Category: Life Page 4 of 6

We have been in Oviedo (Orlando), Florida for two weeks. As of this writing, the house which God wonderfully provided has begun to absorb our stuff. Boxes are disappearing and things are showing up in places that make sense. And though I still feel like I am living in someone else’s house, we are beginning to come to grips with the fact that this is home.

That said, a sign that I have yet to really settle in is that I have a package to mail, and I have yet to discover the post office.

Which caused me to reflect on the things that I have and have not found in these two weeks.

What I have found:

• no straight roads
• roads that change names in the middle of intersections
• roads that do not connect but share the same name
• chickens that wander freely (an Oviedo ‘landmark’, but examine the picture closely…)
• and that cooking for three is a lot different than cooking for five (we brought only one child with us, left two and all their friends in Bradenton)

I have found the library, but have not entered it yet. I have found the Sams and the Wal-Mart, which were once one mile from my home and are now 6 or more. I have found the Best Buy. Both of them. Multiple times. (There is a story there.)

We recently found a path through our garage, found our kitchen, and just yesterday, our living room and bedroom. And thanks to the efficiency and generosity of the Seminole County utilities department and the inefficiency of the Greenwald adults not knowing that the other had already ordered recycle bins, we find that we now are the only family in Seminole county with eight recycle bins. We are so green.

Though I still do not know where the post office is to be found, we have found our church to be warm and accepting and full of hope, a church that wonderfully looks like our family and has made us already feel like family.

Tomorrow, though, I look for the post office.

Last week I compared change to visiting the dentist. We never want to visit, but we are always glad that we have.

As if to add emphasis to that thought, at the end of last week I had to see my friend the dentist. He determined that it would be a good idea to meet his friend the endodontist. My new friend the endodontist liked me so much that tomorrow morning he has invited me back to meet his friend the root canal.

I’ve met enough friends this week.

Given the changes happening in our lives right now, a friend sent me a message in which she said, and I quote, “Change is my friend.”

People who know me know that change is not at all my friend. There are times I want to say that change is my mortal enemy.

But that, I realize, is WAY over the top. The reality is that it is through change that God brings growth into our lives. A plant that does not change is, well, dead.

So, I’ve decided that change is my friend. Like my dentist is my friend. I never want to go see him. But I’m always glad that I did.

Even one preoccupied has to make room for his obsessions. (Further obsessive tendencies revealed here.)

For quite a while I have been persuaded by experience that my Nigel Rudolph mug retained heat better than any other mug in our cabinet. I asked Nigel and his wife Cheyenne about that recently and they could offer no reason why that should be. These are not, you should know, ceramic hacks. Nigel and Cheyenne know much about the science of clays, and as far as they knew, there was nothing in the mug itself to bring about my perceived result.

So, making tea for a guest the other night, I decided to put my perceptions to the test.

I selected three mugs, a tall skinny Hope Presbyterian Church mug, a wide mouth Nigel Rudolph mug, and a medium girth Krispy Kreme mug. I put 7 ounces (by weight) of hot water in each, and took measurements every minute for ten minutes, then every five minutes, and then at 60 minutes.

This was a very efficient use of time, as our guest, Barb, and I sipped our tea and talked while the measurements were being recorded.

Our guest, though, laughed at me. We love her anyway. I have been accused by friends in Los Alamos, NM (having, in my estimations, more PhDs per square inch than anywhere else on the planet) of suffering from LAPD, (Los Alamos Personality Disorder). Diagnosis is, no doubt, hereby confirmed.

What we discovered was that my perceptions were wrong. The wide-mouthed, Nigel Rudolph mug lost heat at a greater rate than the tall and skinny-mouthed Hope mug. Our conclusion was that the surface area of liquid exposed to the air is the variable which determines rate of cooling.

I also concluded that I simply need to drink my coffee faster. All science aside, I’m not giving up the aesthetic and personal pleasure of using Nigel’s mug!

To any who have been wondering what happened to my posting frequency, whether I’d fallen into a hole, been swept away by a rogue wave, or gotten myself stuck on the MTA (“…and his fate is still unlearned…”), none of those theories is true.

I’ve simply been preoccupied. Really preoccupied. Getting-a-house-ready-to-sell-and-possessions-ready-to-move preoccupied.

The best way to explain is to post here the announcement that was read/sent to the members and friends of Hope Presbyterian Church a few days before Easter. This should explain our preoccupation. (Comments afterward.)

To the congregation and friends of Hope Presbyterian Church:

Change is in store for me as a pastor and consequently for you as the congregation of Hope Presbyterian Church. While sometimes exciting, often scary, and never comfortable, change should never surprise us when we serve a God who is laboring for our growth in his grace.

