February 1st, 2025
Begin the first day of February fresh off dreams of mild night tornados, papery debris whipping through the trees...
Yali is already in his Class A Scout uniform... a little bedhead... a little upset that he can't find the dollar Oxbear left under his pillow until he later realizes it fell out of his bunk onto the floor and he's happy again...
Oxbear and Yali are gone by eight-fifteen to the pinewood derby races in Chesterfield...
Puck is still out in O'Fallon...
And Patience and I – after another cup of tea – leave for the studio for three hours of practice with teachers and friends... milky epic of “The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto" straining through the radio under a bright sunshine and... the potholes have been particularly bad this week...
The derby awards ceremony is already happening by the time I drop Patience off at the studio doors... Yali takes 1st in his den and qualifies for Districts... happy dude...
The boys return for Yali to change clothes, then back out to his buddy's house (who took 2nd in the pack) with a box of equipment to prepare for Districts on some home tracks...
Puck returns from J's for his first slow-carb plate : grass-fed beef, sweet garden peas, and eggs over-easy... before piecing together the newly arrived coat rack from Amazon...
Everyone briefly home together before Oxbear leaves for Costco : paper towels (and a chicken bake for the missus)... he and Patience then leave for church where they learn how to make dumplings with the Chinese congregation...
C from across the street runs over to play with Yali on the trampoline with their stuffed animals like old times... discussing their mutual love of “Harry Potter” as the daylight fades...
“Christian hope is not about wishing that all things will get better, that somehow emptiness will go away, meaning will return, and life will be stripped of its uncertainties, its psychological aches and anxieties. Nor does it have anything to do with techniques for improving fallen human life, be they therapeutic or even religious. Hope, instead, has to do, biblically speaking, with the knowledge that "the age to come" is already penetrating "this age," that the sin, death, and meaninglessness of the one is being transformed by the righteousness, life and meaning of the other, that what has emptied out life, what has scarred and blackened it, is being replaced by what is rejuvenating and transforming it. More than that, hope is hope because it knows it has become part of a realm, a kingdom, which endures, where evil is doomed and will be banished."
– David F. Wells, Theologian