About a week ago a FB friend posted, about how learning more made him more aware of how much he didn’t know. As an ornery contrarian, I semi-jokingly responded, “So learning leads to ignorance, right?” Thankfully, he got it, and we’re still friends. At the time though, I didn’t realize I had a similar post planned for this week, so let’s look at another angle of the principle…
Read MoreLook Closer
I suspect we all have a favorite place, one that soothes our soul and calms our spirit. Where merely being there is all we need. I discovered one of mine back in 1994: the Mount Hermon Conference center, that has led to revisits. There, walks through the redwoods not only reveal God’s love of beauty, but they enhance the spiritual tone of the conferences I’ve attended. So, in 2019, I carved out some time to take a trail down to Bean Creek. And loving the art of trout fishing…
Read MoreSituational Awareness
As part of our 45th anniversary last February, we chose to celebrate it at a time share resort in northern California’s Clear Lake, and took off from SoCal. Waze did a fine job, usually, and bypassed us off the crowded 101 in the Bay Area. We approached the appropriate exit, with a lot of backed up traffic: three lanes for normal traffic, one empty lane on the right for FasTrak. She told us to get in the FasTrak lane, but we had no transponder, and I had no desire to lose the $271 fine without one, so I slowed down in one of the three lanes. Then…I noticed a decent sized sign on the FasTrak lane…
Read MorePronoun Changes
This grammar guy has some concern about changing pronouns. Not about changing personal pronouns to match our changing gender views, although the Chicago Manual of Style now accepts “their” as a singular pronoun for he or she. I think that’s awkward, but it’s not the concern here, so please don’t get sidetracked on gender. We have a much more significant aspect of changing pronoun usage, critically focusing on personal possessive pronouns. Who owns what? How? Why? What about my F150 pickup?
Read MoreSpiritual Plans
Plans sometimes get changed. Radically. My October Sierra plans were to fish Rock Creek until late Friday, then to head home and miss the Friday traffic. The snow in the pic above forced a revision. Waking to 2" of snow in my campground made outdoor cooking problematic, so I threw all my wet gear loosely into the back of the truck and headed home. Early. Not much later I walked into a Mickey D's in Lone Pine for coffee, only to meet a middle aged guy in shorts and a hoodie who asked…
Read MoreCoexist
Quite a popular bumper sticker lately, particularly in our relativistic age which encompasses many paths to God. Some take it to mean coexist peacefully, disagree without killing one another. I support that. But if it means, “God is too big to fit into one place,” equating all belief systems, then I take issue.
Easter is the reason.
Read MoreWhen Demons Danced
Events aren’t always what they seem. A brief snapshot out of time cannot include what comes next, the rest of the story. We judge single happenings too quickly, in our shortsightedness and finitude. This concept hit me last fall, and I’ve waited to share this until now, maybe it can impact how we view the events that followed Palm Sunday by five days….
Read MoreQuit Complaining
I made a brief November Facebook post about complaining, and it received a nice response. But that has been haunting my thoughts, and to ease my own mind, let’s give it a deeper dig,
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