I’m grateful to Thomas Howard for Dove Descending, his commentary on T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets.” But why must Eliot be so pointedly obtuse as to need line-by-line decoding? (Though I suspect some of my students would think I find in Eliot a kindred spirit.) Having forced my way through “Prufrock” and “Hollow Men” and “Wasteland” last week, I’m ready for some words of redemption. I’m just getting started on “Four Quartets” — I love the notion of there being “a way up that is at one and the same time a way down,” but this poetry is tough going. (I hope I can get some help from Charlie Kidd when he returns from abroad.)

Last week while grading exams (almost done), I listened several times (and am doing so even now) to Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony. The Alpine Symphony, a tribute to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, makes Nietzsche’s atheism (or at least his quest for a “nobler god”) feel so, I dunno, so what? Brave?

Then again, if your best hope is to have your ashes parked on the top of the Himalayas in a Chock Full o’Nuts can (per The Bucket List, which movie Shari sat me down to watch this weekend, and which movie felt to me like an extended commentary on how to make Nietzsche work for you — even if the main characters do make non-Nietzschean moves toward relationships), you move past bravery into, well, again, what?

OK, I guess it makes a pretty big difference whether there’s a Redeemer or not. If not, The Bucket List is about as close to redemption as you’re going to get, I suppose. That said, I’m not sure a bucket list isn’t a bad idea even if (or since) there is a Redeemer.

What could be on mine? I’ve already killed a gator, hit a home run, played Bach & B.B. King, swung a samurai sword, driven (even briefly owned) a muscled up Mustang, kissed the most beautiful girl in the world, raised with her the three most vibrantly alive sons ever, written more than I have the right to expect anybody to read, spoken truth into the lives of half a generation of seminarians, seen tons of the majestic …

Before we leave Strauss, his Also Sprach Zarathustra (the whole tone poem) has inspired me to try to get the “Prelude” into my fingers on my Lucille and out through my Fender tube amps.

My head still hurts (that good hurt when your head feels like it’s taken in more than it’s able) from how rich the Institute for Worship Studies experience was this session. I’m grateful especially for bold prayers and wise counsel I received, and for the self-giving love I witnessed among strong-willed and talented worship leaders. It’s curious that my teaching partner and I are going through such parallel dysfunctions in church life. I love the church so — may all of us who love the Groom and his Bride help each other help Her not dress so ugly. I hold much promise of Her better adornment through my IWS friends.

Like I said, random thoughts … but, hey, it’s my blog.

Note to both devoted readers: I won’t forget about the other seven reasons for samurai sword training in Japan.

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality. • T. S. Eliot

Praise be to God for the fortitude and restraint Robinson displayed on and off the baseball field, deflecting hate with love, overcoming evil with good.

Praise be to God for Branch Rickey’s relentless pursuit of just the right man to rise to Jesus’ challenge to turn the other cheek.

Praise be to God for Giovanni Papini’s Life of Christ, the book that gave Rickey the words with which to couch the challenge to Robinson.

This Thursday I’ll write in more detail for Glenn Lucke’s Common Grounds community about this shining moment in the history of racial reconciliation. But I just had to put up this brief tribute today.

I’ve just been through one of the latter. I feel like I’ve lived ten years in the last month.

Inexplicably, I woke up the day after being wondrously delivered from a potentially eternity-ushering-in auto accident with a listlessness that went to the core of my being. The switch was “Off” and I didn’t know how to get it back “On.” Truth is, I didn’t want to get it back “On.”

I soon recognized mine to be a condition similar to one that had set in on my father when he was forced to retire from teaching before he was ready. Dad tried to write, but when he found publishers disinterested, he sank into his recliner, put the Braves on TV, and pretty much went away.

Likewise, and to my surprise, after the accident I discovered I too wanted just “to sit and watch a while.”

Mercifully, my life is too full of commitments, my wife too determined that I live, and my memory too full of what I’ve learned from Josef Pieper, Os Guinness, and Carla Waterman about the fourth of the seven deadly sins, sloth.

Often confused with mere laziness, sloth is more a shrinking of the spirit than an indulging of the flesh. What makes sloth sloth is not the nap, but the fact that the nap is the response to the report that there is a lion in the street (Prov 26:13-14). Sloth’s nap has been a constant temptation my entire conscious life, but at no time more oppressively so than in these past few weeks. I’ve come to understand acutely the majority report: “There are giants in the land — if we follow Caleb and Joshua’s counsel, we will perish.”

A month later, and I’m back — but not without an unlookedfor journey into a dark place. Others, too, I suppose, teeter on the balance point between “Further up and further in” and “Whatever … What’s on SportsCenter?” So I thought I would chronicle a few of the tipping points that seem to have brought me back from the edge of the abyss.

