My Misreads Continue

WHAT I READ Susan Philips shared a blink
WHAT IT SAID Susan Philips shared a link

WHAT I READ You can always massage me
WHAT IT SAID You can always message me

WHAT I READ . . . really appalling story . . .
WHAT IT SAID . . . a really appealing story . . .

WHAT I READ Prayer of Confusion
WHAT IT SAID Prayer of Confession

WHAT I READ Nacho man . . .
WHAT IT SAID Macho man . . .

WHAT I READ Thou shalt teach thy children how to thank
WHAT IT SAID Thou shalt teach thy children how to think

WHAT I READ Jesus embroiled the love of God in the world
WHAT IT SAID Jesus embodied the love of God in the world

WHAT I READ Afraid you’re praying too much?
WHAT IT SAID Afraid you’re paying too much?

WHAT I READ What would the me be?
WHAT IT SAID What would the theme be?

WHAT I READ Alcoholism is a family business
WHAT IT SAID Alcoholism is a family illness

I love the idea of sharing a blink with Susan . . . getting a surprise massage via FB . . . thinking of a man as a food group . . . thankful children . . . a Jesus embroiled in all the things of life . . . not so much the family business being alcoholism, but hey, even that gives me a giggle on an otherwise unfunny thing . . . and my prayers are as often confusing as confessing . . . and I had to wonder why anyone would fear praying too much (certainly not my problem, is it, Lord?) . . . and ‘what would the me be?’ – that one doesn’t even make sense – but it made me laugh at the time.

So who’s to say these were misreads after all?

10 Ideas on Church Tweeting (tongue firmly in cheek)

I read Social Media: 40 things your ministry can do and for some reason (maybe it's obvious), I am amused.  Hence my own (very silly) list of 10 things a church can communicate in 140 characters or less:

1. Send emoticons to depict the ‘mood’ of the church at that moment – for those who keep track of such things and even for those who don’t.

2. Tweet who to vote for on American Idol (and all the other singing realities) based on scriptural analysis of the ‘best’ candidate.

3. Tweet a flash mob time and place for something really cool that turns out to be . . . well . . . a sermon.  It’ll only work once, but every preacher deserves to have an audience of thousands of young people at least once in her life . . . doesn’t she?

4. A popularity poll for the preacher – yeah, that’ll be great.

5. A contest for those actually in church that week, to see who can do the pithiest, most clever distillation of Sunday’s sermon (140 characters or less, of course).  For the brave, might even make that the church’s sign for the week – connecting various media is always a good thing.

6. (I don’t tweet with any regularity and then only from my computer, so I don’t know if this can be done, but if type size can be adjusted . . .) Weekly message from very tiny type, larger until it fills the screen . . . Jesus is coming!  (Going from whisper to shout with type size is always fun).

7. Preview Sunday’s sermon theme as if it were gossip using the looked-for abbreviations . . . “ICYMI” [in case you missed it . . .] “OH” [overheard], etc. – might look something like this: ICYMI I OH @ JC bout u!  Ck out Sundy my plc  (“In case you missed it, I overheard at Jesus’ web site [something] about you!  Check it out Sunday at my place.”

8. Just to see who’s paying attention, tweet a scripture that doesn’t exist – might actually get a conversation going.

9. And to drive everyone to distraction, tweet your entire sermon in twitter speak, one message after another – it’ll take a lot of time, but it might be fun.  And not to worry – tweet death messages are just symbols of words, so you should be okay.

10. And even for those (like me) who don’t believe in it, tweet like the rapture’s already here, just falling off in the middle of your message.

Remember: we of the larger social media world are bombarded daily with messages from friends and strangers and only a very few have the time, stamina and interest, to go the distance.  The rest of us tune out in defense against the sheer volume of it all.  So here is my serious recommendation for tweeting, fb’ing, etc., etc, etc.: Only say something if you really have something to say that someone else might actually want or need to hear.

Now there’s a thought.

Sermon Cliff Note: Luke 20.27-38 & The Case for Resurrection

Sermon Cliff Note

The short version of the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Sadducees goes like this: Sadducees: is there a resurrection?  Jesus: Yes.

