Lucy Naomi Goode

Lucy Naomi Goode was born at home into water at 1:42PM on Thursday, January 28th with midwives Lisa and Gillian attending. Christie was in labour for fifteen hours and was truly amazing.

Moments after Lucy was born. She was lifted out of the water into Mom's arms...

...and fell fast asleep.

A self-portrait.

On her first name Lucy…

The books of C.S. Lewis have been important in both of our lives. The most important of which have been the Chronicles of Narnia. I read them as a small child, and have re-discovered them with Christie at different times during my life. In fact, I’m reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to Mahri right now. (A dream come true.)

We named our Lucy after the one who first steps into Narnia through a wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Our prayer for Lucy is that her story may be similar to this following passage from the book Prince Caspian:

Lucy woke out of the deepest sleep you can imagine, with the feeling that the voice she liked best in the world had been calling her name. She thought at first it was her father’s voice, but that did not seem quite right…

“Lucy,” came the call again…

She sat up, trembling with excitement but not with fear. The moon was so bright that the whole forest landscape around her was almost as clear as day, though it looked wilder…

She got up, her heart beating wildly… There was a certain noise in the glade, a noise such as trees make in a high wind, though there was no wind tonight. Yet it was not exactly an ordinary tree-noise either. Lucy felt there was a tune in it, but she could not catch the tune… But there was, at least, a lilt; she felt her own feet wanting to dance as she got nearer. And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving – moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance…

She went fearlessly in among them, dancing herself as she leaped this way and that… She wanted to get beyond them to something else; it was from beyond them that the dear voice had called.

She soon got through them… A circle of grass, smooth as a lawn, met her eyes, with dark trees dancing all round it. And then – oh joy! For he was there: the huge Lion, shining white in the moonlight, with his huge black shadow underneath him.

But for the movement of his tail he might have been a stone lion, but Lucy never thought of that. She never stopped to think whether he as a friendly lion or not. She rushed to him. She felt her heart would burst if she lost a moment. And the next thing she knew was that she was kissing him and putting her arms as far round his neck as she could and burying her face in the beautiful rich silkiness of his mane.

“Aslan, Aslan. Dear Aslan,” sobbed Lucy. “At last.”

The great beast rolled over on his side so that Lucy fell, half sitting and half lying between his front paws. He bent forward and just touched her nose with his tongue. His warm breath came all round her. She gazed up into the large wise face.

“Welcome, child.” he said.

“Aslan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger.”

“That is because you are older, little one,” answered he.

“Not because you are?”

“I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”

And this is our prayer for our Lucy: that she will hear his voice and race fearlessly toward it, that she would rush to him and bury her face in his rich mane, and that he would seem bigger every year that she grows.

A day old.

Mahri has settled into being a happy...

...and affectionate big sister.

On her middle name Naomi…

The Book of Ruth (from the Old Testament) has been very important to Christie and she has passed on her passion for the story to me. In fact, the Book of Ruth is really a story about Naomi, a vulnerable widow in a foreign land whose two sons die. She is cared for by people after God’s heart and eventually goes from a very desperate place to becoming the great, great, great-grandmother of King David. It’s a remarkable story of God’s redemption through a community that acknowledges God’s work in the world. Our prayer is that Lucy would also know this redemption and be a part of such a community.

Christie and Lucy finally get some quiet time after a long day.

A proud Grandma.

This is what it looks like getting used to life on the outside.

Thanks again for your prayers and well-wishes (and meals!). I’ve posted more photos on our flickr page and will be posting lots more in the coming days.

A Very Cute Phone Conversation

Mahri had her first unaided and unprompted phone conversation with her best friend Judah a couple of weeks ago. Not wanting to miss the magic this time, Judah’s dad and I recorded our respective sides of the conversation and I edited it together.

“Saved Through Childbirth” – Christie Goode

(Christie wrote this for the Regent College student newsletter a couple of months ago. As we near the due date of our second child, I thought it would be great to reprint it here. It is definitely worth reading.)

“Saved Through Childbirth” by Christie Goode

I am almost seven months pregnant with my second child.  That means I have an estimated 68 days until labor.  68 days to pain.  I won’t bore you with the details, but as you can imagine, giving birth isn’t a walk in the park.  Twenty-one hours with no drugs to pass an 8 lb baby through a small orifice really hurts.

