2015

Wow, what a year 2015 has been!  The last few, I have enjoyed reviewing Saturday Mornings entries throughout the year -- I am grateful for the reminder of some of the distances traveled, physically and in the heart. Here are some of my 2015 favorites:

December: Why I Like Taking Pictures I Wanted Peace Stop Chasing	June: The Speech Of The Sky One Father Week Of The Bride, Pt. 6
November: Gratitude: Thru the Imperfect Desperate Bravery	May: Not What's Really Important Unrequited Love You Think You Know
October: Space Readies Us Disappointment Liberates	April: UN- Does Sexual Orientation Equal Identity? Good Friday
September: Surrounded By Love Caine's Arcade No Real Substitute	March: Hatred And The Holocaust How We Lose Our Way Interior Stability
August: Perils Alone  Delight? Other Way Around	February: Chicago:  The Ribbon Begins To Die Neglecting Time
July: What Is Love? Largely Through What Happens Natural Response	January: Who We Really Are Silence:  Fear Of What It Has To Say Instead

Duty To Act

​Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act.

-- Albert Einstein

I Used To Think: Extend Goodness

On our recent Christmas Cruise, I read parts of a couple of books.  One was, Love Does, by Bob Goff.  What a wonderful read.  He would start most chapters with the phrase, "I used to think..." and then go on to talk about something that he has learned.

I was running early this morning and was, ironically, feeling a little sorry for myself.  How could I feel this way, coming off of our great week last week?  I started talking to God about it and I believe he pointed me to my own, "I used to think...".

I used to think that I needed to receive goodness and keep receiving goodness, now I recognize that what I really need is to extend goodness.

We have had chances to do that a few times in the last few months and I can see that in so doing I have received all the goodness I need...by extending it to others.

Most Recognizable

Sometimes, gifts from God are most easily recognizable through the hands of people.  Perhaps this is why he asks us to give them.

Election

Election of one is not the rejection of the rest, but ultimately for their benefit. It is as if a group of trapped cave explorers choose one of their number to squeeze through a narrow flooded passage to get out to the surface and call for help. The point of the choice is not so that she alone gets saved, but that she is able to bring help and equipment to ensure the rest get rescued. “Election” in such a case is an instrumental choice of one for the sake of many.

In the same way, God’s election of Israel is instrumental in God’s mission for all nations. Election needs to be seen as a doctrine of mission, not a calculus for the arithmetic of salvation. If we are to speak of being chosen, of being among God’s elect, it is to say that, like Abraham, we are chosen for the sake of God’s plan that the nations of the world come to enjoy the blessing of Abraham (which is exactly how Paul describes the effect of God’s redemption of Israel through Christ in Gal. 3: 14).

-- Christopher J. H. Wright, "The Mission of God's People"

...thanks, Jim, for passing this one along.

Christmas Cruise

Speaking of gifts...my parents are turning 75 in 2016 and decided to celebrate by taking all of us on a cruise!  We are so grateful, not only for the opportunity to receive so lavishly from them, but for their lives of love towards us over all these years.  We are blessed beyond our knowledge and grateful for the goodness God has given us through them.  Some pics here....

Is There Any Room?

A Christmas prayer:

Stir up thy power, O God and Father,
and with great might come among us;
and because we are solely hindered by our sins,
let thy bountiful grace and mercy
speedily help and deliver us;
teach us your joy
and may the Spirit find room
to produce your joy in our hearts.
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
with Thee and the Holy Spirit, one God
be honor and glory forever.
Amen.

Is there room in my heart this Christmas...for the Spirit to work?

A Hallelujah Christmas

Gifts vs Presents

This Christmas, I want to give more gifts than presents.

Take a listen to these reflections on gifts.

You Are Not Alone; A Sermon on Mary, Elizabeth, and Being Given One to Another

A delightfully human sermon for us all, this time of year

You Are Not Alone; A Sermon on Mary, Elizabeth, and Being Given One to Another

Thanks, Vicky, for sending to me!

As Human

​Great leaders don't see themselves as great; they see themselves as human.

-- Simon Sinek

Angels We Have Heard On High

This Proves How Wrong Leaders Can Be

Don’t be fooled.

Throughout history, every generation believes it understands how our world works. And yet we look back and realize that many conventional beliefs were wrong. Today I’d like to share a story that makes my skin crawl because it illustrates just how wrong our leaders can be, even when their own personal safety is at issue.  

George Washington was President of the United States from 1789 to 1797. On December 12, 1799, he was back to private life and spent about four hours on horseback supervising farming activities. The weather went from rain to hail to snow, and Washington was wet when he returned home. By the next morning, he had a sore throat. 24 hours later, the throat infection was so severe that he was having trouble breathing.

This was when Washington asked George Rawlins, an overseer at Mount Vernon, to bleed him...continue here....

-- Bruce Kasanoff

Lullaby for Anyone

My 'Friday Poem' selection for the week -- "Lullaby for Anyone":

Excuse me, lover. I’m busy foretelling
and protesting your end. Whether I hunt,
gather, barter, or sell, what I worry over

is the order: live oaks, shorelines,
wide-eyed and flammable
creature I adore. By day, I admit

no shadow as backup: crow, please keep
your clever forensics. What would I do
with a cardboard guitar, a map of the planets,

and a box of building blocks,
alone? Another bereavement
I haven’t unlearned: to bury one hope

inside another, and I, having made a home
of limbo (I keep a black hole more spotless
than cozy), once traveled through time

at will, invisible. Now, not so free. My beloved
grows heavier, hardier, heavenward.
Certain grief pre-scorches me.

