Wife is Good

Today Stacey arrived back safe and sound and thoroughly worn-out from her two-week long work trip to Trinidad. Emily and Kaylee were ecstatic over her return, and were permanently attached to mommy all morning (as evidenced by the picture to the left from the airport play-area) . I got my chance to have an old-person catching up conversation with Stacey this afternoon (while the girls were napping).

It is so good to have her back. I feel a whole new level of sanity and joy returning to me (of course I've never claimed to have a very high level of sanity, even when Stacey is contributing to my mental health).

It's amazing how 10 years of marriage weaves your soul into another person so much that you cease to function as a whole person when you are separated from them for a long time. I am really grateful for how much Staceyness has infiltrated my system (Those of you who knew me in my pre-Stacey years are probably grateful too).

"No longer two, they become "one flesh." This is a huge mystery, and I don't pretend to understand it all." (Ephesians 5:31b-32a. The Message).

Bad Bert

It's a long-held piece of Scott family wisdom that none of us make any big decisions without consulting our resident Public Relations professional, Stacey.

Unfortunately Stacey is out of town, and Bert is new to the family. Since he was quite upset by my previous post regarding his questionable posturing, he decided to take matters into his own hands and underwent an image overhaul. He slapped on a durag, grew a soul-spot and purchased a knife. He's now claiming his arm injury is the result of a gang-war with the Sesame-GTOs.

He's really a good guy at heart. His injury was healing well with the help of Emily and Kaylee coming in to my office to give him kisses every day.

Last night the police picked him up, shaved him and snapped his mug shot. I don't know where things went wrong. This is what happens when Stacey's away too long I guess.


PS: The mug-shot to the left came from bert is evil. After finding the image and posting this, I went back to the site and discovered that it goes way too far into offensive territory (in my opinion), so if you go visit it, you've been warned.

Of Potties, Providence & Pains in the Posterior

My wife created a story to help my twin two-year olds in their struggle to master the intricacies of human plumbing involved in potty training. I'll leave it to your imagination to fill in the narrative and I’ll get straight to the story’s conclusion: a wise ladybug character informs her protégé to "just let it go."

That's easier said than done when your two years old and bladder control is just barely within your grasp. It’s also easier said than done when you’re 34 years old the intricacies of human internal emotional control are barely within your grasp.

None of us can function healthily in the world any better than an un-potty- trained toddler if we can't learn to let things go. We end up hanging on too long to foul things within us. And the result is that we leave a stink (or worse) behind us for others to deal with.

But how do we tap into the emotional release mechanism’s necessary? This isn’t a rhetorical question. I really want to know how you find emotional release. How do you really forgive when you’re the victim of an offense? How do you overcome your biggest anxieties? How do you “let things go?”

Would the Real Bert Please Stand Up

I hate to feed an urban myth that's always annoyed me, but I have no choice:

I purchased some large, lawn-gnome-like sesame street characters for my kids (cuz no-one should deprive two-year-olds of stuff that breaks easily).

Sure enough, Bert received a painful amputation on his second day at our house. I took him into my office and left him on my desk to writhe in pain until I could find some time to re-attach his arm.

When I re-entered my office later I noticed that Bert's arm was not lined up in the original, friendly-greeting pose you see above, but had moved into the effeminate, check-me-out-baby pose you see below.

I'm still trying to figure out why Stacey didn't appreciate me chasing her around the house last night demonstrating both poses while proclaiming "Gay! ... Not Gay! Gay! ... Not Gay!"

PS: Just to add to the weirdness - My kid's have never actually watched Sesame Street, so they named Bert "Boogey Man." And no-one can change his name now - we've tried.

Cod in the Dock

There are no cod in Rosen Lake. In fact, I think there are no cod in fresh water lakes anywhere. And for that matter, I think there are only two or three left in the ocean. But there is one more dock on Rosen lake cuz I built one (which seems more momentous to me when it’s announced under the title of a C. S. Lewis pun).

The dock saga began a couple of years ago when a two-piece floating dock drifted into our shoreline. We left it there, expecting it to be claimed. It never was ... until this spring, only a month after we decided that if no-one was going to come get it, we might as well swim it into a good position and hitch it up. It was a great place to sip my morning coffee (but was too small for more than one person).

After the owners came and took back their dock this week, my kid’s walked around saying "A lady took my dock away!” in their best deeply saddened, horribly offended, never-going-to-get-over-it two-year old voices.