But I’m looking forward to it.  Giving birth to my daughter was one of the most profoundly spiritual experiences of my life.  1 Timothy 2:15 makes the, well, interesting statement that  “women will be saved through childbearing.”  I don’t know about that one. [The Message has a good take on this verse.] I was saved long before bearing a child.  But what I do know is that, for me, through childbirth I participated in the God-act of creating life through sacrifice.

In Acts 2:22, Peter says that it was “impossible for death to keep its hold on [Jesus]”. I’ve been thinking about that a lot this year.  After what Jesus did in giving his life for us, there was no way that he could not be resurrected.  His sacrifice was life-giving in a quality and quantity so vast that life just exploded, and keeps on exploding, pouring life out on all of us, on all of creation.  Death could not (cannot!) hold it in.

That is the truth of the universe that I participate in when I give birth.  The pain that I voluntarily endure is immense.  My mantra through each contraction actually was, “Just breathe 30 times, then decide if you’re going to die.”  Really.  And I would breathe 30 times, and the pain would subside, and I would tell myself I would be okay.  Then a few moments later it would swell again and it would hurt so bad I would make the same bargain with myself.

But I was doing it to bring life.  I was committing all of myself, my full being, to welcome our daughter into the world.  I’ve never had to be so fully committed to anything, and the depth of that commitment is miraculous.  It allowed me to participate in Christ’s universal way of life through sacrifice.

I confess that I am pathetically ignorant of poetry, but I’ve been reading George Herbert lately, and came across the amazing (amazing!) poem “The Agony”.  Its final line has become embedded in me:

Love is that liquor sweet and most divine
Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.

The poem suggests that the depths of love are inseparable from sacrifice.  Love’s very nature is both blood and wine; at one and the same time it is both sacrifice for the one, and gift for the other.

68 days until I welcome our second child.  68 days until I learn again what love is.

Life as Story

“In short, I had always believe that the world involved magic: now I thought that perhaps it involved a magician. And this pointed to a profound emotion always present and sub-conscious; that this world of ours has some purpose; and that if there is a purpose, there is a person. I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a storyteller.” ~ G.K. Chesterton

To Live is to Dance (Letters to Mahri – January 6, 2010 )

Dearest Mahri,

For the most part I’ve enjoyed getting older. But every time I feel like I’ve got things figured out, my world comes crashing down around me and I realize how broken I am and how little I know and live. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that about 99.9% of me is pretty screwed up: it’s broken and sinful and totally self-absorbed. It’s as if my very way of being is broken and pointing in the wrong direction.

You, however, are very young. Yes, you don’t always do what you’re told. You are very self-focused: you want to get what you want. But you are still much (much) less broken than me. You are honest. Forthright. There is little guile in you. You express yourself freely: anger, happiness, sadness, excitement, joy, disappointment. You wear your heart on your sleeve and are very free with who you are.

I’m not like that. I am mostly a slave to my own brokenness. I am mostly not free. I react, not knowing why. I get angry, and it’s rarely for reasons I’m fully aware of. My brokenness is so deep it goes unnamed.

The tragic news, Mahri, is that I cannot but pass that brokenness on to you. That’s the unfortunate reality of life together. There are things that I’m now doing to you that will affect you for the rest of your life for the worse. I think I know what a few of these are, but I suspect that most of these things are still to be revealed to me.

But I’ve come to believe that part of the vocation of parenthood is allowing the purity, freedom and openness of our children to expose our own brokenness. Parenthood is an opportunity for healing.

But will we let the truth and freedom in? Will we seek healing?

A few days ago you and I had one of our very good days. We both seemed to wake up in a good mood and we allowed each other in. You were free and open with your affection and your desire for my affection, and I seemed empowered to give and receive as well. We went to one of our favourite hangouts for a smoothie and we sat opposite each other. As we slurped away you were overcome with joy. Your happiness at the drink in front of you and my undivided attention was palpable, and you couldn’t help but get up, walk to the centre of the restaurant and dance to the music. You spun around and around and around. People walked by and stared. You were in the way of not a few people. And an inner voice told me to get you to stop. But I didn’t listen to it. I watched with amazement and thought to myself: this is life. This is what living is all about: a small child dancing uncontrollably in the middle of the hustle and bustle.

