Just a couple of quotes I've enjoyed from Family Life in the past few months:


*Paraphrase from Dennis Rainey: We have an orphan crisis.  There are close to 500,000 foster kids in the United States.  Over 130,000 could be adopted right now.  Worldwide there are 140 million orphans.  The only "organization" big enough to meet the need is the Body of Messiah.

*Guest Greg Gunn: "One of the best training grounds for marriage is the sibling relationship.  What other relationship will we ever be in that we will have to share the same bathroom, the same kitchen, with a person who is not always kind, not always loving and not always mature?  Based upon the way I treated my siblings growing up, I was not being trained in marriage, I was being trained in divorce and psychological warfare."


And a couple of pictures of this cutie's birthday:

Quote of the day:

"Here are some additional Paleo Dessert recipes for the festive Jewish caveman in all of us."

Thanks, Elana.

We were driving in the car yesterday, and Eliana was resting her head against her seat.  All of the sudden she popped her head up and said with passion, "I want to do everything I can do."  Then she proceeded to list her "plans" for the day.  Does that sound like anyone you know?

We couldn't be happier to have the TBlakes living with us while they're back in the States. 

Can you tell?

I have a hard time choosing one of these as my favorite, so I will just share them all.

If you want to hear Eliana in action, check her out on Jess' blog.  Don't worry if you can't understand the words - they're Hebrew.  She's singing our favorite song from Sukkot and actually doing a great job with the words.

Have you had your special drink today?

I've added these and more to the slideshow . . .

I think this captures Eliana well -- she's always leaning into life.

 

A day in the life

Here are some photos to catch you up. 

One of Zade's favorite poses

Eliana wanted Zade to watch her play, so I brought his bouncer over while I worked in the kitchen.  When I looked back, she had pulled her duck chair over and was reading to him. What a good big sister!

What's a pretty skirt without a construction hat to go with it?

Thanks, Cousin Cass, for the cute costume.  Eliana got to be "Nemo, the fish".

Ready for Purim

Ready for fun

We couldn't be any happier to announce the arrival of Zadok David.  He came on January 27, an impressive 9 lb. 2 oz and his little hand next to his head, ready to greet the world.  If you haven't met him yet, Jessica took some great pictures at the hospital. 

He has filled my heart with joy in so many unexpected ways, just as the L-rd promised that he would.  Zadok means "my righteousness is G-d", and we're looking forward to G-d revealing to him (and to us through him) a deep understanding of what it means to be clothed in the righteousness of our Messiah.

Eric chose David for him after he was born.  It was on our short list, but he looked at little Zade and knew he was a David, "beloved".

One of the most frequent questions I'm asked is how Eliana is responding to him.  She's doing great.  She doesn't like him to cry, urging us to go pick him up.  And she likes to give him "big" hugs.  We're working on baby-sized hugs, for Zade's sake.  Here's a video from the first time she held him.

This is a little late, but in case you haven't seen it.

The Invitation

Visit Rhonda's website to check out The Invitation, her newest book and my most recent editing project.  It won't let me pull the cover image off her site, so just pretend I posted a picture with this entry.

Eliana is a loyal fan of Sean Cochran when it comes to foosball.

In case you wondered what our last month has been like, here is Eliana putting an ice pack on her neck -- just like Grandma.  My mom was using ice packs so constantly that Eliana started asking for one for Grandma and one for "Ana".  She loves wrapping and unwrapping the ice pack, talking about how cold it is, and sitting on her little couch and icing her neck just like Grandma.  Perhaps in this case imitation isn't so much flattery as it is a heartfelt attempt to connect with Grandma in the midst of a situation far more difficult than her almost-2-year-old brain can understand.

Thanks to everyone for your prayers for my mom.  She is slowly doing better, although we'd still love your prayers for her complete healing.

What do you have to offer?

Attention all Kingdom Living poets, writers, artists, and prose-producing thinkers:

You are invited to participate in the first edition of the community literary magazine, The Circadian.

We will be accepting submissions in the following categories: short stories, essays (creative nonfiction, passionate theological essay, comic blog post, etc.), short plays or screenplays, poetry, graphics and visual art (most likely black and white print capabilities only).

Submit in as many categories as you’d like. Please limit yourself to two submissions per category.  All poets are requested to include three poems per submission, unless your poem is extraordinarily long.  If your writing doesn’t neatly fit into one of the three categories, submit it anyway and suggest your own category. Full theses or dissertations will not be accepted, however, due to space considerations. All further questions can be addressed to Susan or Kait via email.

The deadline for submissions is January 1, so get to it.

A thought after listening to Dan's messages again:

Many Americans come from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds.  For families who have been in America for multiple generations, a distinct heritage separate from being "American" often doesn't really exist. Or at least that's how it is in my family.  My brother has done some family lineage to find our English and -- to our surprise -- Irish roots.  But that really has little to no influence on how we think of ourselves.  So, for people with this melting pot heritage (and I suppose they could be from any country, although America certainly has a good number of mutts like us), what role does this non-heritage have in how people respond to discovering their Jewish roots?

We've talked about how, for those of us from non-denominational backgrounds, part of the allure of Jewish studies is the rich history, the tradition, the grounding in something older and larger than ourselves.  But I wonder if it isn't just a time issue or a non-denominational issue.  Maybe it also taps into our lack of connection to a unique ethnic culture.  How can you be excited about being one of the nations when you have no strong ethnic identity?  Which of the nations would you belong to?

So a mutt who grew up in a non-denominational church might be doubly susceptible to ignoring the Gentile/Jew distinction.  What do you think? How do you relate to being one of the nations?

From Wikipedia:

literary magazine - a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters.

Coming soon.

I'm not sure it gets any better than this.

(Photo is the fabulous work of Jessica Youmans)

A quick update on Peter Loth and his book, Peace by Piece:

Peter has been doing a lot of ministry in schools lately and has been seeing amazing results, like rival gang members forgiving each other.  Also, his book has been published in German and Spanish.  You can buy the book at Peter's website or online at BarnesandNoble.com or Amazon.  The book has also been translated into French and Korean, and they're just waiting for the finances to be able to publish in those languages as well.

It's still hard to believe that the L-rd blessed me with participating in Peter's book. It's humbling to think that four translators have used our work as the foundation for these new editions.