So a couple of days of labour in the hot sun later, we have a dock, built from lumber harvested on our own land. It's a permanent, fixed dock (floating ones are for sissies and people who aren't overweight). And now my kids are walking around saying, "No one’s going to take our dock away!” in their best I-think-I’ve-found-a-reason-to-live-again’ two year old voices.

Orvil Had Died, Orvil (was found in the garage), Orvil Will Come Again

Eons ago, in a time when history and mythology were still united, Orvil the Orange walked among the teenagers of Forest Lawn. As with many of us who walked among the teenagers of this great 'hood, he met an untimely and violent demise (Actually he was just lost in a box in my garage; which makes me wonder if all my old youth group kids are also in a box somewhere in my garage?)

Orvil was the mascot for a weekly video I worked on as a part of the youth program when I worked at St. Luke's Anglican Church many years ago. Over the past week, Stacey's been working on a "proof of concept" claymation video for some youth-oriented promotional material to be used for a big youth outreach in Victoria, BC. She'd initially asked if I could find Orvil or some old Orvil footage, so she could use that to get the ideas flowing. I failed to find Orvil or any footage in time for her project, but luckily was able to find him in time to make a completely pointless claymation video for no good reason ('Cuz you know, after work, business, a day full of toddlerX2 and the rest of life, I have so much free time I'd just stare at the walls if it weren't for projects like this).



PS: Re-animating Orvil's little corpse made me feel really old, because the last time I put the paddles on him it was with a very expensive, cutting-edge Pentium 110mhz abacus ... Err, I mean computer. The encoding process alone took 8 hours (I'm not joking)! Making this new idiocy took just under an hour from deciding to do it to emailing it to Stacey.

Porcelain Pugilism

The "Kill My Toilet" contest finished with a bang (followed immediately by a disgusting goosh) on Saturday night. In case you missed it, the winning entrants explanation of why she should win was:
"I should win this contest because I have a very special relationship with my toilet and I am not allowed to reduce it to rubble even though I would love to. My relationship involves rounds of toilet hugging vomit-fests because the little parasite I like to call my unborn child is doing a great job of sucking all the life out of me. If I had a sledgehammer I might be tempted to go after my own toilet so you should give me the opportunity to kill yours before another toilet gets hurt."
Ahh, the sweet nurturing thoughts of a new mother (I know we're all looking forward to reading more of Michelle's motherly musings in the upcoming "Chicken Soup for the Soon-to-be-incarcerated Soul.")

To see the toilet get tanked, click on this link.

You'll probably need QuickTime 7 to watch the video. If you don't have it, it's free. Just click on this link and wait for your new, improved life to download right before your eyes.

I'm flushed with appreciation for all the relief each of your entries in this contest brought to me. I'm sad to see the contest end, but as all of us have been taught by the porcelain prophets in our tiled temples, all things must pass.

The Hideous Champions

The winner of the hideous face contest is the "gentleman" on the left side of this picture. Apparently the BC medical system has decayed to the point where even a member of the "got balls" gang can practice medicine out on Vancouver Island. That's as far as I'll go in revealing his identity, so you won't fear for your life if you ever meet him in an emergency room (although I hear he wears this toque at the hospital, so fearing for your life is probably unavoidable). The winner was chosen not just because of the hideousness of his facial expression, but because of the appropriateness of the prize.


In one of their frequent gangsta moments (see picture to the left), Emily and Kaylee suggested that the prize for this contest should be a "funky durag." (Should a father be worried when his 2 year olds walk around saying things like, "step-off sister" and "what's up baaaaby?") Our friend the "got balls" boy definitely needs an upgrade to a "funky durag" if he's going to tear up the streets and earn some 'spect.



Life is unfair and so are my contests. If the contest was judged on merit alone, the young woman below would have won. As it stands, she'll only have the comfort of knowing she was a just a durag's width away from winning. She too will remain anonymous, so as to not jeopardize her work as an undercover cop hunting down the "got balls" gang.

Contesting Canada Day

Here are the three folks who split the Canada Day party prize for the most audacious show of patriotism. I will let them remain anonymous to those who don't already know them, as they all have high profile positions in society that I don't want to jeopardize. I think it serves as a good challenge to you young whipper-snappers out there that the greatest show of audacity came from three people who just might be slightly over the age of thirty.

For their pains, these three Canadian heroes received a spectacular prize package which included (among many other things) a self-inflating whoopee cushion and a "Horry Petter" action figure (not to be mistaken for the less socially-awkward "Harry Potter").

Callousness Confronts Kindness in the New Centre of the Universe.

It is now more expensive to occupy office space in downtown Calgary than it is in Rome.

