The Fruit of My Loins

I am proud to be able to announce the birth of Markus Xavier Bird born at 0640 on the 24th of January 2009, weighing eight pounds and fourteen ounces (big bubba!). My wife Naomi was a brave little trooper and she did exceptionally well in what was an unexpectedly slow labour. During the birth I was mainly on back rubbing duties, but I did manage to read quite a bit of Johnathan Knight's Christian Origins book as well.

Naomi and I had a deal, I select the name for a boy and she selects the name for a girl. We both had the power of veto and Rafael Aurelius Amadeus Bird did not make the cut. So I picked the name "Markus" because the Gospel of Mark is my favourite Gospel and I like the spelling of "Markus" in Markus Bockmuehl's name (and I also like Bockmuehl's scholarship, esp. his book on Jesus, Philippians commentary, and the volume on Jewish Law in Gentile Churches). The "Xavier" part has nothing to do with St. Francis Xavier (the missionary) or Charles Xavier (leader of the X-men), but simply because I liked the sound of it and I once worked with an excellent military lawyer named George Xavier O'Kane who was a good man, but was falsely accused of being complicit with the mistreatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq. I always wondered what the "X" in his initials stood for and when he told me, I thought that it made for a good middle name.

May Markus be red-headed, irenically calvinistic, and above all, be a lover of God and a follower of Jesus Christ.