Top Ten News Items (that wouldn't fit in a standardized Christmas letter)

Andy asked me to give the year-end update for our family blog. I’m pretty nervous; I haven’t honed my “blog-voice”. I either tend toward too much verbosity in general, too much impractical prattle, or not enough deep thoughts. But here goes…

Top Ten News Items from Rudd 04

Jaelyn (5) began kindergarten and Addison (4) began preschool for a few hours a week. It’s been a weird adjustment for Jaelyn to start “real” school, but she does enjoy it. She and Addison both attend the Child Development Center preschool and Kindergarten at Malone, so it’s nice to have them close and integrated into a classroom with other Malone community members. Jaelyn is obsessed with gymnastics, and Addison loves swimming right now.

Speaking of our community...actually, communities, I guess. We love our church. Both Andy and I have greatly enjoyed observing the church year calendar with the congregation at Akron Christian Reformed Church. This year’s Advent season was especially meaningful to me. It’s really rewarding to watch our kids learn the rhythm of this calendar also. It’s soothing and anchoring to us. Out of our church, we have a smaller community of Malone people who have started a Bible study here in Canton. We enjoy and grow from the conversations and care we gain from that group.

Another key community would be our Babysitting Co-op which has made our ‘dual-parenting’ model so much easier. We have three families, with two kids each, that rotate some day-care and at least three date nights a month. It’s a win-win for everyone. The kids love being together (they are all in the same school), and the parents get free babysitting!



Andy participated in NanoWrimo month. For those uninitiated, during the month of November, 50,000 people, connected via the Internet, wrote a 50,000 word novel. He worked really hard and completed it by 11:58 p.m. on Nov. 30. Now comes the editing part.

Andy got tenure at Malone and took on the duties of department chair for three years. He has done a great job, but isn’t necessarily tantalized by the ‘power’ of administration. He remains very ambivalent toward institutionalized life.

I started a new job and thus a new phase of our family life. In October I was hired as the Literacy Center Leader for Timken Senior High School in Canton. It’s an urban high school with many of the problems you would expect, but I’m so excited about the opportunity. I feel like it’s kingdom work that is intimately connected to my academic passions. There is so much work to be done, but we will have a new building and hopefully an excited staff and student body by next fall. (I can always dream!) Since Andy has received tenure, he has been able to adjust his schedule a bit more, so that hopefully, the kids will still be with one or both of us more than without us.

Our families are doing well. Andy’s entire family has nestled in Muskegon. Bill is still at Calvary Church as senior pastor with Gloria serving as the first lady of the church. David is at Calvary also, working as youth pastor; Marianne works part-time as a nurse. Their kids, Emma (8) and Liam (5) are favorites of our kids. They love being together. Daniel is a senior pastor in North Muskegon and Andrea works in OB at the hospital there. Ryan works in Muskegon and Angela is a music teacher at Calvary. Yes, we are the only ones not there. We seem to have missed that “all-call”.



My Coshocton family is doing well also. My dad is working as the “Grounds-keeper” at a local high school, but he is truly the man with the power. You know what they say about the custodians and secretaries. He runs that school. My mom is enjoying her first year of retirement. She has traveled a bit with my dad, but mostly takes care of my nephews while their parents work. My brother, Brian, works on a corporate hog farm and his wife, Kristy has started a greenhouse business on my parent’s farm. Keith (6) and Marcaus (2) are also favorite people in my kids’ eyes.

My cousin Jan got married this June. After she and Adam got engaged, I was able to fly to Minneapolis and spend a weekend with her, going shopping and preparing for the wedding. It was great to spend time with Adam and get to know them as a couple. He is a great complement to her spiritually and seems to love her in ways that she needs. Their wedding was such a great celebration; I’m so happy for them both. They both work in Minneapolis, actually with the same type of students. I’m so glad that God brought someone in her life who can share the same passions that she has.



There are so many other details…we all have them right? They all seem mundane, until they are stacked together. Then you begin to see God’s hand moving in very subtle, yet distinct ways. We said good-bye to students and friends this year, but we also welcomed new ones into our hearts. Thank you for your part in our lives! Please get in touch when you are able!