Housing prices have risen by more than 42% over last year.

Retail spending in Alberta exceeds that of British Columbia, which has a million more consumers.”

Calgary sits at the cusp of 1 million residents, growing consistently by nearly 20,000 people each year for the past 10 years.

In mid-May, I walked through a nameless, gleaming, wing of a large, hub-city airport. And I was consumed by the same sense of busy, sterilized, newly renovated professionalism … and unmitigated largeness that I have in Los Angeles, Melbourne and Toronto. But this time I was home. It was the new WestJet arm of Calgary International, and I was just hopping over the mountains to Victoria to see my brother.

Home is changing. Fast. It’s full of brushed metal. I see more truly exotic cars on the streets ... a couple each week. I find myself often beside people who suddenly have obscene amounts of money and don’t know what to do with it, except to show it off.

The city used to be comfortably master-able, familiar to anyone who’d traversed it a handful of times. Now it’s moving faster than anyone can track; faster than builders can keep up with; faster than new workers can arrive; faster than any of us can map or contain it. And this inability to stay familiar feels cold. Even in an unusual May heat wave.

Of course few Calgarians really begrudge this growth. Salaries are up. The lucky folks who own homes suddenly have serious investments surrounding them. And it feels cool to be at the centre of the universe. But sometimes cool simply feels cold: When rush hour eats up what once was leisure time; when the lineup at your local coffee shop shifts from familiar faces to a group of strangers; when the same circumstances that are making so many people rich conspire to raise your rent, jack up your grocery bill and leave you with less resources to fight the cold.

And in a city once noted for its kindness, I wonder if callousness is growing. Money-fuelled callousness. Power-fuelled callousness. Anonymity-fueled callousness. Big-city callousness

After my brief reflection in the brushed metal glory of the airport, my plane takes off. The mountains flow out like a wave consuming more and more of the horizon. The fields, rivers and trees spread in all other directions. The city shrinks. It suddenly stops gleaming and becomes a strange sort of defect - a grey blotch on an otherwise cohesive natural whole. As is so often the case in Calgary, it is an especially meteorologically active day. Dark clouds now almost parallel to my perspective literally begin to disintegrate into the ground below as rain falls. The sun begins to set, and a few thousand feet later a new unblemished and ever-changing natural world emerges. The topside of clouds run from horizon to horizon in a gentle curve.

And all of a sudden I feel like a foreigner even to the once familiar city of my memories. The little old Calgary of my youth feels just as distant as the big new Calgary of adulthood.

There is a part of us - of all of us - that is foreign to all we’ve built. It’s foreign to everything that bears the mark of man. It’s as equally foreign to everything that Calgary once was as it is to everything that it is now becoming. It is the part of us that is at home only in that place where all that we’ve built has decayed into insignificance: the mountain vistas, the rock-crowned hills of cowboy country, the quiet gurgling of a tree-lined creek.

When this part of ourselves emerges, we too are threatened with decay and insignificance. Yet somehow as we shrink it brings comfort. Somehow we are more at home in this insignificance than when we glory in being the new gleaming centre of our nation.

Our Father’s fingerprints are all over this place. It’s home. All that we’ve built; even our most majestic cathedrals are small and temporary. The exploding city is small … even as it grows at an exponential rate it can never expand beyond this smallness. And neither can we.

But we can transcend it. We can drop into the familiarity of this larger world; into the arms of a loving God, a God who entered the smallness, imprisoned Himself in it, spoke of the larger world from within the small; And was tragically strangled by our smallness. Entombed. Dead.

Except that His largeness, His transcendence could not be held within even the iron fortress of death. He rose. And we can too, even if the smallness inflates itself into a pretension of largeness. Even if the callousness swallows the kindness. Our true home cannot be swallowed. It has already been swallowed by the larger, eternal world.

And so long as enough of us reside in this larger world, callousness will never overcome kindness in Calgary.

(D)Anger Man

Last Sunday a young stoner walked into our Sunday night Cafe event in Kensington with no shirt on. The person working the coffee bar promptly informed him that he needed a shirt in order to come in (I was unaware of this rule, so I guess my plan to jump from "Beer Priest" to "Shirtless Padre" will have to be put on hold).

A few minutes later the same guy came back in wearing ... a garbage bag shirt! He accented his new garb with a belt made from "warning - danger" tape from a worksite (he intentionally tore off the "d" to make what he called his "anger belt." I had a good conversation with him after the message (You can actually hear him on the recording of the message at the end say "Hey, wait, wait, WAIT!!!" to me). Kudos to this guy for his innovative shirt solution and bigger kudos to Randy (our guitarist) who bravely lent the guy his guitar to play some licks on immediately after he told Randy that he liked to vent his anger by destroying guitars!

