Miscellaneous catch-up

Been neglecting the blog of late. Many apologies. Much of what I’ve been thinking about isn’t really for public consumption, but I’ll try and get back in the swing of things with a potpourri post.

Monday night, I’m helping Aubrey, our preschooler, brush her teeth. “Look in the cabinet,” she says with a gleam in her eye and a smile on her lips. I open the door and pull out a new tube of CareBear toothpaste. “Mommy got it for me!” she says with satisfaction. I start putting it on her toothbrush, and she says, “It tastes like medicine.”

Since I don’t have all that many birthdays to get through before the big 4-0, that phrase “tastes like medicine” takes me aback. “Oh,” I say as I stop squirting the toothpaste. “You don’t want it, then?”

She looks at me quizzically. “Dad, I LIKE medicine! It’s great toothpaste!”

So now I finally have one of those stories every parent is required to have. “Well, let me tell you, back when I was a kid, we hated the taste of medicine! None of this good tasting, grape flavored stuff. You kids have it so easy these days!”

Fast forwarding to today, I had a really fun and fascinating conversation with someone I hadn’t seen for 20 years. Debby Applegate, a friend from high school, is visiting Oregon and asked if she could pick my brain. She’s spent 7 years writing a book on Henry Ward Beecher, to be published by Doubleday in June of this year. I crammed for the experience by reading Beecher’s entry on wikipedia. The man is absolutely fascinating, and Debby knows her stuff. I learned a lot about him. We talked about the importance of linking intimate connection with God and social action, about how sometimes our best sermons come out of our personal besetting sins, and about how Rick Warren is probably the Oprah of the Christian book market-if he recommends a book, “cha-ching!” come the sales. She promised to send me a comp copy, and I promised to read it. If it’s anywhere close to as good as our conversation made it sound, I’ll be pushing y’all to read it, too.

Finally, it’s been great to read the comments on good old Newberg Friends making the news on KOIN 6. You can see the story for yourself here (be patient with the download, grab Quicktime 7, and thanks, Alan Akins, for posting it), and you can read the text version on KOIN’s website here. Thanks to Kohr Harlan for doing the story (and commenting on the blog!), and to Liz again for suggesting us.