Getting Perspective on Greg Davis’s Death. The day before my accident, I had blogged the way the Newsboys’ Peter Furler’s line, “If indeed Christ rose from the dead, everything matters,” was helping me gain altitude on the death of my friend and co-worker Greg Davis. Little did I know how much those words would become my own do-or-die mantra: “Everything does matter. Everything does matter. Because of Christ, everything does matter.”

Ironically, the Greeks’ term for sloth was akeideia = “indifference.” We’re not the first to discover despair of the soul. Praise be, there was One who was not indifferent to our state.

The Sale of the Mustang. I knew the day after the accident that the biggest casualty of the event was going to be my beloved 1965 performance Mustang — I was going to need to sell it to help replace the totaled minivan. As fun as the ‘Stang was for me, she needed the kind of attention either an owner-mechanic or a wealthy dilettante could lavish on her. As much as I loved her, she wasn’t loving me back enough.

That’s what I knew on days when the switch was “On.” The other days, it was somebody else’s fault.

The day I resolved that it was my decision and not somebody else’s, and that the decision was going to be made out of gratitude for the joy the Mustang has brought instead of regret over the fun that was no longer to be, I called the friend from whom I had acquired her, and I offered her back. My friend had rebuilt the car with his father and had entrusted her to me only to raise money for a life-event that, well, eventually turned sour. The loss of the car was part of that pain. The Mustang’s return was as much a part of his healing as it was of mine.

Two Car Deals. I parse Greek verbs, but break lawn tools. I married a financial planner who carries household tools in her purse. I married amazingly smart. This week I got to watch Mrs. Kidd in full glory: walking us away from one car dealer over a $40 insult fee, and closing two car deals at another dealer. I’m sorry to see her give up the big family camping van that she’d grown about as affectionate of as I had the Mustang. But she’s right: we’ve got to be thinking about life-at-$5-per gallon. So, for now we’re driving his and hers Scion xBs: I’m in “Lucille,” she’s in the “Brave Little Toaster” (until our 16-year old learns to drive).

Speaking at Tullian’s Men’s Retreat & in Chapel. Larry Crabb once observed that sometimes all you can do is live as though you know truth is true, until you find yourself believing it. Sort of a sanctified “fake it till you make it” philosophy. Twice during the last month I’ve had speaking engagements in which I’ve simply had to articulate truth that I know to be true despite my internal disengagement from its reality. In the process, it has become more real. Thanks to the men of New City Church of Margate, FL, where my friends Tullian Tchvidjian and Paul Manuel minister, for bearing with me while I reminded myself as much as them that the apostle Paul calls us to “take hold of that for which I have been taken hold”: a life of faith, hope, love, godliness, justice, courage, and temperance. And thanks as well to the faculty, students, and staff at RTS/Orlando for letting me reflect with them on the way Jesus calls us “Out of Sloth and into Hungering and Thirsting for Righteousness.”

Toward Denominational Bonhomie. Right now, my denomination is characterized by some pretty strong distrust. The default drive, I suspect, is for all of us to surround ourselves with people who think just like we do. That’s its own form of sloth.

It has been heartening to hear, of late, how many and what range of folks are saying, “We can do this. It’ll be hard, but we can work at getting to know each other better so we can define better what’s essential and then trust each other on what’s negotiable.”

ALCS Game 5. OK, so how can I briefly say how great it was for ex-assistant Little League Coach Len Hardison to talk me into flying to Cleveland with him to take in Game 5 of the ALCS? I have to let pictures of the (less than prophetic) freebie Tribe towel, my scorebook, and Len & me tell it all.

Beckett was lights out. Otherwise of note: Youkilis’ home run & triple (but what was up with Sizemore’s bad angle on the triple?). And why didn’t Manny slide at home in the first inning or hustle out of the box in the third? Oh yeah, Manny being Manny. Pedroia’s double … I love that Little Leaguer. Even J.D. Drew got a double!?! Holy cow, this was the start of his ALCS & Series breakout! And you gotta love the sweet talk between Beckett & Cool Papa Lofton. How fun to be there for the ALCS turnaround game.

Sword Testing. My 16-year old takes to the samurai sword like a sandspur to socks. I’m still a klutz. It has taken me three years to learn how to do “seiza” — that’s basically a sitting position where your feet wind up under you pointing backwards with the top of the feet flat on the ground and the bottom of your feet up against your rear end. If you’re going, “Ouch!” then you’re probably imagining it about right.

At any rate, this past weekend (on my 38th spiritual birthday, it turns out), I tested for my second rank (“nidan”) in the U.S. federation of our organization — and I freakin’ passed. (Appropriately, I’m still “mudan,” i.e., unranked, in the Japanese association.) Randall didn’t test because they’ve decided they can’t have 16 year olds showing up 56 year olds. Oh, and about a month before the event, I found out I was in charge of registrations — I may ever get this paperwork sorted out!

So, I woke up this past Monday morning and said, “Wow, Lord, I’m back. Thanks.”