***

A Modern-Day Parable: Happy Aunt Gladys

Aunt Gladys is a family member we all love to talk about – the one with all those husbands!  She’s always so sure this one will be even better than the last.

But Aunt Gladys is not getting any younger, and this husband hopping has to stop.  Otherwise, we’ll be the ones taking care of her in her old age!

So we invite Aunt Gladys to a party and secretly invite all her exes, with the idea that we’ll make her choose one of them.

The day of the party, we’re all a bit nervous.  Have we overstepped?  Will the husbands show up?  Our plan depends on them showing up!

Not to worry – every thing goes smoothly – and as Gladys enters the hall, there are all the husbands, dressed in their very best.

They line up according to when they were married to Gladys as if by some silent agreement amongst themselves; and Gladys, with delight on her face, walks the line, greeting each of them with a kiss and a warm embrace.

        The party is a huge success.  Gladys is positively radiant.  She laughs at all their jokes, pats their hands, and generally has a good time.

At the end of the evening, we gather round, awaiting Aunt Gladys’ decision.  We each have our own odds-on favorite and a few of us have even started a betting pool.

Impatient to be done with it, Gladys’ twin sister Alice breaks the bubble: So, Gladys, who’s it to be?  Choose!

Why, darlings, of course, I chose them all. . . but today, I choose . . . well, today, I choose not to choose.

***

Commentary: Is There a Heaven?

Just by asking their question, we learn much about the Sadducees.  

We learn that they’re guys – only a guy would think this is a problem.  A woman thinking that she might have seven husbands to choose from would not think it a problem.

We learn that the Sadducees just cannot believe in a heaven that is not a mirror of earth.

But the fundamental question remains: is there a heaven?  Assumed in the question is this: if there is such a thing as heaven, then we should be able to know what it ‘is’, or at least, what it is ‘like’.

Jesus gives the Sadducees an answer they can hold on to for the ‘is-ness’ of heaven while refusing to give them an answer for the details.

Sadducees only relied on the first five books of the Bible – the Torah. For them, if it wasn’t in the first five books, it didn’t count.

Knowing this, Jesus reminds them of God’s statement to Moses at the burning bush found at Exodus 3.6: I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. . . God does not say I was . . . but rather, I am . . .

Jesus’ point is simple (perhaps the only time Jesus offers a grammar lesson):  when God spoke to Moses, God was speaking not only of God’s self, but also of the ancestors, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the present tense.  They all live.

There, says Jesus, is your ‘evidence’ for the resurrection, for the God-promise of life beyond death.

The Sadducees don’t get the answer they seek, but they get the answer they need.

That’s how it is with Jesus.

When it comes to heaven and what it’s ‘like’, the best answer I know is that it is a mystery.  We know that it is, but we do not know what it is like, for it is a far country.

And that’s okay.

***

A Dotty Ditty

the wife is the wife

the husbands are husbands

and no one in heaven cares

not even a little

for there is not here

and here not there

and there is no tween

nor twain

Note to Self

736 . . . rescue . . . the P . . . instead of 441

I have absolutely no idea what this note that I must have written to myself within the last day or two means.  I have no memory of writing it though it is unmistakably my scrawl.  I have no idea what call or comment inspired it.

I don’t know about you, but I have a myriad notes to self scattered about my desk – reminders, return calls to be made, thing I hear and mean to remember, thoughts and ideas for a later time.  Usually the act of writing itself serves to enable me to remember and act.  But every now and again, there’s a loose canon – a note that gets lost amidst the detritus that evidences my work life – and I find them later, often with a groan, sometimes with a chuckle, and sometimes, like today, with a great sense of mystery – whatever does it mean?

I imagine a mystery with rescue . . . the P . . . as the only clue.  Then I wonder over the possible theological meanings (hey, it’s not much of a stretch – that is my job, afer all).  Then I either put it to the side or toss it to the trash, hoping the remembrance it was meant to inspire wasn’t too awfully important and move to the next note to self.

Note to self:  don't forget to return this week's phone calls.  Explain that my voice isn’t great just now and it’s been an exhausting month (a good one, but a tiring one) overflowing with human interaction and this introvert (yes, really) needs to recharge a bit.  And don't forget to say thank you for the birthday wishes and songs – I really do appreciate them.  Really.

