We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach. If it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.
Category Archives: Journal
Time to Live in Another Way
Working for the U.S. government overseas, I’ve spent a lot of holidays away from home. I’m thankful not only for being home this year with family but also grateful that I’ve satisfied that wanderlust that I knew as an adolescent and young adult. I’m thankful for the good times I had with numerous friends in many countries, but I no longer feel a need for physically wandering and exploring.
Instead, I enjoy making sense of what i experienced and writing the thoughts for others—whether in essay form or in some kind of story. The desire to have purpose is still there, but in recounting and writing rather than in physical experience.
I’m blessed beyond measure and offer thanks what I’ve had and for the meaning I’m still making from what has happened and for the time to pass it on.
It Begins with Obedience
Mark 16
The old story is recorded: the women, who, unlike the men, had not deserted Jesus, were not through serving Him. They were going to risk being found at Jesus’ tomb, but they wanted to continue to care for Him, even it if it meant only caring for His body, so they thought.
Doring the best for Jesus, even when all seems in terrible shape, is sometimes hard to do, but we are called to that. His command, not our success, is what leads us.
No Snow This Year, So Far
Yesterday my husband and I walked down to the beach to check how our bay was handling all the water and debris flowing down from the mountains.
More debris than I’ve ever seen and a big log or two. Well, the drought of earlier in the year is obviously over with. Unfortunately, the end of it brought too much water, with flooding and houses washed away and other miseries. Concerns about overflow in streams in all the islands.
For me, at least, worries about climate change are no longer overblown.
Wonder if our stalwart New Years Day plungers will congregate this year for the annual dip into the bay.? They may be worried about more than just the cold.
Loving God
Mark 12:28-34:
Love God with everything that we have is the first commandment. Loving God? Eternal awesome God? That I could be privileged and allowed to love Him? Who first loved me? And after I’ve soaked in His love, I then surely find it natural to love my neighbor, whom He had made and loves as He does me. Amen, Lord.
In Order to Form a More Perfect Union
The beginning of the U.S. Constitution states several reasons for the establishment of the United States. One is “in order to form a more perfect union.” Others: “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity . . .”
Surely these are worthy causes. Yet, at the time of this writing, most black Americans were slaves, and only white men had the right to vote. Indeed, the most active Americans generally were fairly well-to-do white men.
Sometimes words are spoken or written that are so powerful that even the speakers of the words don’t realize their power or what they really mean if taken literally.
Enough for Everybody
Mark 8:1-13: Jesus Feeds a Multitude
It isn’t whether we have enough for everybody; of course, we have enough when we share. God shares with us; then we share with others.
The Pharisees kept trying to trap Jesus. Here was God, in loving form, and they were concerned about a sign??
I Escaped to the Library
Perhaps I never would have developed my love of reading if my mother hadn’t needed a place to park me when she shopped downtown. When I was growing up, one went “downtown” to shop. We deprived people had no shopping centers then, only small neighborhood shops lining a few spots on the highway. For major shopping, “downtown” was it.
As soon as I learned to read (about seven, later than most children, I think; we had no preschool), I discovered that the stories I had imagined for fun (to find adventure, to live out stories my father told me about early Nashville history, etc.) could be found in this place called a library. From that moment on, boredom vanished from my life (except anywhere you weren’t allowed to read.) In short, I became a bookworm.
Fortunately, I also had school and church and two close friends to join with me in the school band, so I wasn’t deprived of a social life, but any time away from friends or prescribed duties, I usually lost myself in a book. TV was only beginning, and anyway, it was dull next to a good novel about fighting villains. And if I wanted to learn about something, the library was there to search.
Everywhere we have lived, I have found the closest library. I introduced my children to them, and they also became readers. I think the public library system, opening free books to everyone in the community is one of our greatest inventions of mankind.
How Many of Us Can Stand Solitude?
Listening to a seminar on the founding of the country, I’m reminded of how few people inhabited the early United States, including native Americans. Even Europe and other continents included tracts of empty land.
Still, solitude may not have been easy to find. Long hours of labor, larger families crowded into smaller houses, neighborly needs—perhaps earlier folk strived for solitude as much as we do.
