Unto us a son is given...

Joelle gave birth to our first child this morning. It was a pretty powerful experience, and I am incredibly happy.

Our son is named Lane Thomas. He is named after my step-grandfather, Rudolph Lane Atkins, one of the kindest, most genuine men I have ever known and the best friend within my family I have had. The choice of Lane’s middle name comes mostly from its status of being one of the few names that we liked on which both Joelle and I could agree. I think a boy named Thomas will be in quite good company, sharing the name as he will with some very good men I’ve known, including Tom Perkins and Tom Keating; with the learned farmer and political philosopher Thomas Jefferson, whose character of homo universalis I am drawn to emulate and whose perspectives on personal liberty and personal and social responsibility I espouse and promulgate; with the honest “skeptic” of the Gospels who did not wish to delude himself with unsubstantiated hopes but, when confronted with experience, readily accepted and joyed in the implications of his expanded reality.

I’m sure Joelle does not share all my reasons for liking the name, but that’s OK.