Note to others:  for those chores I may have overlooked, remind me again please.  Yours may be one of those notes floating in the suspension of time that is my desk just now.

Final note to self – don’t forget to post this.

An EasyBake Ovenless Life

You know you’ve had a privileged childhood when you’re biggest beef with your parents is that you never

got that EasyBake Oven you drooled over as a girl.

That’s right – an EasyBake Oven.

Even now when I see the modern equivalent, I find I am jealous, feeling somehow bereft, that I never had the chance as a girl child to cook real, albeit tiny, cakes to the heat of a light bulb.

How does that work, anyway?

And the really silly thing about this (well, several silly things, actually)?

1. I learned to cook from the women of my family on real stoves – way better any day than EasyBake.

2. If I really, really, really want an EasyBake Oven, I could certainly get one for myself now (of course, that wouldn’t be the same, but still).

3. The cakes were crap.  We all know it.  No matter how cool the pictures were on television, when all was said and done, what you were left with was really not much.

4. None of my friends (that I can remember) ever had an EasyBake Oven.  So wherever the source of my childhood obsession resides, it isn’t in jealousy.  What is it?  I truly don’t know.  The fact is, I just hate to admit that 50+ years later, I can still be swayed into a morass of emotions just by seeing a picture of, of all things, an EasyBake Oven (sigh).  And I hate even more the very real possibility that it’s as simple as the power of advertising having planted this ridiculous desire in my heart.

What is an EasyBake Ovenless girl to do?

_________________
NOTE:  After another post on our church's FB page about our upcoming Sunday's Chocolate Communion service, I went to the FB page of Baraka Presbyterian Church (in Bethlehem) because they had 'liked' the Chocolate Communion post.  And what did I see?  In far away Bethlehem, where there is so much suffering, violence and trauma, the children in the nursery at the church there enjoy -- yes -- their very own EasyBake (well, maybe not the same brand) Oven.  What a blessing!  Thank you, Lord, that these children have space in which to laugh and play, live and love, worship and praise.  Amen.

Pie Are Round

So I’m watching a series on Hulu just for relaxation, when one of the characters removes what she calls a

Here's a beauty found at Cocina Para Emancipados

quiche from the oven . . . and it’s a rectangle.  And unbidden, my mind thinks, “that’s not a quiche – it’s a rectangle.  A quiche has to be a circle.  It’s a pie, dammit!  And pie are not square (or rectangular), pie are round.”

It’s a bit of silliness (well, okay, a whole lot of silliness), I know, but I can’t shake this feeling that when quiche are not round, there’s something wrong at work in the universe.

If I had more energy, I would research why pies are round and why quiches in particular are.  I would learn the history of the quiche.  I would know its variations of wonderfulness.  And I might even take the time and learn how to make my quiche square, if not rectangular (there must be some standards, after all!).

But it is way too early in the morning to be spending so much time online investigating just to know the difference, the implications, of the square, rectangle and circle-shaped quiche.

I think I’ll go back to bed.

_______
Because I am that geekie, I just did a quick scan of google images of quiches and although I didn't look at them all, I only found 5 non-circular shaped dishes out of roughly 1,000 images of the glorious quiche - and I suspect that those 5 may not be quiches at all, but rather a strada or some other egg dish.  Just sayin.

Why This 50-Something Female Should Avoid the Movies

Okay, so I’ll be 58 in a few weeks, so the 50-something moniker is a bit of a stretch.  But I digress.

Saturday I went with some friends to see Star Trek: Into Darkness.  Loved it.  And yes, I am a Trekkie at heart – deal.

Again, I digress.

I should have known it would be an interesting day when, upon presenting my happy self at the ticket counter, the lady (who, I must point out, appeared to be older than my own mother by several years) said, “Senior” with no question mark in her voice as she proceeded to ring me up.  The best honor system ever devised kicked into high gear as I, with some umbrage in my voice, I confess, protested her judgment that I am at least 65 (and no, don’t try to comfort me that the age there for the senior discount might ‘only’ be 62 – trust me, it’s no comfort).  Trying to make it all better (I’m betting she is somebody’s mom), the lady said, “I just wanted to be sure you got your discount.” – Yeah, that helped.  Not.