Solitude is a conscious decision to remove oneself from noise and chatter and simply to think, or to read slowly and reflect. Solitude should not be confused with loneliness, though the confusion, may be one reason solitude is neglected.
If solitude today is harder to find, it’s not only because population has increased significantly. I live in a semi-rural area where it’s still possible to walk away from my community into wooded areas. Driving my car for a short time, I can find trails where I can walk for an hour or two and not meet another person.
But we now have phones and carry them with us wherever we go. Some of us wake up and immediately check those phones. We get the news, good and bad, but mostly bad, before we’ve had breakfast.
Maybe this busy, hard wired way of life will change our brains, and we will no longer need solitude. I tend to doubt that. I suspect solitude, to varying degrees according to our natures, is as important to inner growth as is food to our physical bodies.
We are not merely flesh and bones. We also require spiritual feeding and sometimes must search for it.
Autumn Rest
“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” (Gerard Manley Hopkins; “God’s Grandeur”)
We’ve had rain this year, and the trees have responded. Now they’re shedding their summer bounty, leaves floating down slowly, taking their time. I know spring has its glories, but I love autumn. Autumn goes with leaf raking time and the discovery of good books in the library. More people, some from summer trips, fill the pews on Sunday morning in our church.
We go for a walk and spot a deer and her fawns in the nearby woods.
Afternoons, and we meander to our small downtown and meet teenagers checking out where to grab a snack after school.
I know that after winter rains, I will welcome spring every bit it as much as I now welcome fall’s quietness after summer’s activities. But for now, I love autumn best.
A Sense of Mission
In my novel, A Sense of Mission, the orphaned Kaitlin, just entering adolescence, explains why she has a hard time trusting the good times in her life. Influenced by the tragedy of her parents’ deaths, she says it’s “like some—monster—some weird creature from Lord of the Rings or something. Standing at this door that’s cracked half open. He’s staring at me while I’m feasting at a banquet.” She’s always scared they’ll disappear, as some of her good times did when her parents were killed.
Nothing is wrong with enjoying an occasional banquet. Jesus enjoyed banquets, even as he journeyed toward the cross.
Nevertheless, if we have experienced a true banquet, with people we love and enjoy being with, we may understand how powerful is the system that opposes the kinds of banquets Jesus talked about—those for the poor and hungry and imprisoned.
Ultimately, it isn’t about consumer spending or making America great or how many toys we can accumulate before we die. It’s about seeking to do good, even understanding that good may be overwhelmed at times.
How Many of Us Can Stand Solitude?
Listening to a seminar on the founding of the country, I’m reminded of how few people inhabited the early United States, including native Americans. Even Europe and other continents included tracts of empty land.
Still, solitude may not have been easy to find. Long hours of labor, larger families crowded into smaller houses, neighborly needs—perhaps earlier folk strived for solitude as much as we do.
Solitude is a conscious decision to remove oneself from noise and chatter and simply to think, or to read slowly and reflect. Solitude should not be confused with loneliness, though the confusion may be one reason solitude is neglected.
If solitude today is harder to find, it’s not only because population has increased significantly. I live in a semi-rural area where it’s still possible to walk away from my community into wooded areas. Driving my car for a short time, I can find trails where I can walk for an hour or two and not meet another person.
But we now have phones and carry them with us wherever we go. Some of us wake up and immediately check those phones. We get the news, good and bad, but mostly bad, before we’ve had breakfast.
Maybe this busy, hard-wired way of life will change our brains, and we will no longer need solitude. I tend to doubt that. I suspect solitude, to varying degrees according to our personalities, is as important to inner growth as food is to our physical bodies.
We are not merely flesh and bones. We also require spiritual feeding and sometimes must search for it.
Blessed Solitude
How Many of Us Can Stand Solitude?
Listening to a seminar on the founding of the country, I’m reminded of how few people inhabited the early United States, including native Americans. Even Europe and other continents included tracts of empty land.
Still, solitude may not have been easy to find. Long hours of labor, larger families crowded into smaller houses, neighborly needs—perhaps earlier folk strived for solitude as much as we do.
