Dear Beloved Reader,
How are you? Did you have a healthy breakfast? We all hope that your 2011 has been delightful. Ours has been riveting; we recount it here, continuing with the interview style of last year's Christmas letter. [Note: Elliot is again the author of our family letter this year.]
Emily is now 16 years old and a professional, or at least licensed, driver. Her freedom is that of a fledgling robin, alighting into the infinite blue sky.
Interview Question: Emily, how is driving?
Emily: Are you quoting me? It’s not that bad… I almost killed someone the other day.
Interview Question: You are often out and about with your friends. Please describe these occasions.
Emily: We have parties where we play pool and watch movies and have campfires and…we play frisbee a lot.
Interview Question: What do you do at the barn?
Emily: I go riding, and I train and feed the horses, especially Snickers—she’s the horse I am leasing. Snickers is nice, but sometimes she’s a jerk too.
Interview Question: Please describe your future house.
Emily: Ok. Well. Basically it will have some sort of treehouse-ish structure… as if you walked into an Anthropologie catalogue—not like the ones where the modeling is in Spain, but a quaint old cabin-ish house, with a wooden look, and little old bricks, and there will be an arched doorway. [Emily’s lengthy answer has been abridged severely here; for more details, please contact her.]
Jeremy is a sophomore at Gordon College, where he continues to rip the duck on the lacrosse field (if you don’t get that, you clearly don’t play lacrosse), pump iron in the gym, and paint beautiful frescos to woo the hearts of women. He is a renaissance man unmatched in skill, muscle tone, artistry, charisma, and flow.
Interview Question: What is flow?
Jeremy: It’s the hair that comes out of the back of your helmet, resembling a flag or mane blowing in the wind. Flow significantly improves the lacrosse player’s ability. There are different kinds of flow, such as dread flow (dreadlocks) and overflow (too much flow).
Interview Question: Athlete-artists like you must need twice as many calories; is Gordon’s food service up to the task?
Jeremy: Gordon’s food is like getting hit in the back of the head with a brick. I ran out of points halfway through the semester and had to buy points from girls after that. Athletes at Gordon are sometimes observed scraping leftovers from plates and sifting through trash cans in the dining hall.
Interview Question: What else is up at Gordon?
Jeremy: I design logos for the team and some nights I teach lacrosse to kids. My leg is still injured. [Medical update: Jeremy has a torn labrum (i.e., the soft “elastic” tissue lining the hip socket into which the ball on the top of the thigh bone fits) that will require surgery.]
Elliot is in his third year of graduate school at Penn State. After a long period of uncertainty, he now has an advisor and an area of research: inflationary cosmology, which aims to describe the rapid expansion of the universe in the first moments of its existence, and the growth of structure such as galaxies. He is as confused about it as you are.
Interview Question: What is theoretical physics like?
Elliot: It is like being in one of those dreams where you can’t see correctly and everything is blurry... but not always. The physics itself is actually beautiful, but you have to learn to have eyes to see it.
Interview Question: Are you glad you ended up in cosmology?
Elliot: Very glad. I didn’t plan to, but now in hindsight I’d say it was always the right area for me—I am very fortunate.
Interview Question: In last year's letter Emily ranked you “least stylish” in the family. Can you comment on that?
Elliot: It’s true, generally speaking. But when there’s an occasion to dress up, I do. If I wanted to, I could be at the top of that list. I should at least be above Dad.
Having read mostly physics literature this year, Elliot recommends a long-treasured book, C. S. Lewis’ Perelandra, which has shaped his worldview perhaps more than any other book. Now and then he writes on his blog, Unless a Seed Dies.
Cheryl has been heavily involved with projects at church: welcoming new people, heading up efforts to help and encourage others, leading a women’s Bible study on forgiveness and the redeeming work of Christ, etc. She has an ever-fleeting dream of replacing the 1970s features of the church sanctuary, including its “chalet look” and “creative” color scheme.
Interview Question: Mom, describe your daily schedule.
Cheryl: Well, I have oatmeal for breakfast with flax on top, then a hard-boiled egg at noon, and a latte at 4:00, always with a home-baked good. I usually take only one nap a day... no, seriously, every day is different. Sometimes I meet people at Panera or church. Or I work on my Bible study. Every day is different. [this point is emphasized with eyebrow-raising vigor]
If you attempt to contact Cheryl, you may encounter difficulty. Although she has a cell phone, it remains a peculiar and foreign artifact, always turned off. She does not know her number. When this deficiency is noted, Cheryl reacts with a whimsical carelessness, a childlike delight in her willful disregard for modern communication technology.
Interview Question: Mom, last year Jeremy voted you “most confused” family member. Is this true?
Cheryl: I may be superficially confused, but I have clarity of mind on a deeper level.
Peter continues to spend long hours with his Dell laptop, sitting in his pink bee chair of our living room by the front windows. It is a pink bee chair because it is pink and decorated with a pattern of bees (in this respect it differs from the rooster table, on which there are no roosters at all). He is rarely unaccompanied by his camera bag, strapped at all times on his shoulder, in case objects of photography present themselves, as they often do.
Interview Question: Dad, how do you respond to mom’s snickering at your camera bag.
Peter: I flaunt it.
Interview Question: This year you’ve been preaching through the book of Hebrews at Goshen Baptist Church. What is it like to write a sermon?
Peter: Wonderful and overwhelming all at once. You’re never fully ready to write the sermon—there’s always more to learn about the Bible passage at hand. There’s also a vast amount of resources available today, especially online, and you can’t read them all.
Interview Question: You are renowned for your pithy proverbs. Can you share a nugget of wisdom?
Peter: How about this: the best way to have friends is to be a friend. And here’s another: everyone’s good looking when they smile.
Charlie, the family dog, saunters pleasantly about the house, but is feverishly aroused by anyone who happens to knock on the door, towards whom he demonstrates an unhealthy level of hostility. As a philosophically minded dog, Charles wrestles with the epistemological limitations of the canine mind. Awareness, let alone hospitality, remains a lofty goal. Charles could not be reached for an interview. But you can always reach him on Facebook (search for Charles Quentin Xavier).
To see more of our year, take a look at the pictures below (if you scroll to the bottom, "Older Posts" will bring up another page of pictures). And come visit us in Pennsylvania if you get the chance!
Merry Christmas!
Peter, Cheryl, Elliot, Jeremy, and Emily
916 North Hill Dr.
West Chester, PA 19380
610-430-1231
(peterknelson@gmail.com; cherylbj@gmail.com; elliot137@gmail.com; jerm912@gmail.com; emilynelson23@gmail.com)
“Though he, Christ Jesus, was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” (Philippians 2:6)
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