Flash forward to getting into our seats laden with the obligatory popcorn, drink and candies, oh, and the raincoat I take to movie theaters (no old lady jokes will be tolerated) to use as a blanket in case I get cold.  Have you ever noticed that there’s no place except the floor (and who wants to bend clear down to the floor?  As I said, keep the old lady jokes to yourself) to put anything down while you get yourself arranged in the seats?  Well, I have.

I thought I was home free after having the candy fall through the adjacent seat to the floor, after I struggled to find the cup holder to put the water bottle into, as I gracefully sank down, popcorn bag in hand, into the comfortable seat awaiting me, only to lose my balance a bit on the way down and fling my right arm (yes, the one with the popcorn bag in the hand at the end of the arm) outward in a poor imitation of an emcee presenting a favorite guest (think Ed Sullivan here for those of you old enough – see, now you’ve got me doing it).  Popcorn flew everywhere.  Thankfully, the folks sitting in front of me had not yet arrived, sparing themselves the butter-salt shower that in another time dimension (it was a Star Trek movie, you know) awaits them.

After the movie, I only sighed a bit as I crunched my way to the end of the aisle and out the theater, with the obligatory pit stop on the way out (in my defense, my much younger girl friends did the same).  Thankfully, there actually was a hook in the stall (you try dealing with a raincoat and purse when there isn’t one – it’s no fun in that position to wrap your raincoat around your neck like a scarf and your purse like a feed bag, let me tell you).

Almost home free, I approach the water faucet to wash my hands.  How hard can that be?

Well, I stood there and waved my hands again and again under the faucet.  This, for me, is not unusual – for some reason, those sensor things never recognize my hands and I always end up doing some kind of dance of hand waving that I’m sure would be recognized somewhere in the far reaches of the world as a ritual to a god I’ve never met.  Enter Melissa (one of the friends, whose birthday we were celebrating with this outing) from stage left.  I didn’t realize that she had been standing slightly behind me waiting for me to finish when she stepped up and without remark, turned on the faucet with the lever usually provided, and stepped back.

I stood there for a moment – a nano-second, surely –  in disbelief, realizing that I had been trying to wave the automatic water stream into action when there was no automatic water stream.  After the nano-second, I burst into helpless laughter and another nano-second later, so did Melissa – a good friend always waits to see if you get the joke when it’s on yourself and Melissa (Woman Who Brings Water to me now and forevermore) is a good friend.

Next time, I think I’ll just take my senior discount with gratitude and move on.

After all, I’ve earned it, don’t you think?

It’s either that or avoid the movies altogether.

And I really like movies.

The Birds Insist

The birds insist I get up
and greet the new day
for they will give me
no rest – their symphony
erupting, as it does, into
the morning sub-conscious
strata of my oh-so-happy-
to-be-in-a-warm-bed mind

I jump up like a ninja
I’ve still got it!
and fall gracefully
back into the warmth

Sunday beckons and
I will get up – just
not yet, not now

but the birds insist

Fun with Words

From The Writers' Almanac for Monday, January 27 (shout out to Laurie McKnight for sharing)

It was on this day in 1754 that the word "serendipity" was first coined. It's defined by Merriam-Webster as "the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for." It was recently listed by a U.K. translation company as one of the English language's 10 most difficult words to translate. Other words to make their list include plenipotentiary, gobbledegook, poppycock, whimsy, spam, and kitsch.

Given that these are so hard to translate, I thought I’d offer up some (very silly) examples.  Here goes, with all due apologies to Merriam, Webster, et al.:

1. Serendipity.  A very cool coincidence.  An event whose happening is somewhere between fate and chance.  Something that happens to you that’s good and always happens when you’re looking the other way, like when mothers tell their daughters that they’ll find the man of their dreams when they stop looking for him.  Every romantic movie features the element of serendipity: the pair meets (or meets again) in the strangest of ways, totally unexpected (to them).  Sleepless in Seattle doesn’t count because they were looking for each other.  The number one rule of serendipity is that you can’t look for it.  My nomination for most serendipitous movie of all time: Forrest Gump.  