Solitude is a conscious decision to remove oneself from noise and chatter and simply to think, or to read slowly and reflect. Solitude should not be confused with loneliness, though the confusion, may be one reason solitude is neglected.
If solitude today is harder to find, it’s not only because population has increased significantly. I live in a semi-rural area where it’s still possible to walk away from my community into wooded areas. Driving my car for a short time, I can find trails where I can walk for an hour or two and not meet another person.
But we now have phones and carry them with us wherever we go. Some of us wake up and immediately check those phones. We get the news, good and bad, but mostly bad, before we’ve had breakfast.
Maybe this busy, hard wired way of life will change our brains, and we will no longer need solitude. I tend to doubt that. I suspect solitude, to varying degrees according to our natures, is as important to inner growth as is food to our physical bodies.
We are not merely flesh and bones. We also require spiritual feeding and sometimes must search for it.
Choosing the Imperfect
An interviewer for The Sun asked the writer, Jack Miles: “By signing up for an organized faith, am I not rejecting other religious truths?”
Miles answered, “Well, any choice limits us. You can’t practice religion in general; you have to practice one religion. You can’t marry all women or all men; you have to marry one person. OK, you might be a bigamist, but there are limits. And where there are limits, there are choices.”
We choose between imperfect candidates in an election, but we have to finally vote. Not to vote is to scorn the precious right to collectively choose our leaders.
We choose a faith for the sake of meaning and purpose and direction in our lives. We choose between admittedly imperfect and incomplete choices, for none of us has perfect knowledge, but even choosing to be an atheist is a faith choice.
To choose is not, or should not, be the denigration of what is not chosen. The fact that we are fallible human beings means we honor the different choices of others.
But we have need of spiritual choices so as not to waste our precious lives in aimlessness.
Cultural Concoction
Try growing up in the early post-World War II culture of Middle Tennessee, then add early adulthood in a rapidly changing deep South college followed by several early marriage years lived between rural Tennessee and big city Chicago. After that, stir in several years of a U.S. Foreign Service career in the Middle East and Washington, D.C. Then add a move to a Pacific Northwest island community. How’s that for a life of change?
Well, if the one constant in your life is the compulsion to write fiction (mostly) to capture the ideas that keep bubbling up through all this, you do have plenty of material.
None of this has led to a particularly successful writing career. I’ve not written a best-seller or anything near it, despite abundant material.
I don’t think, though, that, even if I had tried, I would have been able not to write. Gardeners garden, teachers teach, writers write.
I am so grateful that no matter how successful I may or may not be, I had and have people in my life who cared and care about me and the world around us. It really is, of course, about the caring. If we are cared for and learn to care about the people in our lives, even extending that care to desperate people as we are given opportunity, then we are successful in what counts.
Five Suggestions for Dealing With That Annoying Telemarketer
1. Tell them you are so glad they called because now you have someone to share your sorrow at the death of Creepy, your beloved pet tarantula, which you will then begin to detail.
2. Use them to let off steam about whichever political party has recently upset you.
3. Share your ancestry—how proud you are of your something great grandfather who served as a cook in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.
4. Tell them about your recently discovered interest in lobotomy. (Don’t know what that is? Make something up.)
5. Ask them if they have ever talked to a being from outer space like you recently did. Begin sharing your experience.
Choosing the Imperfect
An interviewer for The Sun asked the writer, Jack Miles: “By signing up for an organized faith, am I not rejecting other religious truths?”
Miles answered, “Well, any choice limits us. You can’t practice religion in general; you have to practice one religion. You can’t marry all women or all men; you have to marry one person. OK, you might be a bigamist, but there are limits. And where there are limits, there are choices.”
We choose between imperfect candidates in an election, but we have to finally vote. Not to vote is to scorn the precious right to collectively choose our leaders.
We choose a faith for the sake of meaning and purpose and direction in our lives. We choose between admittedly imperfect and incomplete choices, for none of us has perfect knowledge, but even choosing to be an atheist is a faith choice.
To choose is not, or should not, be the denigration of what is not chosen. The fact that we are fallible human beings means we honor the different choices of others.
But we have need of spiritual choices so as not to waste our precious lives in aimlessness.
