Summer, Fun, Favorites
It's summer! Fun is in the air. Time to share with you my favorite . . .

Vacation Places: Marco Island, FL and San Diego, CA
Way To Spend a Summer Night: At a Major League Baseball game
Agenda for a Date Night With Rebekah: Out to dinner & to a bookstore
TV Show : The Late Show With David Letterman
All-Time Production: Les Miserables on Broadway
Little Girl: Tori

My Confession of Faith, as Written in 2002

I believe in God. Here’s a glimpse into that.

“Standing on a tan-sanded beach, watching glimpes of gold sunlight shimmering on pure blue ocean water.
Driving at tree-line elevations, seeing snow-capped peaks, layered in three dimensions, but even with eye level, as far as I can see.

Watching deadly-force water pressure whiz by inches from my face at the edge of Niagara, volumes of water I rarely see standing in a pool, gushing forth at frantic MPH to distances stories below.

It is places like these I have come face-to-face with God’s fingerprint, His reflection on all of creation. At these places, confronted with the bigness, the complexity, the beauty, the ordered chaos of creation, at these places & times I know there is a God. Actually, I now that I don’t know – that I can’t know, what is. I am too small, too simple, too much a part of the whole, too much controlled by something else, too much the object of a subject, too much the result of a cause, too much the attracted being of an ultimate consummation – to know – anything for sure or in full. And it is in this position of not knowing – of not being capable of knowing – that the reality of God becomes subtly obvious (or perhaps I should say “powerfully hidden”).

So, as if it were a big deal, I believe in God. How could I ever know enough to do anything else, really?

Who is God? What is my relationship to God? How does my life relate?

I will ask God – and I have asked God – “Reveal Yourself – show me the truth about You – to the degree that You would have me know. I will listen. I will obey.”

The story of Jesus has so far been the answer. The story of Jesus as foreshadowed in the story of Israel. The story of Jesus in His life on earth, His teachings, and His demonstrations of the Kingdom, His death, His life, His eternal reign. The story of Jesus as it has been lived out by His people (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant), though imperfectly ever since. The story of Jesus as lived out in my family, in my house church, in the lives of those who have written hundreds of thousands of pages I have read the past few years, in the lives of my closest soul mates.”

Happy Birthday Dad
Today is my dad's 63rd birthday. How in the world did my dad get to be 63? He and I had our problems when I was a kid and when I was in high school. Now we get along fine, though we don't see each other more than three or four times a year. Realizing that he is 63 makes me very sad, though I don't know exactly why. Is it because I feel some of his pain and wish he didn't have it? Is it because him being 63 makes me realize that I am 32? Is it because I feel some guilt for moving away from Indianapolis when I was 18? Is it because I wish something about him (or something about me) had been different?

In honor of my dad, here is a "Jim Hubbard" story.
"Boy, we got a lot of work to do today". That was the sentence that woke me up most Saturday mornings during my childhood. This particular Saturday would turn out to be more frustrating than most, though years later it would turn out to be more comical than most. My dad had bought a van -- a plain looking van, like you would use to transport boxes of something, or run a small buisness out of. My dad, however, was going to personally customize this into a family conversion van. This particular day was the day to install the picture windows in the sides (the van came with only the front and rear windows - "boy, you'll pay top dollar to have those windows put in by the dealership."). My job was to hold the light and hand over the requested tools. My dad's job was to take a hand-held electric jig saw (I guess that's what you call it), and after measuring and tracing the location of the windows, to cut holes in the sides of the van where the windows would go. Here we were, sitting in the second most expensive thing our family owned (second only to our house), with a tool designed for lesser purposes, getting ready to cut holes.

I sheepishly said, "Dad, do you think these blades will cut through the sides of a van? Are you sure we should do this?"

"Boy, hold the light," was the only reply.

Then it happened. The hum of the saw began. The deafening grind of metal to metal quickly followed. And not more than 10 seconds later "bam" followed by an expletive form the old man. He had broken a saw blade. Lucky for him, our garage contained at least a half dozen extra blades (three of them right where they belonged, the other three we had to "hunt").

Long story short. The rest of my Saturday was spent holding the light, listening to the same procession of sounds. Hum, grind, bam, expletive. Hum, grind, bam, expletive. We took a short break around noon (I ate lunch, he went to the Central Hardware to buy more saw blades). The projoect was eventually finished. And, in all honestly, the van ended up looking fairly nice. We all knew, however, not to sit by those windows on a rainy day.