Coming in 2009: The People Speak

Saw this today and am now looking forward to seeing the finished work. Looks amazing.

Serendipitous Connection

At the Ice Cream with an Author event I had an interesting experience. As we arrived in the meeting room there was a woman making up name tags for each person. She looked familiar to me, and when I saw her name tag and she introduced herself as Freear, I felt like I already knew that was her name. Obviously with a name as unusual as Freear, it's not likely that I've met many people with that name. But it struck no surprise with me. I felt like I knew her.

All through the event I kept looking at her and wondering how I knew her. Initially I thought she worked at the library, which would make it easy to understand how I know her. But, she wasn't a library staff member. She was there as a good friend to the author that was speaking.

After the sit-and-listen part of the evening was done, Freear and I gravitated toward each other. I told her that I felt like I knew her from somewhere, and she told me she was thinking the same thing about me. We reviewed the various ways that we might have known each other, but there were no intersections that we could figure out.

Still, it felt like we had some sort of connection, which still has me thinking.

She has a very peaceful vibe about her, and seemed like one of those people that you should make sure you try to keep in your life. I didn't want to wig her out by acting all "hey do you want to be my friend" or whatever. But I have a way to contact her, so I'm gonna.

Whether we've met before, or just had some sort of easy connection, I believe life's too short to let it slip by.

Timely Words from Searching For God Knows What

I've been slowly working my way through Donald Miller's book Searching for God Knows What. He has so many good things to say.

In the midst of all the political stuff going on right now, I wanted to highlight a few things he says in the book:

"In my opinion,
if you hate somebody because they are different from you,
you'd best get on your knees and repent
until you can say you love them,
until you have gotten your soul right with Christ.

I can't say this clearly enough:
if we are preaching morality without Christ,
and using war rhetoric to communicate a battle mentality,
we are fighting on Satan's side.
This battle we are in is a battle against the principalities of darkness,
not against people who are different from us.
In war you shoot the enemy, not the hostage."



"The reason I bring this up is to plead with evangelicals
to return to the sort of call Christ has given us,
to obey Him
and experience intimacy with Him
through sharing our faith,
loving our enemies,
serving and feeding the poor and hungry directly,
and to stop showing off about how moral we are
and how that makes us better than other people.
I assure you, once we leave the fight over our country's future
and enter the spiritual battle for the hearts and souls of the lost,
the church will flourish,
and the kingdom of God will grow.
God is not in the business of brokering for power over a nation;
He is in the business of loving the unloved
and pulling sheep out of crags and bushes."

What would life look like if we followed the Bible's rules?

This guy did an experiment for a year where he 9tried to) obey every rule in the Bible. Interesting!

The contempt shown to parents of large families

I found this interesting article today by a Rabbi about the attitude in the West toward large families. He makes many good points. You can read the article here.

Addition By Subtraction

In the September issue of Body + Soul magazine there was an interesting article in the Life Coach column about being able to add to your life (make your life better/more of the things you want for your life) by subtracting the things that are cluttering it up.

I've been doing some thinking about this issue, and trying to figure out what needless clutter is in my life. I have a lot of physical clutter, which I'm taking out of here one bag and box at a time. But I'm also thinking through reducing activity clutter and mental/emotional clutter (my Plagues and Nuisances list, for one).

This morning I found out about a conference call that was recorded by an online business contact of mine, and many of the things she talks about on this recording dovetail nicely with this Addition by Subtraction concept. Although some of what she talks about has to do with being an entrepreneur, there is MUCH to be gained for anyone looking for more balance in their life, particularly if you have children or homeschool. You can go here to listen. Just scroll down a short way until you see where it says Click Play to Hear Mary Jo's
Call About the Course. It's probably 30-40 minutes long, but you can pause it and come back to it if you don't have a chunk of time to devote to listening. I got a whole page of notes and a bunch of ideas that I think will be a big help to me!

Another recent organization inspiration came to me here. I am a list maker, but I also lose my lists. Constantly. In the past I set up one of Flylady's Control Journals, and it quickly became a big, heavy thing to carry around, which was not user friendly. This simple idea of having a 3-ring binder with my menu list, places to jot down what I need to get next time I go to the store, errands to do, calls to be made, things to mention to my husband, etc. has encouraged me so much!

I already have a spot on my desk where our huge Sonlight binder lives, so that I can see what needs to be done next. So, I think it's realistic that I could also have a place for a home organization binder to live as well.

Now the trick is to find time (and paper....anybody have any loose leaf paper???) and put it together. I'll get there....eventually.

Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith

Have you seen this interesting article about Mother Teresa?