Coming Up For Air

I didn't intend to come up for air with the sitcom silliness of Man With A Plan on my mind. Such an outcome tempts me to take another breath and to dive back into David Copperfield, that I've also been feeding on, to present something which will feed my readers, and my ego, with more highbrow material. What's next? Will the sidekick on the show played by Kevin Nealon as so obtuse as to make Matt LeBlanc's character seem relatively smart, get the microphone and the spotlight ? Nevertheless, here we are. In the most recent episode I saw, Leblanc's title character Adam Burns finds out that the bargain pastor he hired many years ago contrary to his fiancée's instructions was a fraud with a gambling addiction. For the length of the show, we get to skewer his cheapskate ways. Though currently prosperous, he insists on getting multiple uses out of portions of coffee grounds designed for daily disposal. He indicts himself as a cheapskate when he opens up a drawer full o...

If C.S. Lewis has any insight into it, the demons delighted in my state of mind on Sunday. His fictional master tempter in Screwtape Letters calls on his inexperienced nephew to foster in humans, "an ingrained habit of belittling anything that concerns the great mass of their fellow men." Unfortunately, this trail of sulfur follows me into church, at which point I attempt to cover it with the incense of religious excuses. For the fellow men, women, and children in my congregation, what concerns the great mass of them this time of year is Operation Christmas Child. It's part of the unofficial liturgy this time of year. Operation Christmas Child extends holiday giddiness for those who do giddy by a full two months. The emphasis on the church-wide preparation of shoeboxes full of gifts for children in the Third World is hard for any but the expert curmudgeon to disparage, but I was managing. I told myself during the extended announcements portion of our service that I crav...

Last night, like the similarly introverted body man in my favorite show The West Wing , I got a purposeful invitation to "speak as men do". Like Charlie, I was invited to hang out with a couple of guys. Though the territory was unfamiliar and my question to my new acquaintance was bookish, his reply sparked quick connection. I asked Richard, whom I had known all of 90 minutes, how his outlook was different as he and his wife expected their second child. He said he wanted to write down more of the experience this time. THAT I can certainly relate to. In fact, the resolve of another practitioner of writing as reflection was timely. Five years ago today, my wife and I got a call that would change our lives. We became foster parents. I'm with Richard in that I've spilled more ink over lesser things, so the opportunity to come up for air and commemorate the experience with lessons from Little One, not named here in keeping with social services policy, seems appropriate. ...

C.S. Lewis was self-conscious enough about undertaking the coming-of-age memoir that became Surprised by Joy that he expressed his diffident ambivalence in print at the book's beginning. In short order, though, he recovered his healthy sense of the worth of his own story. At an incremental intellectual milestone of his childhood early in the book, he tells the reader, if you didn't find this interesting, you probably won't find the rest of the book interesting. Neither his introspection nor his candor have caused many people to close the book. It has become a classic. In that tradition, my landmark event upon Coming Up for Air for the week doesn't make its own noise. With Lewis, I reflect back with honesty that it was important to me. With the encouragement of one of my steady readers, I keep in mind that this alone might be reason enough to find print. Alfred Hitchcock said drama is life with the dull bits cut out. Bill Klein of the reality show The Little Couple ...