Plumb Nuts

For several months now the water pressure in our kitchen has been way less than desirable. When Tara turns on the faucet, it gives a little more than a trickle and a little less than a stream. She has been pretty patient with this situation, but I realized it was untenable, so I came up with a plan.

You need to know that the faucet and lines immediately attached to it are basically brand new, installed sometime either late last year or early this year. So I was not suspicious of them but rather of the old galvanized pipe that runs 16'9" from under the kitchen back toward the water heater. Since the water pressure from things connected earlier than this part had been all right, I figured the problem must be there. Solution? Remove old galvanized, install new galvanized, turn water back on. Of course.

So Wednesday night Scam and I ripped out the old pipe and hauled it outside. Evan participated in this part of the adventure also. Using Scam's handy gadget flashlight, we shone a beam through the pipe and concluded that, while dirty, there was nothing obstructing the galvanized. I had expected corrosive limestone or whatever and only a tiny pin-hole through which to squeeze the water. This was massively inaccurate.

We rinsed out the pipe using the pump near our well and then continued to check inside lines by blowing air through them. Nothing wrong was discovered anywhere, so we hooked the supply lines up again and ran the water. Beautiful water pressure spewed from the kitchen faucet until I happened to jiggle to vegetable sprayer. Immediately the pressure returned to its former anemic five psi. Scam and I looked at each other in amazement. Why had this happened???

We disassembled most of the faucet assembly, discovered nothing of consequence, rebuilt it, and tested again. We don't know anything definitive, but the water pressure is much improved and has been all day. Total investment: 65 cents, about 3 hours, and a good friend. I am blessed.

I was watching a movie earlier this evening and contemplating the milestones of a person's life. After the movie was over, I sat down at my keyboard and played a few old hymns that have components that speak of death or eternity: Amazing Grace; Nearer, My God, To Thee; that sort of thing. And then it struck me with some force: contemporary worship, or at least that which I've been exposed to, doesn't really like to deal with the milestones or passages in life. Yes, there are contemporary songs for weddings, but what about for baby dedications? Baptisms? Commissionings? Funerals?

I'll bet they exist, but I'll also bet they're rare because the whole CCM industry lacks the ability to see itself as part of a several thousand year long tradition. Instead, it sees itself (just guessing) as probably breaking with tradition and breathing a fresh wind or something over the Church. This is too bad because when we lose a sense of our heritage, we lose courage and certainty.

I have to confess that I've done this somewhat in my own life. I left the church of my heritage in disgust around the age of 18. All the systems, connections, and ways that I knew became part of my past in just a few weeks' time. I embraced the general category "evangelicalism" and began a new part of the journey. The problem, of course, is that I just sort of appeared out of nowhere, similar to the churches that I was attending. The contemporary church has no real heritage, except in terms of what it reacted against. Being somewhat anti-historical and anti-intellectual, it also doesn't have a good sense of its own history, however brief.

I mentioned my religious heritage, which did a pretty good job of teaching Bible and its own particular view of doctrine, but was absolutely scandalously hollow when it came to church history and development. I bet I would have loved to know the story of God's people from a young age, but it wasn't given. I think we children believed that Jesus ascended, the apostles wrote the NT, almost nothing happened for 1500 years, WHAM! the Catholic Church was massively corrupt (wait a minute--where'd the Catholic Church come from?? I guess we didn't ask) and God raised up Martin Luther who battled back the forces of evil and re-established the pure Lutheran light of God's Word. After Dr. Luther died, nothing else important happened, either. Really. I'm not kidding. I was the kind of kid who paid excellent attention in class, being interested as I am in ideas, history, and spirituality. I'm sure I would have caught it if they'd said something.

So I applaud some friends of ours whose 5th grade daughter is starting church history as part of their home school curriculum this year. What a gift she's receiving that she may or may not appreciate at her age..!

I'm going to cut off this long and laborious blog because it's time to work on my Christian Worldview Seminar. I'm speaking in Dodge Center at the end of September for a church mini-retreat. Lord willing, I'll give 'em something good.