I came over and stood next to you, watching with wonder. Your unguarded joy was an incredible gift to me. It was life from above. It also revealed how old I’ve become and how cemented I am in my own slavery.

Later, as I reflected on the moment, I realized that I wasn’t quite right — it wasn’t fully living.

It would have been fully living if I had come over and danced with you.

And one of these days I will.

Love,

Dad

THE ANNUNCIATION – from W.H. Auden’s “For the Time Being”

GABRIEL
Mary, in a dream of love
Playing as all children play,
For unsuspecting children may
Express in comic make—believe
The wish that later they will know
Is tragic and impossible;
Hear, child, what I am sent to tell:
Love wills your dream to happen, so
Love’s will on earth may be, through you,
No longer a pretend but true.

MARY
What dancing joy would whirl
My ignorance away?
Light blazes out of the stone,
The taciturn water
Bursts into music, and warm wings throb within
the motionless rose:
What sudden rush of Power
Commands me to command?

GABRIEL
When Eve, in love with her own will,
Denied the will of Love and fell,
She turned the flesh Love knew so well
To knowledge of her love until
Both love and knowledge were of sin:
What her negation wounded, may
Your affirmation heal to-day;
Love’s will requires your own, that in
The flesh whose love you do not know,
Love’s knowledge into flesh may grow.
Wake.

MARY
My flesh in terror and fire
Rejoices that the Word
Who utters the world out of nothing,
As a pledge of His word to love her
Against her will, and to turn
Her desperate longing to love,
Should ask to wear me,
From now to their wedding day,
For an engagement ring.

GABRIEL
Since Adam, being free to choose,
Chose to imagine he was free
To choose his own necessity,
Lost in his freedom, Man pursues
The shadow of his images:
Today the Unknown seeks the known;
What I am willed to ask, your own
Will has to answer; child, it lies
Within your power of choosing to
Conceive the Child who chooses you.

POP SWITCH screens in Florida

Pop Switch screened at the FLIFF2009 Short Film Festival in Ft. Lauderdale on Dec. 20th.

POP SWITCH screens in LA

Pop Switch screened at the La Femme Film Festival in Los Angeles on Friday, October 16th prior the screening of the feature film Girl Clock!

Patrick O’Brian: The Surgeon’s Mate (1980) – Quotes

The Surgeon’s Mate is the seventh book in the Aubrey-Maturin series.

Stephen reflects on the reality of coincidence in the world:

This was not a welcome subject, and the light, the fine glow died out of Diana’s face, which had been alive with the happiness of freedom recovered, the excitement of Paris regained and of new clothes. She said, ‘That was a very curious coincidence, the Hotel d’Arpajon, was it not?’

‘Prodigious,’ said Stephen. ‘And yet in a way one might say that the whole of life is a tissue of prodigious coincidences: as for example that at the very moment we attempt to cross the road this particular coach and six should come by; yet though extremely unlikely, it is a fact. And the glabrous face within belongs to Monsieur de Talleyrand-Perigord.’ Stephen took off his hat: the glabrous face returned his bow. ‘ It is a most improbably coincidence that as we enter La Mothe’s courtyard, and it is just here, on the right – take care of the excrement, Viliers – some merchant should walk into his counting-house in Stockhold, or that Jack Aubrey should mount his horse to pursue the fox. Though now I come to think of it, Jack would scarcely pursue the innocent fox at this time of the year: yet the principle remains. You may object that the overwhelming majority of these coincidences are undetected, which is eminently true; but they are there for all that, and as I raise this knocker, some man in China breathes his last.’

(p. 128, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2003)

Stephen, once again demonstrates his (lack of) navigational knowledge:

‘Stephen, a damned thing has happened: the timepiece is broke. Will you lend me your watch?’
‘You are welcome to it, sure,’ said Stephen, producing his severely beautiful Breguet. ‘But what is wrong with the other chronometers?’

‘There ain’t any other chronometers.’

‘Come, brother, I remember to have seen a whole array in our various ships, and distracted young gentlemen trying to find the mean of them all while you bullied them, holding your hack-watch in one hand and peering at the celestial bodies with the other.’

