truth in advertising

Maybe Dockers is onto something.

And maybe the woman who wrote this rant needs to swallow a chill pill while she sips her foamy non-fat latte.

all here

Probably after the "He is no fool..." quotation, Jim Elliot's next most famous quotation is "Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God."

This quotation is an old, heavy, wooden piece of furniture in the sitting room of my mind. It's always there. And, just when I get too distracted to remember it, I run into it at full speed and get an ugly bruise on my shin.

So it's been on my mind.

And I have two things to say about it.

One is that there are some things I HATE about modern technology. I hate it when people are too distracted being somewhere else with the aid of a gadget to look a companion in the eye. (I do it too, and I need to stop.) I hate it when I get the nagging feeling that I need to check my e-mail or cell phone or Facebook, even when I'm not waiting to be called about anything in particular. What is really that important? What are we so afraid of missing by shutting off the iPhone/iTouch/Blackberry/cell phone/laptop/netbook? If what I'm doing or the person I'm with isn't worth 100% of my attention, then why am I here?

Maybe attention really is a zero sum game. And we're all losing.

Two is that it's taken me this long (almost three months now) to realize that I need to be "all there" at church. Even if I am not going to be here next year or next month or next week, my church is where I'm at right now, and it's the body where God has put me.

The summer was a great experience, and I'm grateful for it and for the friends I spent time with while I was in Jordan. But I think that while I was away I picked up a case of spiritual scurvy, a Vitamin C[hurch] deficiency. Much as I missed everybody, church was one of the last places I wanted to be when I got home. And I really couldn't tell you why. Add to that that I came home thinking that maybe I would be moving somewhere else at some point (if I get a job somewhere else), so it would be "wise" not to jump back in at MidCities with both feet.

Sometime in the last two weeks, I realized (for the millionth time?) that God is in charge, not me. And He does far more abundantly than all that we could ask or think. So I can go right on ahead and jump in with both feet and swim around, and if I need to go He will pick me up and move me.

So I can stop being silly sitting on the side of the pool getting cold.

remember

I'm grateful to be old enough to remember the day the Berlin Wall came down.

I didn't understand it then.

It's scary to think we live in an America that wouldn't understand it now.

Take 25 minutes and remember.

more life coaching

Natty just came into my room to ask if I could give her any receipts, because she is working a lot of jobs and needs receipts to show where she paid money (When I was small we used to play house. And we were ALWAYS indigent [especially during the Clinton campaign when I listened to Rush Limbaugh a lot and was convinced that the end of the world was imminent]; looks like the tenor of the family may have changed a bit . . . that, or there's still only one tenor in the family . . .).

She found one receipt and was scavenging for more when I said,

Me: I know I'm looking for something, but I can't remember what it is.

Natty: A job?

marketing advice (from a 6-year-old)

Natalie just came into my room for help with a math problem. While I puzzled out Saxon Math 3, she was looking through the paper sediment on my desk and picked out the business card for Emma Parker Diamonds.

She said, "I think this poem is funny," and read me the following from the business card:

He came to her on bended knee
With velvet box in hand,
To ask her "Will you marry me
And wear my wedding band?"

"It sounds like he's coming up to her dragging his knee," she said, demonstrating.

It was pretty funny. And probably not politically correct. At all.

And, although I never have been able to read that poem with a straight face, now I just laugh the whole time.

We tried to fix it, but it proved awfully difficult. For instance,

He came to her and bent his knee
With velvet box in hand

sounds like his knee has a box in its hand.

Or

He came to her romantically
With velvet box in hand

But that's just sappy.

Maybe

He came to her expectantly

but that makes him sound like a hungry puppy.

Maybe he's already assured of his success and

He came to her triumphantly

mmmmmmmmm . . . not quite.

(See how easy it is to distract me from math homework? She's talented, this one.)

postponement strategy

I have conducted an informal survey of all the bloggers I know, and come to the following conclusion:

I will start taking (and posting) pictures when/if I have children. Nothing will stop me from posting them. I will post a lot of them.

This will make many people happy, since pictures of children are widely reputed to be well-received.

(Yes, this is a sorry excuse for not taking OR posting any pictures of social functions, special events, or other things that probably I should be photodocumenting. But I don't really have anything better to go on.)

music AND linguistics: what could be better?

The Sounds of our English Words are commonly like those of String Musick, short and transient, which rise and perish upon a single touch; those of other Languages are like the Notes of Wind Instruments, sweet and swelling, and lengthen'd out into variety of Modulation.

Joseph Addison, 135 The Spectator (4 Aug. 1711), in Classics in Composition 76, 77 (Donald E. Hayden ed., 1969).

out of school too long

Thus religious centralism turns out to be the homology of the legal centralism of positivists.

I keep reading and re-reading this line from the law review article I've been (not very successfully) reading all day.

Even though I think I know what the author is getting at, it's just not clicking into place. And I think the problem is me and not him . . .