A Mrs. Baird's bread truck went through an intersection ahead of me today, with a simple sign: AROMA THERAPY - Mrs. Baird's Bread. I remember turning off Central in Dallas, going toward SMU, driving through the most incredible AROMA in the whole world. An entire plant of baking bread.
Early mornings at Lamar U. in Beaumont meant marching band, always in a practice field exactly down-wind of the Texas Coffee Company, roasting!
You know, if they could ever make a coffee that would taste as good as a freshly opened can SMELLS, a fortune could be made.
Non-verbal communication can be among the most powerful things in the world. It brings us non-debatable truths, in every language, time-less.
Consider it: aromas, night-time sky scenes, morning fog over a lake, the compelling rhythm of a high-school marching band. Take a late-night "sit-out" and watch the sky. Go more modern and browse some of the photographic blogs. Experience again the power of non-verbal communication, and open up that part of your mind for a while.
While you're at it, bake (or find newly baked) some good bread - - - it's aroma-therapy that's good for the soul.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Friday, October 29, 2010
Dogs Don't Do Divorce
Close to my place in the world, there is a visiting Beagle, once a month, for an undetermined number of days. He stays in the back yard, calls out lonesome at the fence, and is generally ignored. I'm trying to calculate the pattern, but it's about 4 days, once a month.
He is an award in a divorce. The woman who "won" the issue doesn't do anything with friend Beagle. Doesn't play, doesn't take him for walks. The whole point is that she "won". In the divorce, so I hear, she won shared custody of the family pet, purely to deprive the "loser" of the right to the sole custody of the dog.
Makes you wonder what "win" and "lose" mean, doesn't it?
Dogs just don't understand such business, I think. Maybe that is why some notable or other says, from time to time, I do prefer dogs to people.
God created us and dogs, both. Maybe there are times when God says, all other things being equal, that He prefers dogs to people. Happily and hopefully, it is a passing feeling with God. But humans often take more mercy than dogs to maintain, it seems.
He is an award in a divorce. The woman who "won" the issue doesn't do anything with friend Beagle. Doesn't play, doesn't take him for walks. The whole point is that she "won". In the divorce, so I hear, she won shared custody of the family pet, purely to deprive the "loser" of the right to the sole custody of the dog.
Makes you wonder what "win" and "lose" mean, doesn't it?
Dogs just don't understand such business, I think. Maybe that is why some notable or other says, from time to time, I do prefer dogs to people.
God created us and dogs, both. Maybe there are times when God says, all other things being equal, that He prefers dogs to people. Happily and hopefully, it is a passing feeling with God. But humans often take more mercy than dogs to maintain, it seems.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
A Strong Road
Reading today followed a new thread: Jesus' Sermon on the Mount to Leo Tolstoy to Ghandi. Tolstoy's treatment of the Golden Rule is powerful, and true to the sources. As a professor once said to a young seminarian (me): "to follow and attempt to live out the Sermon on the Mount is a vastly humbling experience."
Is it possible? Probably. Has it been done often? No. Francis of Assisi, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, some lesser saints known only to their contemporaries and companions, perhaps.
But what do we do with it when we cannot actually do it? Even with prayer? Do we walk away from it and consider it no more? Or do we hold its ideals in tension with whoever and whatever we are?
In the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us that the house that survived the storm did not survive by superior construction or by the builder's skill. It survived because it had been founded on the rock. Maybe that is good enough to live by; good enough to lay aside the tension long enough to sleep well; good enough to thank the crafter of that Sermon for the generosity of His love, which maintains the foundation which he lays, while forgiving the clumsiness of the builder of a life/house upon it.
We all make conclusions.......... that's mine.
B
Is it possible? Probably. Has it been done often? No. Francis of Assisi, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, some lesser saints known only to their contemporaries and companions, perhaps.
But what do we do with it when we cannot actually do it? Even with prayer? Do we walk away from it and consider it no more? Or do we hold its ideals in tension with whoever and whatever we are?
In the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us that the house that survived the storm did not survive by superior construction or by the builder's skill. It survived because it had been founded on the rock. Maybe that is good enough to live by; good enough to lay aside the tension long enough to sleep well; good enough to thank the crafter of that Sermon for the generosity of His love, which maintains the foundation which he lays, while forgiving the clumsiness of the builder of a life/house upon it.
We all make conclusions.......... that's mine.
B
The Letter Man's Abundance
Once, he'd been a pilot, traveled a lot of the world, and now he still loved what he remembered. Breathing problems confined him to his house, so he began to connect with people around the world through letters.
Mr. Wolf bought a magazine one day, and through a letter to the editor, began correspondence with two people from Europe. Then, five. Realizing he would actually get a response, he expanded his writing to world leaders. It was exciting when the first response came. Chiang Kai-Shek, nationalist leader in China and opponent of the Communists, picked up the correspondence.
Regular mail meant a slow pace, and even air-mail was hardly what we experience today, but the correspondence continued. Madam Chiang Kai-Shek joined in the letter writing. When Mr. Wolf included in a letter that the church in his small town wanted to build a new fellowship hall, Madam Chiang Kai-Shek volunteered a gift to help.
A large package arrived one day, carrying a multi-panel silk screen, with a message of good will in large Chinese characters, beautifully scripted and decorated. Madam Chiang Kai-Shek was an artist, and had painted this for her letter-writing friend in a tiny Texas town, advising that he could sell it to help pay for the new building.