‘Yes, but that was because I have always had my own, ever since I could afford it; and if a captain buys one, the Admiralty lets him have two more. Otherwise he carries just a single timekeeper, and then only if he is going foreign in most cases.’

‘The machine is used for finding out the latitude, I believe.’

‘To tell you the truth Stephen, most people rely on the sextant for their latitude: the timekeeper is more for the other thing – east and west, you know.’

‘East and west of what, for all love?’

‘Why of Greenwich, naturally.’

‘I am no great navigator –‘ said Stepehn.

‘You are far too modest,’ said Jack.

‘—though I have wondered how you mariners find your way about the dank wastes of ocean. But from what you tell me I see that for your countrymen Greenwich rather than Jerusalem is the navel of the universe – lo, Greenwich where many a shrew is in, ha, ha – and secondly that whereas a poor man can fix his position only with regard to north and south, to up and down, his wealthy brother is secure to right and left as well. There is no doubt a logic in this, although it escapes me, just as the use of the timepiece escapes me, with its peevish insistence upon accuracy in the measurement of what is after all a most debatable concept, quite unknown, we are told in Heaven. Tell me, is it really capable of telling you where you are, or is this just another of you naval – I must say superstitions – like saluting the purely hypothetical crucifix on the quarterdeck?’

‘If you have exact Greenwich time aboard – if you carry it with you – you can fix your longitude exactly by accurate observations of local noon, to say nothing of occultations and the finer points. I have a pair of Arnolds at home – how I wish I had brought ‘em – that only gained twenty seconds from Plymouth to Bermuda. In these waters that would tell you were where you were, east or west, to witin three mles or so. Oh, the lunarians may say what they please, but a well tempered chronometer is the sweetest thing! Suppose you were riding along, with your watch set to Greenwich time in your pocket, and suppose you happened to take a noon observation and found that the sun southed at five minutes after twelve, you would know that you were almost exactly on the meridian of Winchester, without having to search for a finger-post. And the same applies to the sea, where finger-posts are tolerable uncommon.’

‘Heavens, Jack, what things you tell me. And I dare say this would answer for let us say Dublin and Galway?’

‘I should not care to affirm anything about Ireland, where people have the strangest notion of time; but at sea, I do assure you, it answers very well. That is why I should like your watch.’

(p. 259, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2003)

Patrick O’Brian: The Fortune of War (1979) – Quotes

The Fortune of War is the sixth book in the Aubrey-Maturin series:

Director Peter Weir used this joke in the film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World:

Two weevils crept from the crumbs. ‘You see those weevils, Stephen?’ said Jack solemnly.

‘I do.’

‘Which would you choose?’

‘There is not a scrap of difference. Arcades ambo. They are the same species of curculio, and there is nothing to choose between them.’

‘But suppose you had to choose?’

‘Then I should choose the right-hand weevil; it has a perceptible advantage in both length and breadth.’

‘There I have you,’ cried Jack. ‘You are bit – you are completely dished. Don’t you know that in the Navy you must always choose the lesser of two weevils? Oh ha, ha, ha, ha!’

(p. 42, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2003)

Stephen discusses the illogical nature of human beings:

[Mr. Evans:]‘When you look about the world, and view monarchs in it – I do not refer to your own, of course – can you really maintain that the hereditary king cuts a very shining figure?’

[Stephen:] ‘I cannot. Nor is that the point: the person, unless he be extraordinarily good or extraordinarily bad, is of no importance. It is the living, moving, procreating, sometimes speaking symbol that counts.’

‘But surely mere birth without any necessary merit is illogical?’

‘Certainly, and that is its great merit. Man is a deeply illogical being, and must be ruled illogically. Whatever that frigid prig Bentham may say, there are innumerable motives that have nothing to do with utility. In good utilitarian logic a man does not sell all his goods to go crusading, nor does he build cathedrals; still less does he write verse. There are countless pieties without a name that find their focus in a crown. It is as well, I grant you, that the family should have worn it beyond the memory of man; for your recent creations do not answer – they are nothing in comparison of your priest-king, whose merit is irrelevant, whose place cannot be disputed, nor made the subject of a recurring vote.’

(p. 124, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2003)