Tag Archives: Musings

Putting it into practice personally…

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Today, it hit me. I normally take Fridays off – it hit me that for the next couple of weeks, my Fridays (& all/most of Saturdays) will be occupied with work…

The processing begins… what about my rest day? what about the Sabbath? What do I do now that I have realized that I’ve scheduled away my day off? I have a problem taking a mulligan on this one – part of it is because I believe that the Sabbath is not just a good idea or a suggestion, but an obedience to a way of life that God has laid out for us. Not just going back to the September-December series on a Revolution of the Soul but because there is a deeper issue here: how will I put into practice this principle of obedience? It’s not negotiable, & yet I find myself struggling internally to find a justification for “just this once.” (Though it’s twice actually.) Don’t know that there is a simple, easy, quick answer to this one.

Why Girls are different than Boys #1

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Taking a page from Shontell’s “Why I Like Mike” blog series, I’ll be posting from time to time on the joys of having a daughter. For me, growing up as 1 of 4 boys, there was little to no experience or understanding of the world of the Girl. Being married has provided a little insight, but hey, grown up girls are different than little ones. Mostly.

I understand boys – so when we had 2, I didn’t have any issues knowing how to deal with & parent them… part of me has taken great joy in mystifying & amazing the Bean with how I can predict how the boys (esp. Joey) will act – I’m not a mind reader, its just that boys aren’t too complex, if you get my drift.

Girls are different. They look in the mirror all the time. They watch their expressions, when they cry, laugh, talk, you name it. I continually find myself amazed at the attitude, observational skills, personality, interests, & sheer emotional spectrum that my Weezer regularly functions in.

Which leads me to “Why Girls are Different than Boys #1” – the Weez is looking in the full-length mirror WHILE doing her homework. All of the sudden, she jumps off her chair & hikes her pants up. Way up. To the skies. She looked like Jimmy Cagney’s character in “Angels with Dirty Faces” when he wore his pants up to the middle of his chest. (All the cool guys did this, I’m told, even Cary Grant, which is the topic of another blog.)

I have to ask: “What are you doing?”

Her reply: “I’m trying to look like Mrs. Smith.”

(Mrs. Smith is a teacher at the Weez’s school.)

Syndromes…

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A report from The Times – London

A 2006 Church of England report warned that disagreeable congregants, together with the pressures of the church’s “feudal system” bureaucracy, were turning priests harshly negative and creating an “irritable clergy syndrome.” One of the report’s authors told The Times of London in December that priests are bothered by “having to be nice all the time to everyone, even when confronted with extremes of nastiness,” such as aggressive and neurotic parishioners.

I wonder what the symptoms of “irritable clergy syndrome” are…

Lies, Damn Lies, & Statistics or Why Christians scare people in this & other countries…

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A snippet:

Evangelicals Behaving Badly with Statistics
Mistakes were made.

by Christian Smith

American evangelicals, who profess to be committed to Truth, are among the worst abusers of simple descriptive statistics, which claim to represent the truth about reality, of any group I have ever seen. At stake in this misuse are evangelicals’ own integrity, credibility with outsiders, and effectiveness in the world. It is an issue worth making a fuss over. And so I write…

And

Why do evangelicals recurrently abuse statistics? My observation is that they are usually trying desperately to attract attention and raise people’s concern in order to mobilize resources and action for some cause. In a world awash in information and burdened by myriad problems, some evangelicals may justify the problematic misuse of statistics to get people to pay attention to what they think are good causes. But this is inexcusable. Such desperation, alarmism, and sloppiness reflect the worst, not the best, in evangelicalism…

Read the whole article HERE

You can also revisit what THIS BLOG said about the rampant alarmism last January – if you get lost, read the day one, day two & day three posts.

I thiink I’ll do a series on this one. Alarmism. Statistical abuse. Christian Marketing. Might be fun.

Incompetence, Part Deux…

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Yesterday’s post got me to thinking about another area where somehow, someway, people completely miss the boat – and don’t have a clue that they have missed it. What is it I’m speaking of? Thanks for asking.

Some people are delusional when it comes to describing themselves, or at least qualities & traits that they believe are true about them. Only after observing them for a period of time is it found that in reality, they are as far from how they described themselves as the East is from the West.

An example, taken from scoey’s life as a PERS employee – a person describes themself as:
-a person with an eye for detail,
-a linear, patient, methodical, task oriented thinker
-great at problem solving

Sounds like just the kind of person that you’d want to have on a job where lots of information is processed, where accuracy is not only a good idea but is an absolute requirement, & where certain tasks have to be performed over & over, quickly, and with uncanny accuracy… however, the individual turns out to be nothing like they’ve described themself. First, they were dyslexic, (could that be a problem in a job where alphabetizing paper/100K files is the #1 job duty?) Second, they couldn’t figure out WHY a File Clerk 1 would be required to spend all that time filing in the file room; Last, they don’t notice that it could be a problem to take hundreds of files every day & hide them in the supply room. And the coat room. And in big piles behind their desk. Ultimately, their inability to accurately assess themself ends up costing them a state job (which are hard to lose, BTW,) & also creating mounds & mounds of work for everyone around them. The coup d’grat was when they filed a complaint against the supervisor that fired them for wrongful termination.

I’ve got a mound of other examples to choose from, but for the sake of brevity will stop here to ponder:

How does one person get so deluded? Is there hope for the lost individual? Can they be brought back from the world of make-believe that they live in? If so, how?