"A good place to start…

…is with the truth….Hope cannot take root in unreality or untruths.”
I am currently rereading After the Locusts: Letters from a Landscape of Faith, by Denise Ackermann, a theologian from South Africa. Each chapter in the book is a letter to someone she loves. The chapter from which the above quote is taken is written to [...]

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Myriad Ways to Be Fully Smashed

Yes, that’s a bit long for a post title, but it was way better, I thought, than what I’d been planning on calling this post: “Entropy and Corporate Grieving.” I’m still thinking about David Ker’s post “Bon Jovi Gets It” and the dialogue in response, which includes this comment from Codepoke:
The problem, though, is that [...]

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Escape from reality

Today brings a situation I’d rather run from than deal with. Deal with it, I will, one way or another. But if I could run from reality, I’d love to have this in my living room to run to:

The bookshelf chair, which I discovered via Cascades, comes with 16 feet of shelving and variable slot [...]

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Light Pollution

Too much of a good thing? I’d never thought of it before, with regards to light.
Light is good, of course. I live in Florida. I’m happy living in a place where the sun shines pretty much year round. I don’t want to live in a part of the country or even a house with too [...]

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To Gild a Lily

I don’t recall having heard this phrase before this week. It appears to be a mix-up of a phrase from a Shakespeare play. But the verse it comes from has moved me all week.

It’s so easy to want to try to change people. But, quite often, when we try to do that, I think we [...]

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Farming at a Dump and Pacifism

This morning, I received an email from Afrigadget, a blog dedicated to showcasing how Africans solve everyday problems with incredible ingenuity.
This afternoon, I read a selection from “Why I Am Not a Pacificist” by C.S. Lewis. To me, the morning’s email and the afternoon’s reading felt very connected.
The email spotlighted an initiative which transformed a [...]

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A Grief Rabbit Trail

Why do we grieve so little, publicly? In particular, why is there such a paucity of grieving in the church?
David Ker thinks that it would help if our church music were a bit more Bon Jovi-ish.
Codepoke suggests, in response, that the problem is not so much with the music, but rather with the whole way [...]

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Where Have All the Sad Songs Gone?

David Ker asked something like that on two Lingamish posts recently. Well, I thought he asked a question along those lines on either this post or this one.  But, what I find when I go looking is this statement:
Somebody really ought to write a song that includes the bad stuff. Life is all about contrasts.
In [...]

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War and Peace and Life Goes On

A friend sent me the link to this photo from the Telegraph in the U.K. with this caption: “Children play in Tskhinvali, capital of Georgia’s breakaway province of South Ossetia”
Here’s what my friend said about it: “To be happening in a place at war makes it really shocking, but it’s just two kids doing what [...]

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Why I’ve Not Been Blogging

David Ker is my blogfather. He is the one I thank or blame (depending on my mood) for getting me into this whole blogging thing. I think my comments on his blog were getting too long (imagine that) or something, and he nicely recommended I start my own blog.
Well, I’ve now been blogging a little [...]

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