How could I ever go back to doing “regular church” after experiencing crazy-fun people like “(D)anger Man?” I love it!

Rejected Report Pics

Here are some pics that were rejected (for obvious reasons) from the King's Bridge 2005 Annual Report. To read the report (and see the pics that did make the cut), just click on the highlighted title in the last sentence and if that doesn’t work with your browser, right click it and choose "download linked file" or something similar to that. The report is online as a pdf file (which your computer probably can open even if you don't know what a pdf is*). I wasn't able to fulfill my personal goal of one blog essay a month this month, but I did write the Director's Report and an report on evangelism to fruit flies, goats and chronic gum-stickin'-on-the-bottom-of-tables addicts for the Annual Report. So give it a read and see what KB's been up to in the past year!

*If you can't open a pdf file click this sentence to get the free reader software you need.

Indentity Crisis

I'm a little worried about what teenagerdom is going to look like in the Scott household when confronted with the fact that Emily and Kaylee are only 2 years old and in the past two weeks they have swung from pretending to be Gansta Rappers to Burka-wearing Fundamentalist Muslims to pretending to be ... me. I think Fundamentalism and Ganstadom might be healthier lifestyles than emulating me (but at least their just ripping off my hats rather than shaving their heads and sticking the hair on their faces).

PS: These costumes were all completely fabricated by E & K with no adult help! (And for those of you who are concerned and planning on calling social services on us ... they've never seen images of Fundamentalist Islam or Gansta Rap).

Another Freaky Face Contest Entry

Toilet Smashers Revealed!

And the winners of the grand-prize toilet smashing adventure, Darth Maul view-master, big Canada sticker and a beer are ...

Kirk and Michelle Tasa.

The Tasas won on the strength of Michelle's horrifying labeling of her child as a parasite. I'm including Kirk as a prizewinner because I think I'll go to hell (or at least heck) if I hand a pregnant lady a beer.

I'm expecting a deeply moving acceptance speech to be left as a comment to this post in the very near future. I'll then schedule a smashing time with the Tasas, and post the details here so you can all join in.

Everyone who entered brought tears to my eyes with their lovely sentiments. Thanks for playing.

More Horrible Faces

Here are some more entries in the hideous face contest (along with the following explanation):
"You asked for it... here are five of our best worst shots. The train ride was getting long... it was late... we were alone... everyone makes mistakes sometimes!! - Rachel and Avi"

Toilet Contest Winner Announcement Coming Monday!

Get your final entries into the toilet-smashing contest soon! The weather's supposed to warm up this week, Emily and Kaylee have given the toilet a thorough check-up, and as soon as the snow melts off my patio it'll be sledgehammer time.
I'm going to announce the winner on Monday, March 27.

You can enter as many times as you want. If you've forgotten how to enter, here's the information from my original post: All you have to do to get a chance to win is to leave a comment on this post (by clicking comments below) and tell me why you want to kill my toilet. I'll subjectively pick a winner using every opinionated and unfair motivation I can muster.

If you've forgotten what the prize is, you'll have to scroll down to the original post.

First Entries in the Hideous Face Contest

Here are the first entries in the face making contest (plus a few non-eligible-to-win Scott family faces).

Liquor Store Jesus

There are a lot of drunks on the street. Their addiction isn’t hidden. It takes a house and a family secret to hide a drunk from his neighbours.

There are a lot of Christians on the street. Their faith isn’t hidden. It takes a church and a family secret to hide a Christian from his neighbours.

He started drinking when he was eleven years old. Frank’s* drinking wasn’t that of a curious almost-teenager. It was the chemically-fueled escapism of someone dealt a painful hand in life.

The bottle followed him right up to the day he met the love-of-his-life. Month’s passed and Shirley* moved in with Frank. They both knew this was real. This was love. But two lives that have never known peace rarely make a happy home. After a few years of fights and reconciliations and more fights, she left him for good. His heart broke. He would never trust romantic love again. And the bottle stayed with him through it all.

The bottle followed him daily to a downtown Ottawa park: A quiet place to sit and try not to think. One day a couple of strapping young men followed him as well. They beat him into a coma just to get a nearly empty wallet. The coma lasted for 13 days. His first 13 days of sobriety in 30 years.