Lynn, Andrew, Jaelyn, & Addison

Lynn's New Job

historic Timken High School

So Lynn started her new job with the Canton City Schools as literacy coordinator for Timken Academy. When I first met her, she couldn't really conceive of teaching in an urban school. Now she's not only devoted to working in that setting, but she also is a passionate advocate for justice in that setting. Yesterday she quizzed a visiting Ohio Dept of Education on the inequities that "No Child Left Behind" is creating for this (and many other) schools.

A position couldn't be more perfect for her growing interest in integrating literacy across the curriculum for adolescents. This is exactly what this job enables her to do. It's a perfect combination of her training, her developing interest and her growing passions for urban schools.

I feel lucky to be married to somebody who's not only so gifted, but also so able to be SO MANY different things to so many different people...

Cue Ben Folds -- "The Lucky One"...



Timken's New Building -- Lynn's Center for Learning will be here.

Gramma & Bampa Came to Visit

"Uncle Charlie" and "Gramma Linda" are the family catch-phrases for labelling over-zealous photographers. With my mom's cool digital camera -- she has obliterated the memory of both of them. Her zest for capturing still moments is astonishing. But we end up with these great pictures!


My mom and dad took the kids to McD's playland, out to buy fabric for this year's pajamas (Gramma Glo is sewing manically these days), played hide & seek with them, and told endless Charlie-Chipmunk story -- a staple element of my Dad's bardic nature...



They made baked hanging window things on Saturday morning. Everyone has bed-head and pajamas (the latest trend in pajamas is shirts dug out of mom & dad's drawers so they can feel our hugs all night long).

Top Ten Notable But Unrelated Life Markers of the Moment

10. Jaelyn woke up on Monday, and after calling "DADDY!" asked -- Daddy, when will kindergarten start. Every morning has been a countdown. Friday a.m. is orientation.

9. Addison has not once regreted giving up his flyer. He teased me the other day, Daddy, bring me my flyer? I said, Your FLYER!? And he giggled uproariously, knowing that he had gotten me with his subtle humour.

8. Long day today at "Faculty Retreat." Several surreal elements (unpostable for legal reasons) confused me throughout the day on the question of -- is this just an extension of my very odd dream last night?

7. My office is organized. Really and Truly organized. And it was fun to make it that way. I understand why professional organizers get off on their jobs. Though I suppose I would grow weary of it eventually. (BTW, I have not abandoned my official stance that people should only aspire to be organizING never organizED.)

6. I finished a short screenplay about a forty five year old woman locked into a community college.

5. Lynn is gearing up for a new position as the Director (?) / Coordinator (?) of the Literacy Center in the downtown school district.

4. Jaelyn announced her plans tonight at dinner to shuttle the family to each of the four corners of the United States next summer. Seattle - Miami - San Diego - and Phillips Family....here we come!

3. I love corn season. We buy fresh corn at the market every night and devour it. Addison arrived at the table last night and in a broken hearted whine exclaimed, Not Corn! Again!

2. I'm zipping to the store after I finish this to buy the ingredients for Tomato Jam and Tunisian CousCous Salad. While tomorrow evenings eats sound really good. It's starting to feel a little late.

1. Lynn and I decided to chill together last night, and I felt bored with all the old topics (and given how many years we've been in this conversation, that's a lot of topics) and so somehow we had our first long serious conversation about --

Pro Football.

Apparently someone quite knowledgeable (L.) paired with a major blowhard (A.) can make quite a conversation out of relatively little shared knowledge....

Hope your top ten are treating you well....

peace~

cross post from the backburner

Rites of Passage

Yesterday Addison announced that today was tomorrow.

I was confused too. Until Lynn explained to me that Yesterday he had decided that Tomorrow he would be getting rid of his Flyer. And today is tomorrow (but that was yesterday).

When Jaelyn was ready to give up her pacifier (nicknamed the Flyer, via Gabe Gibbs, channeling an Unger Family Tradition), she took it to Toys R Us and bought a doll named Haley (just days after Haley Cearley had been born), so today, Addison his sister’s example and valiantly gave up his Flyer, using it to purchase (what else?) a sword!



Giving up your flyer is no small thing. The dude has not passed a single night, owie or naptime without asking for his Flyer and Blankie. But he quit. Cold turkey.

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Saw our friend Josh Elek at church today. He and Erik (former housemate) and Cristin were all very close friends with (our friend, too) Scott Schuler who died unexpectedly this week. He was 25 and we found out about his brain death minutes before Noah took his tumble to the ground.

