Monday, July 26th
Today was unexpectedly a day of transition for us. We knew that Susan and her husband had sold their California house. The original version was that it would be an extremely long escrow. But some things changed and abruptly, it will be closing in three weeks.
Susan is from Colorado. Even though she has been here for awhile, her heart never really left that region. So she and Ted are going to be moving back there in a remarkably short period of time.
So, today was her last day with us, as she needs to dig into the huge project of packing up their house here, so they can leave on schedule. We did a quick adjustment of priorities this morning. She spent the morning handing off her projects to Megan and cleaning out her files. Then at lunch, we closed the office and all went to Sizzler's and spent some time savoring her work here.
Obviously she was a vital part of the team during the last few weeks of my spring marathon. Megan would have been hard pressed to keep up with everything alone while I was on the road almost nonstop. But in addition to the phones, the e-mails and the post office runs, she also accomplished a HUGE project which has been on our wish list for a long time, and that has to do with the video library.
We are in the process of a massive restructuring of this part of our teaching, to make it more user friendly. She spent hours and hours and hours searching through video files of raw and edited clips, finding stuff that had been stored in a somewhat haphazard manner, and bringing all of the files to one location, in proper order, with sundry other valuable features.
Everyone who uses the new video library which will come out in a month or two will be benefiting from her hard tenacious work.
For now, we are grateful for her time with us, and bless her with a highly efficient exit from the California season of her life, and a glorious re-entry to Colorado -- her heart country.
Saturday, July 24th
Thursday was a milestone day for us. After four years of wishing for a new website, and a year of actively exploring options, and a few months of working on the features list of what we would like, and weeks of making the hard choices of what we had to give up in order to get what we wanted, and then days of detail work assembling all of the raw materials, we finally sent the package to the website people in South Carolina last Thursday.
On Monday Megan will have a conference call with the glib salesman who has been assuring us for weeks that everything is simple, and the rooted-in-reality tech who is actually going to convert Megan's elastic imagination into something that will walk and talk and dance. She will go over the written instructions with the two of them in a call which will be recorded, in hopes that we will get something vaguely like what we ordered, for something vaguely like the price we have agreed to pay.
(Can you tell I am completely devoid of any bruises from the IT community and there is not even a tiny shred of festering cynicism? My calm certainty and solidly anchored peace about the situation is just a balm to my own soul as I read back over it. Rock solid!)
Then while we wait the mythical "one to two weeks" for this masterpiece of versatility to come back to us, we will engage in a company wide search and destroy mission for all of the little things around the office that are blocking our effeciency.
Most of the phones need the auto dialer updated. The intercom directory is out of date. Most of the Favorites bars on the computers need to be refreshed. The shippping table needs to be raised. The kitchen needs to be cleaned and some of the excess (read: EXPIRED) mustard in the Mercy's refrigerator thrown out.
We need to call the locksmith for the two glitchy door locks and get a bid on installing an A/C duct fan for the production room. The big cupboard in production needs to be emptied, thrown out and replaced. And, we might even splurge and buy some drapes for the library, since mini blinds don't exactly add much to the ambiance of a center for cerebral refreshment.
About the time the web guys deliver their initial interpretation of what Megan asked for, I will demonstrate my infinite sagacity (as well as my cowardice and self-preservation instinct) by jumping in an airplane and flying 10,330 miles to the southeast and hiding there, with minimal connectivity, while Megan and Susan duke it out with the techs and tediously load hundreds of graphics, texts and products into the right places on the new website.
Should they not be done by the 13th of September, I have friends in Uganda, Switzerland, Norway, England, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong who could easily produce, contrive, or create some sort of situation that would absolutely require my presence there for some indeterminate period of time which would broadly coincide with the duration of Megan's aforementioned difficulties.
Or to be utterly unambiguous, if all you people out there want downloadable audio files so you don't have to pay VAT, customs and all those other nasty things when we ship you albums, I strongly suggest you immediately go into 40 days of prayer and fasting for our new website project.
Tuesday, July 20th
On the Hebrew calendar, today is called the 9th of Av. This is a day when there has been immense trauma to Israel over the millennia. As a result of that, Jews around the world observe today as a day of mourning, coupled with fasting and other similar disciplines.
It is not my intent to in any way disparage the Jewish faith, nor to diminish the horror of the tragedies that have befallen them in history. However, respectfully, I would like to present a Christian view of this day.
God created time, and time was the first thing He made holy. On that seventh day of the Creation week, He imprinted specific, appropriate dynamics into each day. Jeremiah summed this up as he said the compassions of the Lord are new, different, fresh, uniquely flavored for each new day.
That brings us to explore the day when the curse on the 9th of Av began. According to the Rabbis, it was on that day that the spies came back from exploring Canaan and declared that the walled cities and the giants were too great. They despised their inheritance and voted to return to Egypt.
Granted that was a great sin. Granted there have been millennia of consequences since then. But we have to factor in two dynamics. First is the fact that "this" day had been lived many times before then. Time is cyclical. This curse has attached itself to time and has manifested again and again as "this" day comes around in the cycle of time. But there was a season before that sin when "this" day was not cursed -- it only carried the blessings of God.
Second is the fact that the central tenent of Christianity is redemption. Jesus died to redeem all things and that includes time. I don't believe that we should reinforce the defilement on this time by entering into agreement with the grief that rides heavily on this day.
Rather, we should bring the sin, rebellion, iniquity, grief and despair to the Cross of Christ and sanctify the time, and THEN seek to appropriate the treasures that God deposited on this particular day before it was defiled.
As I look back on the original day, there was immense faith on the part of two men -- faith that was prepared to not only defy the walls and the giants, but faith that was able to stand against ten other leaders of leaders, and indeed, the entire nation.
For Christians, THIS ought to be a day when the defilement is removed and the mountain of faith that is imprinted on the day is released into our lives.
So I invite you to come out from under the cloud of grief and heaviness that has been brooding over the day since yesterday evening, and walk in the light and the power of the gift of faith, to move defiantly toward your birthright today, staring directly at the walled cities and giants guarding them, proclaiming that they are subordinate to the will of God.
Thursday, July 15th
It has been so good to be home for awhile. Sleeping in my own bed and eating my own food lands well after several months of being mostly on the road. My body is happy.
Desiree is happy too. She came by the other day and we played three rounds of Pente. She was rusty and I cleaned up on the first two, but then she found her old files and came back like a tiger on the third one. She played me longer than anyone has before. We had more markers on the board than I have ever had in any game. And in the end she beat me. She not only won fair and square, she managed to pull it off without my seeing that it was coming. It was a brilliant game. Hope she comes back by some time.
The website has not gone to the developer yet. We are still finessing the look, feel and features. Hopefully next week.
Meanwhile, the work on our new project is going exceptionally well. I have some new software that is helping me capture and organize my thoughts more easily. That has made the research side much more fun than usual.
We have sent out hundreds of copies of Joy Unstoppable and gotten back about three comments. I would very much appreciate hearing how it is landing if any of you have the time to write and share.
