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| a quiet place to sit and ramble on about the thoughts in my head. |
on blogging:
I like the idea of blogging. I feel like I need to write more to help learn how to communicate better. Communicating better in writing should help me communicate verbally, especially in the teaching/preaching role I'm in. Yet I find the hardest thing is finding out how to jump in*. What thoughts should I share, what needs to stay locked up in my head so I don't get locked up for being crazy? What is provocative thought? What is ranting? What is soap-boxing? How does one create content that others will interact with? How do stay consistent in all of this?
*hence today's random post.
on time and life and stuff:
helped with a grade eight graduation last night. I'm still processing the funeral I officiated in Ottawa in May. I turned 36 at the end of May. Put the three together and I wonder how I have progressed from grade eight to now and where do I need to grow before I'm 97? What are the things that are personality traits and what are character weaknesses? Why is change so welcome in some areas of our lives and so difficult in others? What do we have control over and what do we not have control over?
on some of my Scripture study as of late:
I've been chewing on the book of Ephesians.
Chapter 3:16-17
16 I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. 17 Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. (NLT)
How much do I trust Jesus? What does that trust look like?
Was talking to one of the teachers the other night at the school. Her students have been given netbooks to study with. Most of her students don't see the potential of what kind of learning could happen with those machines. Nor do they see all that they could do with them. The class was to have made a presentation to play on the screen during their grad. It was clear that not a lot of effort was put into that presentation. I'm not trying to criticize, but to put it in perspective, it was black type on purple, which looked like an indigo kind of blue on the screen. Difficult to read, rather dull to look at. With even a modest amount of effort, that presentation could have been improved greatly.
Now, that might sound like I'm bashing here a bit, I think I do the same thing at times in my spiritual walk. I do the bare minimum to get by. I say to myself, that it was good enough for what I'm trying to do. Are the goals I have for myself high enough? How am I doing in pursuing those goals? What happens when I miss a goal?
I heard a line in a song a bit ago that said:
"It’s my habits that made my fingers weak, when my chances came I couldn’t grab them."-from the song "Train Song" by Listener. (You can listen to the "Train Song" here, I recommend trying the "original" version, which is numbered 5)
on how different people see the world:
sometimes I feel double minded in that I see that positive thinking and exerting effort to focus on the good can help move our lives forward. Conversely, there are times where just pushing forward trying to focus on good things (I mean good in the largest most positive sense of the word) feels hollow, as if it's ignoring all the people and things that are so broken in this world.
Maybe the road less travelled weaves between feeling the pain of the brokenness of this world and feeling the joy and hope of the gospel and of redemption. Which is easier said than done. More than that, we avoid the richness of experience, because the difference between those lows and those highs feel like too much to bear. So we do our best to live in the middle.
on photos:
I am enjoying taking pictures. I've been taking lots of pictures. Where I've been struggling is editing them in a timely fashion. Part of that is the ongoing technical challenge of all these files and finding solutions to sort them all out. Mostly though, my default state of disorganization extends even to my computer files. Although I'm better than I used to be.
on who I create content for:
if you have ever blogged, written a note for facebook or posted a picture on the web to share with people, you likely know that it's fun to see how other people react to what you are saying, creating and putting out there.
You can end up spending a lot of time looking at the number of comments or page hits, or views or whatever and less time thinking about the content.
For the record... all of my photos and all of my on-line writing is for me. It is a cathartic process for me to share what's on my heart and head and to get it beyond just my thoughts, and my journal. But I'm human. I think we all like to see people comment on things. I confess to be frustrated about the whole blogging thing because of a lack of response. I also realize that infrequent posting and long posts (like this one) make following along harder.
