written to elaborate the setting before continuing seriously here. I’m occasionally working on additional worldbuilding and text that could fit in an RPG manual.
(6) The Blog: Of course, more blog posts to come.

 

Accounting for Respect

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(This is the 8th of 17 posts in my “200 for 200” challenge to myself. We’ve hit over 200 followers in total, but the goal is to have 200 followers through Wordpress subscribers–there are currently 147).

It has recently struck me that we talk about respect as a currency. We do certain things to “pay our respects,” and we talk about those to whom “respect is owed.” We talk about respect being “earned, not given.” Several sci-fi settings I’m aware of–the Eclipse Phase RPG and even The Orville TV show–discuss the use of reputation as a form of currency in a semi-or-fully-post-scarcity economy.

1 Timothy 6:10 tells us that “The love of money is the root of all evil.” Out of curiosity, I went to Strong’s Concordance to look up the word use for “love of money.” It’s philargyria, which comes from a root indicating “avarice” or “avariciousness.” Avariciousness can be applied to more than just money–it applies to the “miserly hoarding of wealth” in a general sense. Greed. This is what I expected to find; it’s axiomatic that it’s the feeling, the obsession and the behavior, rather than the object, that causes the problem.

And here’s where my concern comes in: should respect be something that we commoditize? In other posts (like this one), I’ve talked about the societal tendency (at least in Western cultures) to value people in a capitalistic way–a person is only worth what they produce for consumption or what they generate in terms of income. This, I think, is why stay-at-home parents face a stigma despite the fact that managing a household and rearing children is as or more difficult than many jobs for which people get paid (which, ironically, includes both household management and child-rearing!).

These issues (assigning capitalistic value to a person and commoditizing respect) are related, perhaps symptoms of the same malady, but they’re different things. The previous post referred to above deals with the problem of how we assign value to other people. This post is about the problem of seeing reputation as a form of currency.

As is often the case on this blog, the topic is complex and filled with nuance. In her book The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, the anthropologist Ruth Benedict drew a distinction between “guilt” cultures and “shame” cultures, with an assertion that Christian societies were mostly “guilt” cultures (with notable exceptions) and a focus on Japanese culture as a “shame” culture. These assignments are, of course, debatable, and further categories (“fear” culture and the “shame” culture is now sometimes discussed as the “honor-shame” culture) have since been developed. We can also talk about “face” as an aspect of honor-shame cultures and we can debate whether the part of the United States we think of as “the South” is (or formerly was) an honor-type culture where the rest of the country may be something else.

The basic premise of this anthropological view of cultures is that guilt cultures rely on the concepts of justice and punishment (temporal or spiritual) as the enforcer of societal norms and the honor-shame culture relies on the judgment of other by society as the enforcer of norms.

This post is not about an anthropological dissection of social constructs; it is a reflection on the consequences of assigning value to reputation. In my own studies (and I’m accepting this as generally true for sake of discussion), I’ve read writers who argue that many agriculturally-based societies tend to be honor societies (pointing to the agriculturally-dominated economy of the antebellum “South” as an example). I’d like to use this idea to give some form to my thoughts. The argument goes that honor societies (here sometimes contrasted with law societies) use a person’s reputation as a regulatory structure in place of reliance on a legal code. The Southern gentlemen who disavowed a business agreement after the fact would suffer economic consequences for his actions (others would be unwilling to deal with him in the future); this cause-and-effect serves to enforce expectations and provide the predictability and stability that an economy needs to thrive.

It also meant that challenges to a person’s sense of honor unrelated to business dealings had to be vigorously defended, lest an affair unrelated to one’s livelihood bleed over into economic ruin. Hence dueling, honor killings, and all other manner of senseless activities that occupy the fringes of some honor/shame societies, historical and present. It seems especially true that women tend to suffer most from honor-based cultures. I would argue that this is strongly related to the preservation of property rights–both the intense focus on the maintenance of virginity and the use of honor killings as a consequence for premarital sex or adultery stem in great part from controlling who might inherit a family’s property and economic wealth.

That writes large one problem with commoditized reputation: it gives incentive to do things which may be immoral to protect a source of wealth and livelihood. But it also–as with all forms of wealth–has a disproportionate effect, because those will little economic power to begin with are disincentivized to participate in the system. This, in turn, means that those with wealth, reputation and the power that goes along with both being to see those without wealth or reputation as inherently immoral or amoral (though the reliance on this system of honor means that morality is not typically the first motivating factor for anyone). This gives those with power freedom to further exploit and oppress those without by viewing them as morally bankrupt. As Shakespeare’s Apothecary says, “My poverty, but not my will, consents.” Come to think of it, Romeo & Juliet is an excellent example of a contemporary critique of Renaissance European honor culture, given that the crux of the play hangs on the tensive nature of the relationship between love as moral motivator and honor as destroyer of that which love builds up.

Likewise, the Renaissance historian, philosopher and (in my opinion, at least) funny-man, Francesco Guicciardini gave this advice (paraphrased): If you want to ingratiate yourself with someone, do not do a favor for them, ask them for a favor. People would much rather feel that someone is indebted to them than that they are indebted to another, and this creates a bond between you that invites them to return to you to call in that reciprocal favor. The context of the time–Guicciardini was friends with Machievelli and a product of the same tumultuous political systems (and experiments) of early sixteenth century Italy–jibes well with this sort of thinking. But, of course, it is based upon a background of often life-or-death political competitions and the assumption that every man’s ambition should be the accumulation of social, political and economic power. This is the very thing Scripture warns us about, because it skews what is truly important in favor of what is, fleeting, ultimately disappointing and often self-destructive.

And that’s the problem with our tendency to make a commodity of respect and reputation. Our reputations are inextricably bound up in the web of relationships we have with others, our “social networks.” When our focus is on leveraging those relationships–which is really a matter of exploiting the people on the other end of them–we’ve lost sight of the types of relationships we should have with others. Respect merely becomes a currency we cash in for personal benefit. Such an approach removes even the possibility that our relationships are about mutual admiration and celebration of the uniqueness and sacred worth of others.

When we look to the example of Jesus, we see someone who looks past reputation to acknowledge the value of the person. He dines with the sinners and bears harsh words to the Pharisees, whose power and reputations allow them to reject and exploit those “beneath” them.

What would it look like if we viewed respect as something that ought to be shown to every person simply because they, too, are a child of God? What would happen if we stopped talking about “earning respect” and removed our respect for each other as a commodity to be traded for personal benefit? I think we’d have brought the Kingdom of Heaven just a little closer to Earth.