-- Stephanie Ford

We Will Change

​We will change when it hurts bad enough not to.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

Got me again (even if a bit enhanced this time).

Last Thing

The last thing we learn about ourselves is our effect.

-- William Boyd

All Problems Stem

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

-- Blaise Pascal, Pensées

Mary, Did You Know?

...adapted from one my favorite songs on the significance of the Christmas Story, Mary's Song in Luke 1.

Depression: The Struggle None of Us Want to Talk About

There can be a great collision this time of year...where the Christmas-card version of the lives we may want smash up against the realities of our deeper aches in life. I was grateful to find this:

I don’t like talking about depression much, because I want my life to look together. I want to sound smart and my kids to obey the first time and for my marriage to be a beacon for all others who follow in my marriage’s glorious light.

I’m scared to let anyone in on the secret because then the gig would be up.  Continue here....

-- Lisa Gungor

I am grateful for this quote from the reading referenced above:

We don’t know what to do with our own weakness but pretend it doesn’t exist…how can we welcome fully the weakness of another if we haven’t welcomed our own weakness?

-- Jean Vanier

I Wanted Peace

My 'Friday Poem' selection for the week -- "I Wanted Peace":

​I wanted peace
without pain,
but it is through the pain
that I crave Your presence
and therein lies peace

-- Lynelle Watford

At a time when it seems there is so much fear, it seems fitting that we acknowledge what was announced to us long ago:  PEACE.

Of all the things that could have been said by heaven to earth, why this?  We have acquired a new nature, not one designed by God, and it is fear.  We are almost now even naturally afraid.  We are afraid even of our fellow man, not to mention the times when man encounters the supernatural like they did in this story.  Man seems to be almost always instinctively afraid of God.  And, so, God seems to pretty regularly announce himself first with words designed to off-set our fear.

Perhaps he knows the energy of fear is to act, in self-protection inwardly or by striking outwardly.  Perhaps he also knows that this nearly instinctive response is really what perpetuates the very energy of fear itself.  Fear in fact is nothing substantive, it is the object of our fear that grips us.

So God simply pre-empts our actions-of-fear by proclaiming something in front of it, before we can react, by announcing 'peace'.  And, perhaps, this is the greatest gift we have as well, to announce and live peace to those around us -- to live in good will to men.  As God's presence is experienced in us, as peace, so we can be present with others.

Stop Chasing

​When you stop chasing the wrong things you give the right things a chance to catch you.

-- Lolly Daskal

Fundamental Turn

Big parts of life will take a fundamental turn once we stop trying to get harmful things to make us feel better and turn our attention to God, taking how we feel to him instead.

This is not to imply a guarantee that by doing so, things will get better...though they certainly might.  But the significant part is the turning, on our part, the entrusting of ourselves to God, because we learn best about ourselves in relationship with the one in whose image we are made.

Thief of Time

Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.

-- Charles Dickens

When It Isn't Shared

What is the value of something when it isn't shared?

Noel

What a voice! What a song for the heart of this season...what a truth!

Why I Like Taking Pictures

Rujida, a friend of mine, said she was thinking about why she likes to take pictures.  She asked me why I like taking pictures.  Thinking about her question, I saw this photo by Eastlyn Bright.

I think my answer to her question is a bit difficult to describe...because there is a kind of mystery to it.  Just like a photograph itself, describing something doesn't capture the whole of it.  For me, a photograph captures something.  It slows something down about life.  It creates a moment, lifting it out of all the surrounding moments that often just end up running together.  A photo is always, in fact, something that has already happened.  And, perhaps because of that, it teases us with the possibility that the captured thing might happen again...even though it, in an of itself, is over.  A photograph is an attempt to preserve something, a memory.  

A photo, like the one above, can create a longing for its content, or something like it, to happen again.  A photo can create hope (future), in an ironic way, from a memory (past).

I am drawn to beauty.  I have encountered a quality of beauty that almost always makes me want to share it with someone else.  Taking photos is a way I enjoy of doing this.

Permanence

My 'Friday Poem' selection for the week -- "Permanence":

Permanence we have already,
 Though we act as if we don’t;
 And miss many a gratitude
 To honor the Body loan’t

-- Tim Koshnick

Productivity Killer

Avoid multitasking. It's a real productivity killer. Research conducted at Stanford University confirms that multitasking is less productive than doing a single thing at a time. The researchers found that people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information cannot pay attention, recall information or switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one task at a time.

-- Travis Bradberry

Without Feedback

One function of feedback is that it can be used to shape how you want to be.  This can be a helpful strategy for navigating life.

But, there comes a time when you have to learn to trust something, without the benefit of feedback to reinforce your sense of things.  You are forced to rely on something else, within yourself -- to live with the consequences of your own choices...to learn from them, rather than relying tentatively on feedback to move forward.

It seems to me like I am in one of those 'times'.

Do To Yourself

​Education is what others do to you 
while Learning is what you do to yourself.

-- Joichi Ito