Between Joseph (who is flipping through this, grabbed from Daddy’s office, where we’d just dropped of Chris, to be then taken on to the Indianapolis airport) and Michael who evidently has a rather reflexively negative view of humanity.

Michael: He’s bad!

Joseph (surprised and amused): No, they’re not! They’re saints! They’re good!

MIchael: He’s bad!

Joseph: No, he’s the goodest king in the whole wide world!

(It’s apparently a picture of the Baby Jesus)

Michael: He’s a bad baby!

Jospeh: He’s the king of the whole world – he’s a good baby!

Collision of theological worldviews, writ small.

It was a good visit with Chris, in which we were able to show him the best that the Fort has to offer from the Fort Wayne Fusion to Germanfest to a Sunday afternoon at Foster Park, across the street from our house,  which blasts anyone’s stereotypes of the Midwest as the land of white bread homogeneity, being as it is, Gathering Central for the Burmese and Latinos every weekend, as well as an ample sampling of the rest of the South side – we pushed Michael in the swing between Mexican and Iraqi families pushing their own.

Big brothers come in handy, to be sure. Their visits are always bittersweet because, you know, they are just visits, and if one is here you want the other one (David – who celebrated his 22nd birthday on Sunday) here as well. The end of this one was more cheerful though, since we will be seeing Chris again in just a couple of weeks when we are in Atlanta for CBA – always such a fascinating experience – on our way back from a week or so in Florida.