Mary’s Journal
Odds are good Mary did not keep a journal.
Not on parchment, anyway.
In fact, as a girl in her middle teens living in Nazareth in days before we began to mark time in increments of “the year of our Lord,” it’s likely she didn’t even read or write.
But she did soak herself in some of those same practices that many of us who journal do: She pondered. She treasured. She observed and absorbed and processed.
Mary’d traveled quite the winding road since her engagement to Joseph.
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I’m not very good at Christmas
I Christmas-ified my header.
A paltry effort, I know. But it’s something.
I’m not very good at Christmas.
Not sure the reason, but it doesn’t come so easy. Seems for most, Christmas dances in amber glow. For me, the lighting seems more a bluish fluorescent. It can be a little twitchy and sometimes it makes that buzzing sound.
Perhaps my middle name is Ebenezer.
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Halloween’s Over — Take Off the Mask
My dad posts again to round out the series of the past week. His thoughts here relate to the Legends post from earlier in the week, so we’ll call it Part 1.5. If you missed Dad’s earlier guest spot, you can pick it up here.
Meanwhile, Delilah is just dying to cut Samson’s hair, so I’ll be back in Judges 16 this week if you care to join me.
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by Paul Willingham
Rambo and Homer. Hmmmm! Superman and Casper Milquetoast. Babe Ruth and Casey (at the Bat). Sgt. York and Sgt. Bilko. The James Gang and the Apple Dumpling Gang. Rambo I know, having watched “First Blood” several times. Rambo II and Rambo III fell sort of flat, as most sequels do. I know who Homer Simpson is but have never watched even 5 minutes of “The Simpsons”. But I digress. My TV/movie viewing preferences are not germane here. What you were really saying as one wag put it long ago, we want to be legends but we only end up being “legends in our own mind”.
When I was in college, an annual event was the “Speech Banquet”. After the meal, the program consisted of speeches by several students. The speakers (mostly male students as they were pursuing careers as preachers) on the program were selected by the Speech Professor. I agreed to serve as toastmaster for the event and thus escaped preparing and delivering a speech. Following years of tradition established by those who had gone before me, plus my own idea of what an emcee does, I introduced the various speakers with a short and what I hoped was a good joke (a good joke being defined as one that folks actually laugh at).
I introduced one of the students (We’ll call him Bob) as follows: Bob had a date with his long-time girl friend. When he arrived at the door and rang her bell, she appeared at the door and greeted him with the question that every male dreads. “Bob, do you notice any thing different about me?”
What to Do with Our Hearts Online
When I was in college, a good friend and roommate stopped talking to me for a couple of weeks. When I realized it (only because she pointed it out to me), I asked why. Turns out she’d shared with me that she was struggling with some unresolved anger and my response was unsatisfying.
The offending conversation went something like this:
Her: I’m struggling with some unresolved anger.
Me: Really? Hmm. Get rid of it.
Seems I then moved on to something much more compelling, probably strategies of nuclear deterrence if I remember myself right.
I was puzzled.
How could such an incisive, definitive and obviously helpful response have made her stop talking to me?
She described a problem; I proposed a solution. And a darned good one, I thought.
Book open, book closed.
Where’s the problem?
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My Dad Reflects on Crunching the Numbers
I had an unexpected and pleasant surprise in my inbox this morning: a guest post from my dad, reflecting on some of the discussion we’ve had here the last few days. I know, I promised Part 3 on confession and self-disclosure today. It’s still coming. Consider this Part 2.5. You can pick up Part 1 and Part 2 to get up to speed.
When I think of what’s made me what I am today, it’s one part my dad, one part my mom, one part being beat up by my brother, one part having a girly older sister, one part reading a lot of books, one part being pursued for years by the love of my life, one part . . . well, a whole lot of parts God worked together to come up with a little something called me. But I was highly blessed to have a mom and dad who taught me the good stuff from day one and lived it out where I could see it.
So I’m happy to break my dad out of the comment box for you today. Ignore his flattery (he’s my dad, what do you expect?) and just move straight to the meat of it.
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by Paul Willingham
Fascinating discussion. You have the uncanny ability to take mundane things like pocket lint and Show and Tell and make us think. It is interesting that you posted on this subject this week. Yesterday, I started putting into words something that came to me in the car and it sort of ties into what you are discussing here. My opening lines were going to be the words of an old hymn that popped into my head while driving to Grandpa’s last week.
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Show and Tell
No surprise to me, Part 2 didn’t go where I thought it would. I promised a look at self-disclosure and confession. I ended up at self-promotion. You can read Part 1 here. Part 3 to come.
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When my boys started kindergarten I was in for a rude awakening.
Oh, I was fine with them going off to school and all. But with kindergarten came the dawn of homework.
And at that age, let’s be fair. Homework is for parents. Not for kids.
It seemed that every day they had school, they had Show and Tell. And Show and Tell always meant work for us, scurrying around at bed time when we were nearly ready to collapse, looking for the perfect item for their next big moment on stage.
If perchance we forgot to prepare, the boys weren’t above reaching into their pants pockets for a chunk of lint and then jumping up on the platform to extol its function and beauty.
They loved Show and Tell.
But you can bet that sitting at their short-legged table, on a tiny chair, there was a smallish kindergarten classmate wondering why, when that dreaded moment arrived each day, she couldn’t make herself even smaller. Why the ground couldn’t open and swallow her little self whole.
She wondered why, after tossing pennies in the fountain, did she never awake to find she finally had that invisibility superpower she always wished for.