2. Plenipotentiary.  I can pronounce it (I think), and know it has something to do with governing, but without resort to the web, have nothing much to say.  I googled the word, learned (or relearned) that it means one invested with full power – one who can come to the negotiating table with the power to speak on behalf of the principal.  It took two pages to even find a reference to actual usage and wouldn’t you know – it’s from the United Nations, whose ITU (International Telecommunication Union) has a Plenipotentiary every so often.  Presumably this is a meeting of representatives who have the authority to make decisions on their nations’ collective behalf.  Of course, I’m only guessing, never having been.  The next one, should you wish to join in, will be in 2014 in Busan, South Korea’s second largest city.

3.   Gobbledegook (which I always thought was spelled gobblygook - shows how much I know).  A hodge-podge.  A mish-mash.  Now you see the problem of trying to define something hard to define: all its synonyms are equally obscure.

4. Poppycock.  A nice way of saying ‘bull shit’.  Synonyms: nonsense; not true; wrong; insupportable; bull shit.

5. Whimsy.  Silliness that’s sort of romantic or cute.  A teenage girl who dresses like she’s 4 is whimsical.  A 60-year-old woman who does is creepy.  One is cute; the other is wrong.  The cute one is an example of whimsy.

6. Spam.  I’m guessing this refers not to the internet phenomena of being hit with a snow-ball of an e-mail or other mass event, but rather to the meat-like product of same name.  No wonder it cannot be explained – who would do that to meat?  So to my friends around the world, the best I can explain spam is this: take every part of a land animal you find most disgusting, throw them together, grind them into mush, squeeze it all together in a small container until it forms a solid and call it ‘spam’.  We don’t understand it either.  And I have yet to meet anyone who admits to eating it, although I have heard rumors of fried Spam and it does continue to appear on grocery shelves, so unless those cans on the shelf are post-WWII relics, some of you are lying to me.

7. Kitsch.  Shout out to law-school friend Anna Norton, who first introduced me to the concept of kitsch and even loaned me a book dedicated to examples.  However you define kitsch (tackiness, appropriating important cultural icons for the basest of pop culture purposes), giving the Mona Lisa a big toothy grin is definitely the best example I know.  And given the season, pretty much anything sold for Valentine’s Day is kitsch.

What’s Hot in Fashion for the Aspiring Pastor These Days?

I admit it – I am a fashion wanna-be.  I’m way too old for it, but I love fashion.  It’s an utter waste of time, but I love it.  The Bible condemns it, but I’m into it.  

Now the disclaimers are out of the way, what’s fashion hot for the up and coming minister?

Fred Rogers (a Presbyterian pastor
as well as children's television host)
in his famous cardigan sweater

Well, it turns out that the cardigan sweater (thank you, Mr. Rogers) is making a grand come back this year.  And  what could be better for the one who comforts for a living than such comfort wear as the cardigan?

Colors are in too, so load up on cardigans for the liturgical seasons: purple, green, white and red, with the optional blue thrown in for good measure.  And of course, you can never go wrong with basic black.

Advent Reflection: Look out, Cleveland, here we come!

That’s right – Cleveland.

My son & I are lobbying the family to consider spending next Christmas in Cleveland – Cleveland, home of A Christmas Story – there’s actually a museum.

And, Ben points out, we will absolutely have to eat our Christmas dinner in a Chinese restaurant.

Does life imitate art?  You be the judge – if you catch a family of very silly people laughing a lot in a Chinese restaurant somewhere in Cleveland who aren’t Jewish next Christmas, you’ll know it’s us.  Come and join in or just keep walking – either way, we’re good.

Oh, how easy it is to forget the joy of childish things.

Thank you Advent, for reminding me that the joy I await can be silly as well as serious, light-hearted as well as fraught with meaning, and filled to the very brim with the laughter of anticipation.

So look out, Cleveland – we are coming!  Count on it!

The Joy of Driving

I was always the last or near to last kid to be picked when it came to sports – even by my own family, even by my own dad.  I just wasn’t that good at any of it.  Now if there had been a team for best Nancy Drew mystery readers, I would have been in the running.  But baseball?  Forget it!