Noah is fine. Scott is dead. This jumble of life and emotion is exhausting. Harry blessed Josh & Cristin during Communion, but ironically the Celtic band was wailing away at this celebratory, tambourine & flute driven song. And it felt like that highwire again.

But Josh talked about this perfect healing moment where a ton of Scott’s friends walked down the steps of the McKinley Monument in silence at 3 am, a little tipsy from toasting and re-membering Scott, and suddenly that moment felt like a bit of lived poetry. A sort of perfection in the middle of sadness...

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These accidental and incidental rites of passage are so desperately important for marking our lives for us. The chaos feels so pervasive, so relentless, so neverending, that when we can find some gesture to mark ourselves as new and mark the past as behind us.

Utne Reader recently had some articles on DIY rituals, but I think the irony is that rituals only work if they come from US (as opposed to ME). But all the us-s in our lives are so fragmentered and illusory. In these moments, I wish that it wasn’t a blog that connected me to so many of you who have helped me pass from this to that part of my life….And frankly, I could use you around me, to help me keep growing up…

Peace~

(not a sword)


cross post from the backburner

in michigan this past week

we had quests with the cousins -- trekking across the dangerous Backyardis to recover some potion from the wooden castle to heal Queen Glorianis' fatal eyebrow twitching disease. The costumes pictured here were Queen Glorianis' disguises (pulled straight from the Easter Cantata Closet) to sneak the children past the wizards --



Cousins, acting like foxes narrowly escaped their pursuers Bampa & Uncle Andy, colored with Aunt Gigi, posed for Gramma Glo, collected hundreds of tadpoles from the water above the pool cover.



The "notals" sat around the table for hours like the endless talkers we are.


And Bampa and I discovered / created a performance art / game that the kids (ok, and the adults) played over and over. Who knew that a poolcover could be so great?

a perfect moment

the banks of the creek behind the cemetery which borders the back of our circle overflowed by fifty and a hundred feet today. Lynn saw it on her run, and we all went down to see.

inevitably we started to wade, and as the children recognized how transgressive the moment was -- we started to frolic.

I'm always reminded that I'm in a perfect moment when I see Jaelyn Running.

She has a funny and completely authentic gesture of whirling one arm -- at full length when she's running in complete abandon. She doesn't even recognize it when she's doing it -- and can't really make it "pretend" to happen.

So today as she ran through the Knee Deep water -- splashing everywhere -- Lynn running and yelling too, Woo Hoo -- and the arm started going --

I had a flash of recognition that we had found one of THOSE moments. A moment where all the rules go hazy and all the background floats away -- where you are completely and utterly HERE -- RIGHT NOW -- with EACH OTHER.

I flopped under the water myself (brrr!) and then attempted to cross the creek. The raging creek was at my armpits and despite all my (substantial) girth fighting against the creek --> I got SWEPT AWAY.

I grapped tufts of grass and pulled myself to the submerged shore.

Addison and Jaelyn ran freely and wildly. Splashing purposely to sit down up to their necks, climbing atop an island tree or water main cap. We waved to the maintenance workers who smiled at us from their mowers and bulldozers. We tried to be subdued when mourners drove by, but it was hard.

The world was overflowing and we happened to be right in the flow of it.

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family update
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import from the backburner
this is the "here's what's happening" regular update -- target audience: people who care alot; lonely parasocial lurkers, beware. tedious cataloguing of the mundane follows:

i'm enjoying my semester much more at malone this semester. i'm teaching my two favorite classes (only), & having time to *almost* get all the work done that i'm supposed to...

i've got a couple of stories i'm scripting right now -- they're at the stage of newness that i can be purely excited about them still...

lynn is teaching a normal load & also partnering with the local urban school district in a number of ways. the work she's doing is very rewarding and difficult -- trying to equip overworked, under-resourced teachers to develop literacy strategies for under-under-resourced student-populations.

one of the school districts has made some *huge* cuts in the past few weeks -- maybe more if a second levy is defeated this month. that whole bleak reality has been saddening and disheartening...there were a few days that lynn de-celebrated as the: "death of idealism"...

we LOVE: our babysitting coop. Our friends Jeff & Linda & Brian & Jenni have an arrangement which results in a date night two out of every three weekends and a housefull of two-through-four year olds every third weekend. It feels like a really solid way to share life and invest in each other's vocations and families. It's also really fun to have so many dates with the woman I love.

jaelyn's sick. not that that accounts for most of who she is and is-becoming, but it certainly occupies a front-ish burner right now. It's a recurring theme throughout the winter particularly....

