Homeownership / Mission field

The long-held dream of buying a slightly crappy house in a slightly shady neighborhood is almost fulfilled.  We expect to close next Monday. 

It's been a long process, but not nearly so fraught and stressful as I had imagined it would be.  Here's to studying the process ahead of time, so we knew what to expect from each step of the way.  Also to being secure and content with our current situation made us patient.  We had very strict criteria (only Hilltop, within easy biking distance to work, 3+ bedrooms, etc) and were willing to wait until we satisfied all of them.  We passed up a lot of homes which were nice, but fell short in one way or another.  Of course, it does help to buy in a slumping market during a recession when interest rates will remain low; but the biggest factor, I believe, to getting the house we wanted, was being happy with where we're at and therefore being willing to wait.

So now we're going to get a livable house in a convenient location, half a block from one of the coolest mini-parks in the city and about 4 blocks from Wright Park.  I'll be literally a half-mile from work, we'll have a back yard to turn the kids loose in, and we'll be in a diverse neighborhood. 

I've been obsessively riding past it almost every day on my commute to work.  I think the neighbors think I'm some sort of creepy biking vagrant.  Speaking of which, I know there are several who hang out in the neighborhood and have gotten into the habit of cutting through the property to get to the alley behind it.  I expect to have to have some discussions with drifters about using a different route.

On the flip side, though, one of the things I look forward to most is getting to know the people around us.  It's what I love most about the place we're in now, and what I'll miss most about it- getting to know our neighbors. 

Lisa and I believe that loving the people around us is the best way to live a Christian life.  Our neighborhood is our mission field.  Now to clarify, we're not crazy evangelical nuts who keep some silly tally of "converts" who we talked into saying the "sinners prayer."  But rather, we genuinely want to love and serve the people around us, and how better to reach someone than through daily interaction and support?  This is a big reason we don't want to live in UP or Gig Harbor (no offense to those who do, mind you), because those people don't really need that in the same way. 

Around here it has taken the form of going outside and hanging out and talking with the neighborhood kids.  Saying hi, smiling, and remembering their names.  We've taken a few on regular library trips.  We go to the playground and play.  We invite them in our home and talk about their day.  Simple stuff, nothing heroic, but meaningful. 

Now we're going to repeat that in our new place, but we're going to miss the kids around here.

Orthodox Ecology, Part 1 of 2

The following is a summary/paraphrase of a lecture by Fr. Andrew Stephen Damik, an Orthodox priest, given on Feb 3, 2010 at Bucknell University.  The title of his talk is "This Holy Earth- Ecological Vision in the Cosmic Cathedral."  You can find the audio of the lecture at the Roads From Emmaus website.
This is not a strict transcription, it's me listening to the lecture and picking out the salient points as I understand them, although Fr. Andrew is very well-measured in his words and rarely do I want to omit or edit what he says.  When I've added my own 2 cents, I've enclosed them in parentheses. 

Here goes.

The Daily Habit

I used to write on this blog on a daily basis.  Now everything I want to write about seems so pretentious.  I kept it for 2 years while living in Thailand, and I have felt recently the need for an outlet.  What used to be my public writings has turned into the gym blog, and my scope for expression has diminished.  But here I sit, motivated to write, and can't think of a topic I'm ready to put to words.
The best way I know to break a writers block is to spend some more time writing about whatever comes to mind. 
What about the purpose of this blog?  What is something that has been interesting to me recently?  Or what is something I envisioned this blog being about?

Theology is one.  Because it matters.  And differences in theology matter.  It matters to society, to the natural world, and an individual's salvation.  I consider myself an Orthodox Christian, but any true Orthodox believer might take issue with that.  It's more right to say that I am an ally of Orthodoxy, but have not reconciled myself to the church.  I want to be, but Orthodoxy is not an easy religion.  Orthodoxy is not something you believe, it's something you live.  Daily prayer, holy days, fasts, scripture, evangelism, humility, theology, service, suffering.  There is much room in my internal life for these things, but I don't have them.  In addition to that, there is the simple practical obstacle of not connecting with regular worship.  The local church, St. Nicholas, though I love it, is mostly ethnically Greek in orientation.  Much of the service is spoken or chanted Greek, and there is no childcare.  Trying to keep a 2 and 3 year old happy on a hard pew while Lisa and I struggle to follow what's happening or being said, is a challenge we have yet to master.  The priest, Fr. Seraphim is awesome.  I dig his energy, his focus, and he's smart.  I connect with him and try to get to his weekly bible study. 
Orthodoxy just makes sense.  It makes sense in ways I didn't conceive of before getting to know Orthodox thought.  I want to share it with people because I think there are a lot people like me.  Who have questions about God, life, faith, and the church, who are dissatisfied with the answers they find in Protestant or Catholic Christianity. 
But I don't plan to talk much on my own authority, I'm an idiot.  You shouldn't trust me about anything to do with your eternal soul.  So rather than speak on my own authority, one idea I've been mulling is to transcribe and paraphrase some lectures I like to come back to.  A great resource is a podcast series called Roads from Emmaus.  Also, Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy.  I keep these in my ipod and come back to them again and again.  I just relistened to a 2-part series on Orthodox Ecology. 

It looks like I found my next project. 

Owning a Business in Tacoma

When I started by business, Crossfit Tacoma, 3 years ago I knew nothing, I mean nothing, about how to properly run a business.  My general habit was to wait until I recieved a terse letter in the mail telling me to file whatever report with whatever arcane obscure department, which required me to submit information I barely understood, much less has the foresight to actually collect ahead of time. 
The worldview of a novice businessman is pretty much focused on whatever is currently on fire and threatens to burn him down.  If it wasn't screaming at me, it got put last on the to-do list.  This is not a good policy for successful entrepreneurship, nor is it a good way to stay out of trouble.  So needless to say, I used to get a lot of red envelopes and letters with big headlines shouting about last notice. 
When I could ignore it no longer, I would make my way down to City Hall and shuffle in, feeling like a kid reporting for after school detention.  To my surprise, the clerks were always helpful.  Maybe not always friendly, but let's not get carried away, I'm trying to pay a bill, not make a friend.  More than once I had penalties waived, interest reduced, and extensions on deadlines to give me time to get the information I needed.  I never left feeling like a chastened teen who didn't turn in his homework. 
What I found even more surprising was that the common widsom is that governments just hamstring businesses.  I expected to find some cone-headed bureaucrat looking down at me, but found the opposite- a city government that wants me to survive and is willing to cut me some slack to do so.  They also hold free quarterly workshops for businesses in the city, and provide tons of other helpful services for free.  It's enough to make you want to go shoot the whiny anti-government-business-apologists in the face.