Sabbaths
I was raised in a church-going family—every Sunday, rain or shine, we attended at least two gatherings of our church. We made friends there. As a young person, I spent the greater part of my social life within its activities.
I’m aware that Sunday is no longer part of public consciousness as before, even if one was an atheist. Friday, Saturday, Sunday or whatever holy day the religious favor, all of us more often choose to use that day for other pursuits. We ignore both the larger community and thoughtful contemplation.
But we don’t just forget to rest one day a week—whether sacred or secular resting. We go full stop all seven days of the week. Our stores are open every day.
If religion sometimes led to bigotry and persecution, the secular alternatives are no better. Capitalism can be an efficient way to order our economic activities. When it becomes our god and our religion, it corrupts us. A country ruled by a capitalist cabal, divided into haves and have-nots, is just as harmful as a state ruled by religious fanatics.
The early Hebrews were enjoined not only to keep one day a week for rest and worship but also to proclaim a Year of Jubilee every 49 years. Family property, sold to strangers, now would be given back to the original family. We might call the system compassionate capitalism., capitalism with limits.
Neither Sabbath nor Jubilee was kept as intended.
When the Hebrews finally were carried off into exile, their prophets told them to consider those years of exile as the Sabbaths and the Jubilees they had neglected to keep.
Perhaps those recently passed days when we were kept by Covid from many of our communal activities were a kind of forced rest.
Is Secularism Necessary to Keep the Religious From Killing Each Other?
Did the rise of secularism in the West finally end Europe’s religious wars of the 1600’s?
Today we in democratic nations rejoice when Middle Eastern nations become more secular. Secularism encourages more religious freedom. A strong middle class may develop, influenced by material wealth rather than religious dogma. Nations with secularist trends are not likely to fight religious wars.
On the other hand, secular nations also have produced wars and brutality, as in the First and Second World Wars.
Religion is not necessary for evil to flourish. The desire to eliminate those we don’t like or to make them second class citizens so we can grab their wealth and cheap labor is embedded in our DNA.
The problem with religion is the problem with whatever humans touch. Religion can become a weapon, but so can national pride (Germany in the first half of the twentieth century) or desire for wealth (the invasion of Africa by European nations).
In addition, politicians can manipulate believers through granting special favor to one particular religion. Religious leaders may be tempted to use the power of the state to advance their beliefs, even to force them on others.
The United States was founded as one of the most secular nations in the world. To the astonishment of Europe and its state churches, religion flourished in the former colony.
Unfortunately, as Christianity became more influential, the old temptation to use it for power asserted itself. Though some political leaders certainly practiced a sincere religion, others less honest began to play the religious card to get elected.
Better to earn converts the old-fashioned way. Forget using the government as a tool to bolster your personal religious beliefs. Live your religion so people find it attractive.
Searching for “thou”
Somewhere along the language path, English lost thou. That is, we who speak English lost the way to speak to an individual in the second person singular.
We can follow this change in our English versions of the Christian Bible. Early versions, such as the King James version, differentiate between a singular and plural version of “you.” The KJV quotes one of Jesus’ early disciples saying of Jesus: “Rabbi, thou art the Son of God . . ..” The Revised Standard, however, records: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God . . ..” Our modern English no longer differentiates between a familiar you (one person) and a plural you (more than one person.)
Various segments of the English speaking world have ways to mark that plural “you.” In my native Tennessee, I learned to say “you all” if I was addressing more than one person (or the contracted word “y’all.”) To this day, I stumble if I’m addressing more than one person. I may say something like “you folks” to avoid using a simple you to address more than one person. It just doesn’t sound right to me.
I’m more concerned, however, with our growing inability to communicate effectively within our politics. Some of it is regional, divided up into interests according to the general views of where we live: east coast, west coast, Midwest, south, plains, and so on.
Immigration is particularly divisive: how many and where from. We also have different views depending on our political backgrounds, academic standing, economic class, etc.
The idea of people, and not an elite class, ruling a country is, taking in the long sweep of history, still a new invention. Hope comes from insuring that the next free and fair election is guaranteed.
That includes reasonable discussion, dissenting from a majority if one is led that way, and, especially, regard for someone to say that with which I disagree.
Thus, I give thee permission to peaceably disagree with me.