May showers and birthdays

We’re finally into May and since I last wrote, there’s been several birthdays. This past Thursday, I had a birthday, a rather significant one, but one that made me feel quite old! When I turned 50, I was months away from adopting Veeka, still employed at the newspaper and at the top of my game. I traveled to Jamaica and India that year and skiied at Breckenridge for a week. Those days are over and things are tougher now. But it is wonderful to be close to family, as this birthday was the first one in 34 years that I’ve had at home in Seattle. I think there were 13 of us assorted brothers, sisters, grandchildren and grandparents, so we simply dined in one of the rooms at the retirement place where my parents live and my mother bought me a cake from QFC because they’re so moist.Unfortunately, the rules at the center forbid lighting candles inside, so I had none to blow out, which is just as well. Of course it was rainy outside. For awhile, it had been sunny and quite lovely here (finally) after a record-setting rainy winter. One of my snow tires wore out, so I ended up gifting the rest to the local Firestone. In early May, there was a Northwest Paddling Festival at Lake Sammamishstate park, not far from where we live. So when Veeka arrived home from school, I told her to forget the homework, put on a bathing suite and off we went. We got to kayak twice and wander about these wonderful boating and camping booths. Would love to start camping but I have nowhere to store equipment. I did get to paddleboard on the lake and it was magnificent. On the first try, I felt into the lake, but on the second, I was happily zooming about on the board. Would love to do more of that.My WaPo piece on the Dalton Highway got lots of hits (I am told) and was picked up by the Denver Post and Alaska Dispatch (in Anchorage), among other places. About two weeks later, another piece of mine came out on the Religion News Service about the #westcoastrumble, which I’ve talked about previously. I talked with two experts on a movement that this revival is related to known as the New Apostolic Reformation. Some of its leaders claim they know nothing of it nor are a part of it, but it’s a loose network of evangelists, revivalists and “apostles” who visit each other’s churches and share teachings and personnel. For instance, the Seattle Revival Center, which was at the center of my piece, is in frequent contact with folks from Bethel Church in Redding, Calif., which is at the epicenter of this movement. Christianity Today’s April 24 cover story talks a lot about Bethel. There are some professors at Biola University outside of Los Angeles that are following this movement. This is what one of them said (and which got cut from the RNS piece because of length):Brad Christerson, a sociology professor at Biola University in La Mirada, Calif., and a fellow with the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture, is coming out with a book on the new Pentecostal networks that Goll, Nelson, Martin and Shamp belong to. He noted that very few of these revivalists are answerable to a denomination. “What’s unique about this group is their network structure, which is much more suited to growth in the global religious marketplace,” he said. “It is flexible and you can do experimental things you can’t do with a church that has a board and a doctrinal statement. They are independent agents but they are networked together and share each others’ resources and followings.” Many of the 30-something revivalists are networked with Bethel Church in Redding, Calif., pastored by Bill Johnson, a key leader in this movement. Bethel left the Assemblies of God in 2006. “Bill Johnson told me he travels 250 days a year,” Christerson added. “These guys are going all over the world. These guys have god-like status among their followers. I don’t have the sense there’s abuse going on but the amount of influence they have is frightening.” The folks at Seattle Revival Center (which parted ways with the Assemblies of God in 2015) were pretty happy with my piece and the meetings are continuing there in their 12th week. The last time Veeka and I went, there were 65 folks there; not huge numbers. As I’ve watched the services online, I have noticed how the church is not at all full, which one could interpret several ways. I have heard of some good and maybe miraculous things happening there, but spectacular healings are not one of those things. As the pastor says, “We’ll show up as long as God shows up,” so it’s a matter of figuring out how much God is truly showing up. It must be costing a mint to fly in these evangelists plus hire local worship bands, so if the crowds are thinning out, folks must be wondering where this is going.Other events: Veeka turned 11 in April, so some of the family kindly showed up at a brunch I held for her. Then we spent the afternoon seeing the Pacific Northwest Ballet perform “Coppelia,” which was a gift from Oma and Opa. The month since then has been lots of ups and downs. For a time, I thought I was going to get a well-paying contract to help someone write a book. I did some preliminary work on it, only to have this person get cold feet and walk off the project. But Veeka finished a year with Awana in May and has a T-shirt and lots of Bible verses to show for it.I’ve gotten two assignments from local magazines and three more travel assignments from the Washington Post, so my freelancing has picked up. Then a week ago, my mother had a birthday, so we showed up on a rainy Sunday evening with a lemon cake and dinner, as my dad was feeling poorly and my mother didn’t feel like cooking. Oh, and a coupon for a massage, as I've been trying to talk my mom into patronizing a very nice salon in downtown Redmond. This was a few hours after Veeka and I arrived home from a weekend Girl Scout camp on Vashon Island. The locale was nice but the weather stunk. Another bright light was the few days we spent over spring break with friends in Port Ludlow, across Puget Sound from Seattle. It was a nice break just to get away and they drove us to places like Neah Bay and Sol Duc Hot Springs in the Olympic National Park. We also drove down the Dungeness Spit in Port Angeles and spent a (rainy, of course) today puttering about Port Townsend.Jobhunting continues apace but for the most part, things are quite discouraging. I went to a local job fair last week and realized I could be an emergency substitute and that the hours might work for me along with my freelance projects. So, we will see. I'm also putting together a creative writing class for fifth graders that I'd like to shop around the district. It's based on a similar class for talented writers that I had in fifth grade and which really got me started on a writing career. So I've been volunteering at a nearby elementary school, working with nine fifth-graders each week to see what lessons work and which ones do not, as fifth graders have changed a lot since I was 10 years old. The teacher tells me they really enjoy it and he is glad to recommend me to other teachers. In a few weeks, I'll have an author day at the school where I'll be doing a reading and hawking my children's book, so am hoping for good things. I am grateful this particular elementary school is letting me try out my ideas with their students this spring.