Recently another PCA church, Covenant Presbyterian Church in Oviedo, Florida (near Orlando), voted to issue a call to me to be their pastor. Barb and I for years have wrestled with whether and when we should move on from our ministry here at Hope. We have decided that the time has come, that God is showing us his will, and that we should therefore accept this new call.

I don’t know how to soften such an announcement as this, nor do I have the insight to know what this change will mean for me or for you. I find comfort, and I hope you do as well, in the fact that God’s leading is wise and that his heart always inclines to bless us. He is writing a new and good chapter in our lives, and he can be trusted to do that well.

Since no one is forcing this decision or asking for it, this has been one of the most difficult decisions we have ever made. We will be leaving people whom we love, and by whom we have been loved far beyond what we deserve. Leaving will separate us from dear friends and precious memories and we will always be grateful to God for each one of you. 

We are not certain how quickly this transition will come about, though it looks as if it will be complete by summer.

There are, as you can imagine, a lot of details yet to be worked out. We wish we could have communicated this to each of you individually, but obviously that is not possible.

This weekend we celebrate the greatest act of God’s love, the death of his Son on the cross, and the greatest act of his will and power, the resurrection of Jesus from the grave. These are realities which should strip away any fear and uncertainty any of us might have regarding the future. Though we cannot see the future, the future in the hands of such a God is good.

That which remains unchanged, whether we are together or apart, is the hope that God would continue to use each of us individually and his church corporately to the end that “the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.” 

May it always be so.

With deepest affection,

Randy

This is an exciting, and bittersweet, piece of news. In equal measure we look forward to the new ministry and new relationships awaiting us in Oviedo, and we sorrow and grieve for the separations that must take place in Bradenton.

God has opened up this opportunity and we are looking forward with great anticipation to the wonderful things He plans to do.

What this means for Somber and Dull is that posting will be erratic and unpredictable for the foreseeable future. Be patient, and join us in this new adventure.

To God be all the glory.

Nigel Rudolph mugs are beautiful, useful, comfortable, heat-retaining, unique, lovingly hand-made, and dishwasher safe.

But they are not unbreakable.

This is what happens when one misses the table with his (favorite) mug full of coffee early in the morning.

Sadness.

Here is life from the other side of the drive-thru window from two lovely “quick service restaurant” veterans who had bunches of fun putting this together!

Standing at the top of the escalator at the Ikea in South Florida where we were helping our son and daughter-in-law transport a new couch, the following conversation occurred between me and my youngest son, age nine, which left me without an answer. He’s good at that.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Why is it called an escalator?”

“Because the word ‘escalate’ means to raise or make higher. So, an escalator is used to raise people up.”

“What do they call it when it goes down?”

I’m not a geek. Or a nerd. (I’ve tried to discover from my daughters what the difference is. I’m still not sure.)

I played a friend a couple games of chess the other day, and we attempted to assure each other as we sat at Lov-a-Da Coffee that though we were playing chess, in a cafe, with a chess clock, in the middle of the day, and taking it quite seriously, we were not nerds.

Or geeks.

Or whatever.

We figured that a chess geek would be a guy who studied chess strategy and played on-line and stuff. We were not guilty of THOSE infractions. And only a true geek would read a book about chess.

Well, a year or so ago I read a book called The Immortal Game: A History of Chess
by David Shenk. (I’m a sucker for sub-titles, which often give more insight into what a book is about than the title itself. This one is “Or how 32 carved pieces on a board illuminated our understanding of war, art, science, and the human brain.” How can one resist THAT?)

Anyway, I loved every page of it. I even re-created what this book claims is the greatest chess game ever played. In that, I was pushing geekdom.

This is a book about the origins of chess (shrouded in mystery, but very ancient), the mathematics of chess (10 to the 120th power or, 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible games), and, most interestingly, the people of chess.

One example of the latter will suffice:

The artist Marcel Duchamp stunned and changed the art world in the early 20th century by, among other things, displaying and signing and calling it art, a urinal. He mounted a postcard image of the Mona Lisa altered with a mustache and goatee. He grew famous doing it.

But after age 30, he produced almost no art. Chess had become his obsession.

How great an obsession?

Even true love could not moderate his fixation. In 1927 Duchamp married Lydia Sarazin-lavassor, a young heiress. On their honeymoon he spent the entire week studying chess problems. Infuriated, his bride plotted her revenge. When Duchamp finally drifted off to sleep late one night, Lydia glued all of the pieces to the board.

They were divorced three months later.

That, my non-geek friend and I assured one another, was not us.

We played another game.