Now Frank can’t remember a lot of things. He remembers his first sip of the bottle. He remembers Shirley. He remembers the beating. He remembers some of the worst of the seizures that now plague him. But he frequently forgets who I am, though he’s opened his life’s story to me a number of times.

Frank has a very-developed personal code. He won’t accept a meal from me. He just wants to talk. It’s not pride that keeps him from accepting my offer. He just wants real friendship, and in his mind my attempts at charity hinder that. He has no home. He has few possessions; But he won’t steal from individuals. Stealing from big businesses is as much shame as he has allowed his personal code to absorb. He took his shopping cart from a big business. He once took a handful of food from the same business. He also ended up taking a few months in prison with it. He knows he deserved it. He justifies none of what he’s done. But he also doesn’t know where else he could have gotten food that day.

No one needs to tell Frank that booze has destroyed his life; he knows that. So we talk about Jesus, and broken hearts, and life and we tell stories. Frank illustrates some of his stories with self-carved tattoos running up his arm. Shirley’s name is as prominent on his arm as she is in his heart.

At the end of one of our conversations, Frank left me with the following words: “No matter what crap happens to you, trust Jesus as your Lord and Saviour.” The presence of Christ is tangible in my conversations with Frank. It’s as if God has sat down beside us. The presence of Christ in Frank’s company is more distinct than in many church services I’ve attended.

Jesus was frequently accused of hanging out with drunkards. It was an accusation that he openly admitted was true. Jesus had real relationships, real conversations, and perhaps even real laughs with drunks. He still has real relationships, conversations and laughs with drunks.

I’ve puzzled over Frank’s connection to Christ. Surely the average Friday night bar room would be a much more spiritually potent place if enslavement to alcohol opened some doorway to friendship with the Almighty. But I’ve been to the average Friday night bar room and the absence of spiritual light is at times palpable. Why is Frank different? For a time I simply couldn’t answer this conundrum. And then it dawned on me: It’s not Frank’s vice that connects him to Christ. It’s his humility.

I’ve met drug addicts who rail against “straights.” I’ve met drunks who blame their situation on everyone else. But Frank knows he’s culpable. He’s humble enough to accept his homelessness as the result of the bottle that’s never left him. He’s humble enough to realize that it’s always been his own hands grasping that bottle, his own throat channeling the alcohol down, his own will accepting another drink.

I’ve met “straights” who rail against drunks. I’ve met sober, successful people who blame every struggle they face on everyone else. And they’ve never been humble enough to accept their own culpability. And I’ve never sensed the presence of Christ in them.

I, myself, have been a “straight” who rails against drunks. I’ve stayed sober, achieved some modest success in life and yet still found reason to blame my struggles on others. And I’ve run from my own culpability. Pride sustains my flight. The humility that Frank demonstrates to me calls me to stop running, fess-up, and reach out for Christ.

Jesus doesn’t hang out with Frank in front of the liquor store because He’s following the bottle. He hangs out with Frank because Frank knows he needs divine help. Frank knows his hope lies outside of his own achievements. He’s asking for love. He’s begging for grace. And I’ve never known Jesus to be anything other than lavish with grace and love.

Frank’s hand is scarred from clutching a broken bottle. A day lies ahead where those scars will be taken into the clasp of another scarred hand. A scarred hand that will lead him to the one place where the bottle can no longer follow: A place where the only thing that can follow Frank is his humility.


Post-script:
Frank remains in contact with me and with a community of other Christians. The last time I saw him he was plastered and in trouble. But for two full weeks before that he had remained sober. During his sober-stint, with the help of some of the people in his Christian community, he attempted to get into a long-term, residential recovery program. There was no room left in the program, but I’m holding out hope that a moment of sobriety and an opening in the program will soon coincide.


* Not their real names.

A Hideous New Contest (plus a toilet update)

The "Kill My Toilet" contest requires nice weather for comfortable backyard porcelain smashing, so the contest was kind of de-railed by the cold and then the snow. To make up for this poor planning on my part, I'm launching another contest that'll carry us a little closer to spring so I can announce the toilet-smashing winner then (keep entering the toilet contest by adding a comment to that post).

Here's the new contest: Send me a picture of you making the most horrible and/or amusing face possible (my kids are demonstrating in the pics above). The winner will get a unique and extra-cheesy prize picked specifically for them. If you don't have access to a digital camera, send me a film pic or pop over to my house and I'll take your picture with my camera. If you are funny-face challenged take a pic of a friend or family member and send it in. I'll post all the pics I get sent. Just email your faces to me at robert_scott@shaw.ca

Let the contortions begin!