charlieDEAN’S Blog

One of the cool things about living in a smallish city is minor league baseball. First it’s affordable — $10 buys you the best seat in the house. And then when stars like Nomar Garciaparra are re-habbing, you get to see them play at close range.

Nomar’s in town tues - thurs. I’m going on Tuesday night with my buddy Dan who’s visiting from God’s country (Colorado) and our 4-year olds! Should be cool!

So far, I’ve watched 14 stages this year’s Tour de France. I’ve always been a casual fan, but this year I’ve really begun to understand biking a whole lot better and I’ve enjoyed it so much more! I’ve been wanting to do this post for a while, but I think I’ve just finally gotten all my thoughts together. By the way, I’m not going to sing Lance’s praises here, since everyone else is doing it rather well already, but here are my top 5 reasons that I think cycling is the toughest sport in the world. Notice that I’m not necessarily saying that it’s the most exciting to watch or that it’s for everyone, but I do believe that it’s the toughest.

1. The sheer physicality. Most tour stages are between 4 and 5 hours of constant pedaling. Besides a marathon, I don’t know of any other sport where you just keep pounding it out that long without breaks.
2. The Danger. Like NASCAR (which is NOT a sport by the way — it’s driving fast) bike racers race inches away from each other and one small mistake by anyone in the peleton and there’s a major wipeout.
3. The Strategy. A lot like football or baseball, cycling is all about strategy. Knowing when to attack when not to, who to chase, when to cut your losses, etc. Lance once compared bike racing to a game of chess.
4. The Strategy (part two). I can’t think of any other sport where you sometimes collaborate with your chief competitors to get further down the road. In cycling, when there’s a break away from the peleton, even the fiercest competitors have to work together so they can fight it out at the finish line.
5. The Sportmanship. They call it the “brotherhood of the bike” and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sport where the competitors have such respect for one another. I could go on and on here, but I won’t bore you!

This is my two boys, Gavin (2) on the left, Caleb (4) on the right and my niece Malea (1) sitting in the middle. Getting the three of them to all look at a camera at the same time for a picture is nearly impossible. Anyway, there’s no reason for this post except to say that blogger, has a new, easier way to upload pictures. I used to have work the Hello! software, that I really hate, so I’m pretty excited that pictures will be much easier!

I was sitting in a meeting the other day, having a tension-filled discussion, when someone further up the organizational food chain said something like, “I want to own my own bad attitude. I made this situation worse because I felt like I was in a bad position.”

How refreshing that somebody in a leadership position is willing to own their own crap! I admire that so much! I hate the mentality among many leaders that says, “never let them see you as weak.” If “weak” means that you own up to your own shortcomings, then I’d rather follow a “weak” person than a strong one any day of the week, especially if “strong” means that one never apologizes, never admits to doing anything wrong, etc.

I’ve just been thinking through a bunch of leadership stuff lately and trying to figure out how to be one!

Jennifer and I are pregnant again…this will be our third (& final) pregnancy. We’re pretty excited! Let me answer a few FAQ’s:

Yes, we are hoping for a girl, since we already have two boys, but we’re okay with having another boy too (actually both of us are pretty convinced it’s a boy).

Yes, Jennifer is feeling fine. Her first two pregnancies were relatively uncomplicated and so far, this one is following suit.

She’s due the first of March, although with both of the boys, they induced her a couple weeks early, so we’re expecting a late February birth date.

Couple of things to clear up before I get to the real idea behind this post. First…Happy Birthday to my wife of nine years!!

Last post I complained about a tooth…so I got a root canal on Thursday…that’s always a good time!

So this morning, I was home a little later than usual because I was making breakfast for Jennifer (bacon-cheese-onion-mushroom omelet w/ toast and coffee). Anyway, I was just about ready to leave for the office at about 8:00 when a segment on the TODAY show came on that piqued my interest about the fact that more and more couples are choosing to live together before getting married. The segment was followed by an interview with a professor from Rutgers’ who has just published a study on cohabitating, non-married couples and a “relationship” counselor. Here are a couple thoughts…

1. I was amused that even though the professor stated that couples who live together prior to marriage are about twice as likely to divorce after marriage, the counselor (who was recently married after living with her partner) insisted that although she doesn’t recommend that couples live together, she thinks it’s a good thing that couples do live together. I was amused by the total lack of logic. Let me get this straight…studies show that if you live together your more likely to end up getting a divorce so you should probably live together before you get married in order to avoid a divorce. Am I totally missing something here? I don’t get the logic at all!

2. I was saddened, that in the discussion of this issue no clergy or moral authority was present in the discussion. The issue was only one of pragmatism — what works or doesn’t work. Is it possible that there are some things that are right to do, even if they aren’t necessarily pragmatic? I guess I see more and more people arguing against morality because it’s not practical and convenient.

3. This issue is a growing concern for me as I move into a position where I find myself doing more and more pre-marital counseling and marriages and I find myself arguing for chastity and yet struggling with how to extend grace. I told a friend recently that one of my goals in the next couple months is to get together some people that I respect to have a theological conversation that deals with chastity, grace, and under what circumstances should a church “bless” a marriage.

Finally went to the dentist today after about a week and a half of pain…I had an 8am appt., and now I’m getting ready to leave my office for a root canal this afternoon! This sucks! I really try to take care of my teeth and what do I get? Nothing but cavities!! (Plus a $500 bill, that isn’t great for anyone’s budget!)

I hate the dentist! It’s not fair, I realize…it’s not his fault that I have a mouth of rot and decay, but I take out my agression in passive-aggresive ways…if he’s going to keep finding cavities, than I just won’t go to the dentist anymore! There! That will get him!

I couldn’t sleep last night due to a toothache that I’ve been trying to ignore for the last week (never have I wanted powerful drugs as much as I do right now). Anyway, someone had loaned me this book so I read it last night…yes the whole thing. Anyway, it’s about a guy who chose to live among the homeless in five different U.S. cities over the course of about six months. Some of it I really liked, other parts felt like two white, middle class college students hunting for material that they could put in a book and sell. (Call me cynical, but it’s what I feel about a lot of Christian publishing, and I’ve got a severe toothache today and am feeling just a little bit surly, so if I’m way off base, I’m sorry).

Anyway, here’s one good quotation that I really liked:
“Be relentlessly suspicious of your comfortable life, and of the comfort zones that render so many Christian fellowships insensitive and ineffective in our communities.”

I think that it’s real easy for us to retreat into our beautiful church buildings and ignore that the world really needs us on their terms, not always on ours. Gotta go….

This is just too stupid to comment on! Really…I have no words!

I’m reading a book called Unspeakable: Facing Up to Evil in an Age of Genocide and Terror, by one of my favortie authors, Os Guinness (yes, he’s a distant relative of the beer family). I’m going to teach a series on evil in August @ Nexus, but here’s a quote regarding Rwanda:

“Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general who commanded the UN forces in Rwanda during the massacre, sufffered an emotional breakdown afterward. He was haunted by the thought that, given the green light by his superior, ‘he could have stopped it.’ His comments on the later visit to Kigali by President Clinton were scathing: ‘Kept the engines on Air Force One running, spent a couple of hours in the airport terminal, and said he was sorry, he didn’t know.’
‘Didn’t know?’ said Dallaire. ‘I saw the NATO electronic aircraft overhead. I’ve spent my life in NATO. I know what they do.’
For himself, the general said later, he was still haunted in his dreams by the eyes — thousands and thousands of them, disembodied, staring out of the African darkness. ‘You can’t just walk away from something like that saying you did what you could…You can’t just Pontius Pilate 800,000 people.”