In college, I dropped the swimming class in favor of archery to fulfill the physical education requirement at my college.  I wasn’t great at archery either, but it was much easier for me to participate in a sport that required that I stand still.

Any personal sense of competency that I have ever had has more to do with the mind than the body.  And most of my memories about physical endeavors, highly embarrassing and painful at the time, are, in hindsight, filled with humor. . .like the time I took a baseball to the stomach when my dad was pitching to me because I froze when the ball came at me (now you know why my dad didn’t pick me to be on his team after that – he really felt bad about the bruise) . . . or the time I knocked myself unconscious by trying to imitate a sledding trick of racing towards a parked car only to veer sharply left at the last minute to get past the teasing boys blocking our way – yep, I froze again and ran right into the bumper of the car . . . or the time as a young adult that I got on skis in the slightly slanted driveway of a friend and was so terrified of the incline that I cried and sat down in the snow . . . or the time my cousins and I (well me, really) broke my Aunt Bonnie’s window pitching ball in the house when I missed the ball that sailed past my ducking frame and shattered the glass . . .

I could go on, but what would be the point?  There’s only so much of these laughing memories one woman can take, after all.

Thus it was with perhaps understandable, if inappropriate, pride that I received the left-handed compliment of a local police officer giving me my third speeding ticket from his own hand.

It was Easter Sunday.  And folks around these parts will know how silly it was for me to be speeding . . . right past his house.  My only defense is that my mind was elsewhere (hardly any comfort to my fellow motorists, I know).

Pulling me over at the top of Jack Mountain and going through our by-now usual ritual – “Beth,” he sighs.  “I know,”I respond.  “Didn’t you see me?” he asks.  “No.”  But it’s Easter and so there’s a new wrinkle: “I can’t believe you’re making me do this!  It’s Easter Sunday and you’re a preacher!”  “I know,” I sigh.  “Don’t feel bad.  It’s not your fault.  It’s mine.”  (Who knew pastoral duties extended to comforting the police officer who feels bad for having to give you a ticket?)

After all the ritual of paper exchange and ticket writing and explaining is completed comes the real surprise for me: “Have you had any driving training?”  “Not other than driver’s ed when I was a kid,” I respond.  “Well, I will say this: you take those curves like a pro.”

Like I said before, the pride I feel is inappropriate to the situation.  But it is real.

James-Bond blue BMW Z3 drop top -
the object of my affection

I love to drive a car, especially in the mountains.  And I drive too fast.  Before I left my previous life to go to seminary, I leased a sports car.  It’s the only physical thing that I have ever loved.  And I did love that car.

Sitting atop Jack Mountain on Easter Sunday with my ticket in hand, I pondered this thing about me and was pleased.  When it comes to driving, I am competent, able, deft.

I don’t know why this gives me such pleasure.  Maybe it’s simply the little girl inside who was never picked first for the team knowing that she’s good at something.

Walking Plants and Pointing Maidens

Two signs I did not capture on camera during my time in Scotland remain with me and just plain tickle my funny bone to no end.

They were close together and totally unrelated, yet remain fixed in tandem in my mind.

The first was a red warning sign: Heavy Plant Crossing.  There was no factory in sight and I still have no idea what the heavy plants were/are and why they would cross that road in that spot and in such a way that required that I be warned, bearing out my own personal hypothesis about road signage: Road signs are designed for people who already know where they’re going.  

If you’ve ever driven in unfamiliar locales, you’ll know what I mean.  Sign placement is sometimes overhead, sometimes at the side of the road (left or right without much rhyme or reason that I can discern) and sometimes affixed to buildings.  Sometimes signs are large and sometimes they’re so small a magnifying glass wouldn’t help.  And most of the time when exploring a new place, I find myself seeing the sign as I pass my destination by, with finger pointed helplessly at where I was supposed to be.

But I digress.  Who could resist the visual of Dinosaur jr.’s album cover when it comes to plants boldly crossing the street (or in their case, several streets or cities at a time)?  Although I have to confess that my own internal visual when I read ‘Heavy Plant Crossing’ (the meaning of which I still do not know) resembles more a clutch of chubby cacti, peace lilies and African violets tumbling across the road, begging the question, why did the plants cross the road?  

