Thanks to Paula, I was able to give my kids brand new books for gifts before the holiday break. My kids were so excited. They each got at least two new books and taken into consideration were their reading levels. They were so proud of their gifts and couldn’t stop showing them off at the end of the day!

After celebrating Christmas with Laura’s mom and dad in St. Louis, we headed to my parents’ house in Tahoka, Texas. You may be thinking to yourself, “What in the world is there to do in Tahoka?” Well, Opal figured it out. Snuggling with Gram is just about perfect.

Sophia and I had other plans.

And of course, we HAD to visit SantaLand. It’s been around for 53 years. I remember visiting SantaLand when I was a kid. What I don’t remember was the randomness of the decor. For those of you keeping score at home, yes, that’s a nativity scene next to Clifford the Dog and his friends which is accentuated by an American flag.

Finally, what’s a visit to SantaLand without a visit with Santa and Mrs. Claus? (Does she have a first name?) Yeah, we caved. Insert joke here about how Laura and I have given in to the corporatization of the holiday season. But dang, this picture is cute!

I wished I knew the camera was on. Oh well, here’s a quick update. Okay, not so quick but you won’t be disappointed spending 11 minutes watching this gem…or maybe you will.

As soon as we moved from Brooklyn to St. Louis I hit the ground running. Meaning, Teach For America quickly consumed my life. Therefore, Laura and I didn’t have a lot of time to think about what we would do to find a church home. And personally, I didn’t have a lot of time to think about my shift from being a pastor to a layperson.

What we did know is that we wanted to explore a new denomination. Specifically, we wanted to see what was up with the couple of St. Louis Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) that we had heard about.

While teaching in Atlanta for the summer, I made it a point to fly home a couple of weekends to be with the family. (If you didn’t catch that, we moved to St. Louis and a week later I went to Atlanta for teacher training.) The first weekend I flew down we spent Sunday morning at a local church. No one spoke to us before or after the service. A few weeks later, I flew home again from Atlanta. That Sunday we visited Union Avenue Christian Church. We were immediately greeted by an older couple that couldn’t have been sweeter. The pastors of the church also made it a point to greet us before and after the service. Within a few minutes, we were telling them our story. The friendliness was overwhelming…in a good way.

After I finished my teaching stint in Atlanta I came home and days later, Laura gave birth to Opal June. Ten days later we took her to Union Avenue. We hadn’t officially committed to UA but the pastor scooped Opal up and spoke a blessing over her during the service. We were sold. A couple of Sundays later we became members of the church.

Laura and I are in the rotation to teach a children’s class, Laura sings in the choir and we both have served as liturgists. The church family didn’t blink an eye at my unusual story: a former pastor who is now teaching but still thinking of obtaining standing within their (now my) denomination. The church fully embraced us. And we, in turn, have embraced them.

If you find yourself in St. Louis come and visit this church that is dedicated to the neighborhood it finds itself in, to the arts and to any and every one who walks through its doors. And if you do make it one Sunday, look for Laura sitting with the choir in the chancel and for me sitting with three squirmy kids in the pew. I hope to see you there.

I just popped three Ibuprofen. I’m now sitting in my chair behind my desk with my mouth propped open just a bit. I’m guessing that if I had a mirror handy and if I looked into it I would see someone who looked as if they had just been flattened by an eighteen-wheeler full of heavy, heavy cargo…three times over. (Yeah, three times. Like, the driver of the eighteen-wheeler flattened me once, looked in his rearview mirror and wasn’t satisfied. And so he threw the rig in reverse and did it again. And then again. Dang that driver!)

Today was just one of those days. A “three-Ibuprofen, mouth propped open and can’t shut” kind of day. And now as I sit here behind the desk I ask the questions that must be asked if I want tomorrow to be better: ”What made today hard? And what can be different tomorrow?”

After some contemplation, there is one answer to the first question. The math we are doing is hard: division with remainders. About half the class is struggling with this objective and I got frustrated today with these struggling students. It wasn’t my best moment today. And so now I have to ask and answer the next question, What can be different tomorrow?

I wear ties every day. A teaching friend of mine back in New York wore a tie every day and it impressed me. The culture of Teach For America is such that dressing nicely is strongly encouraged. And so I wear a tie. Every day. And I don’t even mind.

At the beginning of October I found this ridiculously cheesy Halloween tie that when you pressed a button at the bottom of the tie, it played spooky noises. I found it at the dollar store. The kids loved it. LOVED IT! I pounced all over their enthusiasm for the tie and told them that I would pick a student of the month on October 30 and award them with the tie. The student who won the tie on Oct 30 was ecstatic and wore the tie proudly that day. And in typical SuperStar fashion, the class cheered her on.

I’m in need of a cheesy Christmas tie that plays a Christmas tune but can’t find one. Any suggestions as to where I should look? The dollar store did not produce this time around. Have you seen this type of tie at a chain retail store?