Last night was a humdinger though. Between Lynn and I together I'm sure we got eight hours of sleep. Well. Almost. Vomit, not breathing through stuffy nose, fever, achy neck, sore throat...

BUT IN GENERAL ~ Jaelyn's delightful. She loves to play imaginatively with little people, dolls & animals; she can do so for hours with her brother uninterrupted and unsupervised. Okay for one half of an hour. But given the (st/)age we're emerging from -- a half an hour feels like a lifetime... She loves to care for sick, sad, or little people. It seems to be a part of her that's pretty unique and just - her. I admire that quality in her....

she really likes preschool & visits to the local YMCA --

as does ADDISON ~ who apparently deferred the terrible twos (because he was sweet, gentle, generous, kind, funny) until this week. He's ornery this week. In eastern-ohio-culture -- the personality trait of "orneriness" in children is celebrated -- particularly in male children (but occasionally a girl, too). It's a part of the cultural milieu that i'm still puzzling about.

He loves cooking. Seriously. Real or play cooking. Trains. Balls. Stories about (as he calls them) ROARS. (the most recent incarnation of said "roars" is a plea to include at least a guest appearance of Simba in any story you tell him...yes, i'm galled at the triumph of the disneyfication of the universe even in the lore of family and history...

we've been trying to sell our house for five months.

we want to move into a more diverse school district, a more urban environment & closer to work (eliminate a car) -- but we can't seem to sell our house.

we've been showing it more than once a week for the past three weeks, which is great right? Wrong. After 5 months, you're just resigned to the fact that whoever is looking at it is *not* going to put an offer on it. So you punctuate your day with a mad dash home in the hour you have between classes and meetings and you once over the bathroom and swiffer the kitchen and stuff all the brightly colored plastic toys into the large, someone less cluttered looking, but also brightly colored rubbermaid containers. it gets tiring.

But its one of our definitive rhythms right now. a recurring motif.

i'm using the term "post-evangelical" to refer to my faith journey right now...and feel disheartened by most of mainline American Christendom -- particularly all of the ways it gets commodified, represented & politicized -- BUT curiously, in light of all that -- I really love the church we're going to now...

as always, i miss my friends, miss time with my friends, and enjoy most the few opportunities there seem to be in life for true communion...

The Psino

import from the back burner
I was never sure why I was a psino (silent p); if it was something i had done; something i should be embarrassed about or something that was generally true of everyone.

it was certainly true of everyone that was in my sunday school classes.

Jesus loves me, the psino, for the bible tells me so.

Perhaps "psino" was a theological term describing the comprehensiveness of original sin?

It was a ridiculously long time before I figured out my error.

this, I know.

and i thought of it this weekend when Jaelyn asked me and Lynn very insistently and repetitively:

"What is Cruisey - Violence?"

It took a lot of conversation to realize that this was her take on the crowds maelovelent chant in the JESUS film (which she's been watching) as they chant, "crucify him!"

She'd been walking around muttering the magical dangerous phrase "Cruisey Violence" all day.

peace~

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addison fandom
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import from the back burner

my parents gave us this remake of the "Jesus" movie -- the one that missionaries cart all over the world to show in villages where we don't have time to learn about their cultures or languages or problems, but that probably need to say the sinners prayer sooner rather than later given the impending end times and all...

(but wait, i digress, apologies to my dispensationalist friends and family for my sarcasm...)

the jesus movie is *way* better than the other two videos that my parents have given me for my kids -- the cedarmont kids & Ms. Pattycake (for these two gifts alone, i'm guessing that my parents will languish in Limbo for several years before they find the pearly gates -- who knew that there was anything worse than those dreadfully stepfordian Barney's children -- trust me the cedarmont kids are two levels of hell worse)...BUT....

Addison is obsesed with it. Anytime there is a question about what we will do next -- where we will go next -- how we should pass our collective time? His answer? Let's watch the Jesus Movie.