Maybe the plants were crossing the road to get to the maidens, for the next sign, just yards down the road, reads Maidens   2, fixed onto the usual white painted metal sign pointing  ☞  thataway.

Maidens is a small village between Girvan and Ayr.  But every time I saw the sign for Maidens, I was reduced to silly giggles, imagining that it must be lean pickings in this part of Scotland for there to be only two maidens and stuck on the idea that some Scottish fellows somewhere are desperately searching for that sign.  I sure hope they find it, for there are two maidens somewhere surely waiting for them.

Internet Surfer Girl

Today I went from pinterest 

to Joshua Ritter on YouTube

to Leonard Cohen from YouTube sidebar

to Wikipedia article about the Ten Bulls

to Wikidpedia article on Vietnamese water puppetry

back to YouTube to watch video of Vietnamese water puppetry

with some side trips

into N. T. Wright’s version of Genesis 

(as sung to the tune of ‘Yesterday’)

and a random preacher guy doing 

1-minute movie reviews 

(cool idea/really bad execution 

said the review of the reviewer)

a day in the life of a surfer-girl, internet style

***

From Flickr Commons by jason.raff

Life is like a day surfing the internet:  

You start out headed in one direction and end up going an entirely different place than you had planned.

Sometimes through virtually no effort on your part, you find something wondrous, amazing, beautiful.

There’s a lot of silliness to filter out along the way.

Other people’s anger can catch you by surprise or it can sweep you along with it.

And every now and then, you learn something new.

A Sonnet – not Shakespearian – to

Flickr Commons

what?  Of what shall I write?  A sonnet - a song of praise - a paean to – a burst of joy about – exactly what?  Maybe babies – they’re cute, after all – or maybe to a butterfly – who doesn’t love butterflies?  Well, that suggests I go for the unlikely - a sonnet to the turkey buzzard?  Ben would approve, no doubt.  Maybe to politics and pundits.  Or bad daytime television - that’s it!  Bad daytime television - here goes . . .

1 There’s a place to which I aspire – if you will, a summit
2 the very peak of civilization – television in the daytime
3 I step into the land of the remote and my IQ begins to plummet
4 as I settle in to watch game shows, soaps, and all sorts of visual grime

5 restaurants at war and cooking gone bad
6 syndicated reruns I’d never waste a minute on after 8
7 houses oh, so so, desired, but not had
8 lovers, mothers and brothers spewing hate

9 whether Jennifer’s baby belongs to Brad or to Sam
10 whether this one or that knows where Canada is
11 whether it’s true love – or a scam
12 whether the bad-boy beau will break a chair or walk off stage in a tizz

13 Another day’s gone and I find I’m late
14 for my own life – off the couch with me – it’s a date!

________________
This bit of silliness is the result of my playing around with poetic forms.  The doggerel reflects time I’ve spent totally wasted – mindlessly – watching daytime television.

What is a Lamset, Alex?

Another in my continuing silliness of making up definitions for the random letters for the online  security check to make sure that you’re a human being (as opposed to what, I want to ask), aka captcha.

The definition possibilities are:
1. A lamb in the blocks, race position fixed
2. A fine sewing needle – or –
3. A straw hat

The answer?

Lamset

Monday we gather, we friends of Stu Hammel, to bid him the final farewell in this thing we call a funeral.  It has been an incredibly sad week.  But for these few hours, there’s been a respite – the calm in the eye of the storm . . . the place where family and friends sit and actually laugh, allowing themselves to wander from the focus on the sadness . . . forgetting for an instant . . . looking away from and towards . . . away from the pain and towards the things of life – the mundane as well as the wonderful.

There have been times in my life when I have cursed my ‘waste’ of time.  But I see things differently now . . . now I think it’s not possible to waste time . . . rather, I think we simply live . . . for however long it is allotted to us, we live . . . whether ridiculously or sublimely, we live.

That is how it should be.

_____________
My own favorite definition for the made-up word lamset is a straw hat, although it would be #1, a lamb in the blocks, race position fixed, if I ever thought I could get a lamb to pose for the picture.