And for the record, I so wish there was a generic holiday tie that played a mixture of Hanukkah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa music but I’m betting that I’m outta luck on that front.

Before Laura and I headed up to New Jersey for grad school, we worked for a year in Sugar Land, Texas. The family that took us under their wings (we were young, newly married and poor as dirt) shared us with their other friends. It just so happens that one of those friends once lived the life of a teacher. Therefore, she was once a first year teacher like I am now.

Thankfully, she’s kept up with us via the blog and when she read that I was making a professional transition into teaching, she perked up a bit. She immediately reached out to me and has been relentless in her pursuit of outfitting me with what I need.

I had already branded my class the SuperStars but my friend took it to a whole new level. She had her son create a graphic to go along with the brand (a star dressed as a superhero – LOVE IT). And then she went to work. Sticky notes, notepads, note cards and a large poster with a picture of our class made its way to my home. She talked with one of her teaching friends and the next thing I knew, I had boxes and boxes of books on the front porch. She’s talked to others about my class and solicited from them gift cards to Office Depot or OfficeMax. She nominated me to win a $100 gift card from OfficeMax and I won due to her work!

I sent her a thank you note but that hardly seemed adequate. I feel like I should do hard manual labor for her over my summer break. (But, wait, Houston in the summer is as close to Hell as anything you’ll ever experience. Seriously, my Houston friends, how do you do it?) So maybe hard manual labor this coming summer is out of the question. Hopefully a blog post will do?

Lone Star Lifer, thank you so much for your generosity and graciousness. My class is so much better because of your efforts.

I don’t really have anything to say except, I. Can. Not. Resist. This. Girl.

There’s this contemporary Christian song titled He Reigns. I’m not usually a fan of contemporary Christian music because of the lack of depth but I like He Reigns. I like it because the refrain seems like something people would have sung in the presence of Jesus. For example, as he enters into Jerusalem for the last time I can envision the people singing over and over again:

Glory, glory, hallelujah, He reigns. He reigns.

But the song never mentions Jesus so it could be a prayer to God for all we know. And that’s another reason I like it: it has some of the same elements of some of the Psalms.

Because we now belong to a church that doesn’t do contemporary music, the song has been kinda lost on us Hayses. However the other day and seemingly out of the no where Ira started singing at the top of his lungs the song He Reigns….sort of. This is what we all heard throughout the house:

HOLY MOLY, HALLELUJAH, SHE REIGNS.

He kept singing it over and over again. At the top of his lungs. When I went to find him, he was sitting in front of his bookshelf thumbing through books. Obviously, greater things were on his mind. And obviously Ira has already learned that it’s quite plausible – maybe even preferable – for us to think of God in ways we normally don’t.

A friend of ours from Brooklyn called Laura the other day to catch up. She admitted, “I don’t read Joe’s blog any longer because he doesn’t talk about the kids.”

And let’s be honest, as soon as Ira emerged from living on the edge of life and death a lot of people quit stopping by my blog. (The numbers don’t lie.)

And now that I have what seems to be a mundane job while living in mundane suburbia I’ve lost some of my blogging audience. A teacher in St. Louis is just not as sexy as a minister in New York City. (Speaking of not sexy I’ve got a growing spare tire on my mid-section to accompany this new life I now live. Bring it.)

And, oh yeah, there’s the issue of me not blogging that much these days. I stay swamped at work and when I come home, I want nothing to do with thinking. At all. Yep, my kids are the lucky recipients of my after-work-mush-brains.

All of that makes me wonder, Is this blog dying a slow death? Should I put it out of its misery?

I’ve been blogging since August of 2003. There have been slow times before so when I ask the above questions I think, “Hey, it’s seasonal. Blogging is seasonal. Sometimes there is more to say. Sometimes, not so much.” And so for now, I’ll let precedent be my guide. I won’t give it up just yet but trust me – the few of you who are still out there – I’m aware that things are pretty slow around here. I’ll see what I can do to rectify the problem.

So what can you expect to see and/or read around these here parts?

• Ira is convinced God is a woman. I’ll tell you that story soon.
• Speaking of females, a woman from Texas has outfitted my class in all kinds of ways. I want to tell you about her and the work she’s done on behalf of my students and me. Amazing.
• I want to tell you about our new church home. It’s pretty crazy just sitting in the pew on Sundays; however, this church family makes it easy for me. I’ll tell you why at some point.
• I need to blog about something controversial. Hmm. Maybe I should curse. That always ups my stats.
• As the college and pro football seasons start winding down, I’ll make – once again – the argument that college football (in spite of it’s messed up post-season) is far superior to pro football.
• And should I blog about how elated I am that the Yanks are the world champions? You should be, too. Apparently, the stock market jumps 10% the year after the Yanks win. See? You should be excited about number twenty-seven! Bring on the holiday shopping season!