At least that’s how I remember Show and Tell.
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Legends
If you were a young child living in a cardboard shack in the interior of a South American country, it’s likely you’d heard of a North American movie legend or two.
But never venturing beyond the confines of your dusty shanty town, you probably wouldn’t know Rambo from a redheaded Swede.
So in the early 1990s when Lane and I traveled to just such an Argentine barrio to show the Jesus film, it came as no surprise that many of the children mistook the first big Yankee they’d ever seen for their hero, Rambo.
The kids spoke no English. Lane spoke limited Spanish.
Their interactions, when he wasn’t showing off his proficiency at asking about a bathroom, usually amounted to kids squealing Rambo! and throwing their arms around his neck every time they saw him, and Lane returning their hugs and flashing his trademark grin, two international signs for friendly.
All in all, everybody was happy. The kids had a real live action hero. Lane had an instant fan club.
And Sylvester Stallone was none the wiser.
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1 may be the loneliest number, but 7 is the hardest
When I win my Academy Award (which will come as a complete surprise because I have no connection with the motion picture industry), they will not need to start playing the make-her-stop-talking-and-get-her-off-the-stage music to get me to quickly wind up my flowery speech. I’m pretty sure I’ll be standing there behind the podium blank faced muttering something like, “Umm . . . how’d this happen?”
No Academy Award to contend with, thankfully, but Jennifer over at Quail and Manna and More Than Just Adam’s Rib was kind enough this week to send the Kreativ Blogger award my way. That kind of left me standing here behind my own little podium saying, “Umm . . . how’d this happen?”
See, I still get pretty surprised every day when anyone shows up to read. So to have Jennifer take note in the first place (she’s smart, and funny, and insightful and loves Jesus), and then stick my name in the company of two of my favorite bloggers out there (and frankly, among the very best), Getting Down with Jesus and What I Learned Today, well, it kind of just makes my head spin. I’m humbled, and not just a little bewildered.
There are rules to this award, rules I’m having trouble following. First one is easy, though. I linked back to Jennifer. Happy to do that.
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Good Grief! How Many Blogs Does a Person Need?
A few years ago we crammed into tightly packed bleachers at our high school with friends to watch the Junior/Senior Prom grand march. It seemed like a good place for a church youth director to be, cheering on our high school kids who’d cleaned themselves up and put on a pretty good parade of dresses and tuxedos.
As one of the couples promenaded down the aisle, we spied a young lady who was more likely to be seen in sweats on a basketball court than in a formal gown with glamorous hair coiffed a good six inches over her head.
On seeing this, our friend’s young daughter blurted out, “Good grief! How much hair does a person need?”
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Housekeeping – hopefully the last word on the move
I don’t like to do housekeeping.
Talking about it is almost as little fun.
So I’ll make this quick.
Email Subscription: Subscribing by email is back. Click on the “Subscribe to A Different Story by Email” link (catchy, I know) in the upper right corner. You won’t receive an email at the time a new post is published but should receive an email sometime each day when there is an update. Not flawless, but it’s an option.
Feeds: I had to update my own RSS and Blogger subscriptions (yes, I subscribe to my own . . . to make sure I know what you’re getting . . . it’s not all narcissistic) to get them to pick up the feeds correctly. Same address, but you may need to delete and resubscribe in order to stay current if you subscribe in a reader or Blogger. Of course, if you’re still waiting for your reader or Blogger to update you, well, you won’t read this anyway.
Blogrolls: If you have A Different Story listed in your blogroll (a million thanks for that) and include a feed for the most current post, that may need to be updated as well.
Thanks all for coming along. I appreciate all of you and your encouragement.
Why We Blog: Blame It On the Grasshoppers
Just down the road and to the east at Getting Down with Jesus, Jennifer tossed out a challenge to consider the question “Why We Blog” and post on it this week. (Unsolicited plug for Jennifer: Stop reading this and go read her today instead. You may wonder about me, but you’ll have no problem at all understanding why she blogs. Amazing God-seeking heart rushes out every time she uncaps her pen.)
The timing of her invitation is good for me.
I just passed the 200-entry mark (without a lot of fanfare, thanks, since I completely failed to notice).
The soon approaching expiration of my domain and hosting contract remind me that I’m nearing the end of a full year of writing out in the light of day.
And I’m in the process of moving A Different Story to a new home (at once frightening, painful and tedious — I’ll be whining about it in an upcoming post or two if I ever get Gideon out of my hair).
All of that makes it a very good time for me to reflect on Why.
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In a word, I blog because of the grasshoppers.
Yes, grasshoppers.
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Is Anonymous Your First Name or Last Name?
I looked up from my notes during our weekly staff meeting to read my pastor’s expression before I answered. Eyebrow up. Head cocked a little. He leaned back in his chair behind the desk.
Swell.
Someone had called.
“We went to A&W,” I said. It wasn’t as though it were a secret. “A lot of families were out of town this week, so only three kids showed. We thought it would be a good night to take a walk to the drive-in and hang out. They got our full attention, and we got to know them a little better. We loved it.”
“I got a call saying some people are concerned about this kind of thing,” he explained. “Youth group happens in the youth room. “
Who called? How many people are concerned? Which ones?
“I appreciate the concern,” I told him. “If someone else calls, be sure to remind them of my phone number.”
The next day, someone else called, pretending to wonder what the young people did on Sunday night. “Some people are concerned . . .”
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2009/12/06 | Categories: Blogging | Tags: admonishment, anonymous comments, Blogging, encouragement | 26 Comments »