We were sitting in a restaurant last night and he noticed that they were playing a radio in the background...his idea -- we should go home and bring the Jesus Movie and listen to that instead.

Hey Addison -- want to go outside and play? Yeah, then we come in side, and eat and watch the Jesus movie.

Me: No, buddy, we've watched enough media this week...

Addison: Then we go to sleep and wake up and THEN we watch the Jesus Movie.

Me: Add. You've watched that movie enough. Why don't we act it out together.

Addison: we play Jesus movie, the dead part, (his other obsession -- along with Mel), THEN we watch the Jesus movie.

Me: Addison, we're not going to watch the Jesus movie right now.

His entire countenance falls into a mixture between enraged and despondent.

ADDISON: HOW we going to watch it?

Me: You mean, WHEN are we going to watch it?

ADDISON: HOW we going to watch it? We never EVER get to watch Jesus movie.

so you take that obsession and braid it with the cultural critics' obsession over the Passion -- and you have a very crucifixion centered lent....

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wobbly teeth * celebrity dreams
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import from the back burner


Tonight we were riding home from the grocery store when suddenly a LONG profound silence from Jaelyn pooled in the back seat. I turned around and turned on the overhead light.

Have I told you before that my daughter who has the biggest, most beautiful brown eyes in the universe also has an uncanny ability to spill buckets of tears from those eyes at will?

I’m not talking about crying. I’m talking about a unique ability to sit silently, wide eyed and cry tears so violently that her face is soaking within a minute?

The moisture is building in her eyes.

ME: What is it Jaelyn?

Niagra Falls.

JAELYN: I almost broke my tooth.

ME: You what?

Have I told you before that my daughter has the most astonishing oral fixation yet documented (in my somewhat limited experience with such things) in a four-year-old? That she not only chews her fingernails and hangnails and dolls feet and hands and teddy bear paws, but also the sleeves of all of her shirts. And what’s more – tonight, she decided to chew – to pull violently – to … I don’t know what she was doing…snapping her elastic black pants with her teeth?

And sure enough, one of her front lower teeth is loose.

It was such an interesting moment, because the flood of her tears came to feel like Eden lost...they were genuinely pentitent, but neither she nor I could do nothing to reverse the angels at the gates with the flaming swords.

Everythingteeth.com (or something like that) assured us that four year olds are the right age to lose their teeth (even if mother nature gets a bit of help).

I cuddled her on the couch as she sobbed after I explained that the tooth would probably fall out, and though she would have a hole in her smile, a new tooth would eventually grow. Its amazing and horrible to feel the weight of a four year old dealing with the profound understanding that a choice she has made is undoable.

Is it true that in general, as a child, you get used to the idea that the world is not so much fixed as it is routine? That all that happens may well be purged and cleansed by the next time around? New Years doesn’t matter because years aren’t picking up speed and there's no great loss if you miss an opportunity this time, because it doesn't affect all the future opportunities you'll ever have....?

Freudian psychologists say that if you dream that your teeth are falling out – you’re fearing your own mortality. I don’t dream my teeth falling out, but I have been dreaming ALL THE TIME of being on trips – to far away places – amalgams of places I’ve lived and places I’d like to go. In every case, I run into old friends, and together we spend time with more recent friends. And I know that something is about to happen in these dreams.

Oddly enough (this is very strange for me), I’ve had celebrity dreams twice in the last week. Last night I was hanging with a bunch of friends (Burt, Brenda, Brendon, Natalie & Lynn) in a library that overlooked the Santa Monica Beach. And what’ya know….guess who was there? Jennifer Anniston! She engaged me in some banter about the note I had sent Brad. She’s been so funny about pretending that I’m really the snooty one to get to know – and people accuse HER of it! Imagine!

Two nights before that an old family friend that Lynn and I share – who just happened to be a dignitary in Iran before the Shah fell, asked Lynn and I to take Sheryl Crow to lunch at the local casino. He wanted to get our opinion of her before he asked her to sing at a fundraising lunch he was having. She was also very funny, really joking around and everything with us.

I’m not the guy who’s a star-f*$#er. I really have very few parasocial relationships with media figures, and I’m only interested in the phenomenon of celebrity in a very distant objective way.

So what do these dreams mean?

Will Jaelyn’s tooth fall out?

Stay tuned in 2004

for answers to these questions…

…and more.

peace~