People are sometimes wise, you know. They decided that the better way would be to frame her fine work, and display it in the new building. Much better than selling it.
And so, in a tiny town that would raise no expectations if you drove through, a disabled man who wrote letters brought beauty from a well-known and beautifully artistic lady, to decorate a church fellowship hall.
Sometimes life "fulfills". Like the abundance of life that Jesus taught. Isn't it a wonder when it happens?
Mr. Wolf bought a magazine one day, and through a letter to the editor, began correspondence with two people from Europe. Then, five. Realizing he would actually get a response, he expanded his writing to world leaders. It was exciting when the first response came. Chiang Kai-Shek, nationalist leader in China and opponent of the Communists, picked up the correspondence.
Regular mail meant a slow pace, and even air-mail was hardly what we experience today, but the correspondence continued. Madam Chiang Kai-Shek joined in the letter writing. When Mr. Wolf included in a letter that the church in his small town wanted to build a new fellowship hall, Madam Chiang Kai-Shek volunteered a gift to help.
A large package arrived one day, carrying a multi-panel silk screen, with a message of good will in large Chinese characters, beautifully scripted and decorated. Madam Chiang Kai-Shek was an artist, and had painted this for her letter-writing friend in a tiny Texas town, advising that he could sell it to help pay for the new building.
People are sometimes wise, you know. They decided that the better way would be to frame her fine work, and display it in the new building. Much better than selling it.
And so, in a tiny town that would raise no expectations if you drove through, a disabled man who wrote letters brought beauty from a well-known and beautifully artistic lady, to decorate a church fellowship hall.
Sometimes life "fulfills". Like the abundance of life that Jesus taught. Isn't it a wonder when it happens?
Thursday, October 21, 2010
An Exit Strategy
When you leave faith, where do you go?
A columnist was pondering this, and set me to wondering. His spin was that as Americans have tended to leave religion, they've gone to other first-priority substitutes.
Leaving? Well, the pollsters have a definition, in place for lots of years, that "regular church attendance", in their question/response protocols, means once every six weeks. Not exactly a measurement of putting church at the top of the list!
So, presuming that America is becoming LESS religious, where do people go? Some drift off into paranoia, the mild sort that picks new causes and projects based on "what frightens me". Some drift into materialism, some into nationalism (one of the oldest religions).
But, every time someone drifts "out of faith", human nature seems to require us to find a substitute. We're hard-wired to be religious, anyway.
So, in our time, like in all times, someone may leave "church" for whatever reason, but just end up replacing faith with a new "object of their devotion".
Consider: if a person builds a blend of paranoia, materialism, and nationalism, two things become apparent.
First, this is a "hot" blend, always passionate! Second, haven't we seen this before?
Seems to me that we might exit the church, but it is very hard for human nature to ever become NON-religious. And that leads to an open question ......................................................
A columnist was pondering this, and set me to wondering. His spin was that as Americans have tended to leave religion, they've gone to other first-priority substitutes.
Leaving? Well, the pollsters have a definition, in place for lots of years, that "regular church attendance", in their question/response protocols, means once every six weeks. Not exactly a measurement of putting church at the top of the list!
So, presuming that America is becoming LESS religious, where do people go? Some drift off into paranoia, the mild sort that picks new causes and projects based on "what frightens me". Some drift into materialism, some into nationalism (one of the oldest religions).
But, every time someone drifts "out of faith", human nature seems to require us to find a substitute. We're hard-wired to be religious, anyway.
So, in our time, like in all times, someone may leave "church" for whatever reason, but just end up replacing faith with a new "object of their devotion".
Consider: if a person builds a blend of paranoia, materialism, and nationalism, two things become apparent.
First, this is a "hot" blend, always passionate! Second, haven't we seen this before?
Seems to me that we might exit the church, but it is very hard for human nature to ever become NON-religious. And that leads to an open question ......................................................
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
The Other Lesson from Earl
He came to Lindale, TX from Jacksonville, TX, where he had engineered the wooden-box factory system, translating hand work into fast and accurate automated production. Allen Canning Company brought him in to rework their production line. He liked to tell how he began.
First day on the job, Earl took a folding chair and a legal pad, and moved slowly along the line. He listened to the machinery, the wheels and bearings, every part that moved a can or touched one. On day two, he went back, walking the line with the engineering drawings, listening to the way each part passed a can down the line. With a well-trained ear, he heard the pauses and the tensions, the grabs and the slips. The process was repeated until Earl knew the rhythm and timing of the machinery very well.
First you listen, THEN you modify.
Good lesson to learn early, specially if you want to succeed! There are lots of "machines" in life. Production lines, schools, churches, families, all have bumps and whistles, groans and strains, smooth spots and conflicts. Earl said, "You have to listen first." Whether you're making baskets, canning vegetables, growing a family, or shaping up a team, listen first.
We've all seen instances of a highly skilled "engineer" of one sort or another, trained, equipped, eager to work, but who never learned to listen. Frustrates everyone. But the listener always wins the day and the long, long run.
The best blessing I know? God listens! It all works better when God's children, who want to do His pleasure, learn how to listen, too. If I listen, and you listen, then that is the 'thing-in-common" that over-rides all of the differences that might obstruct our friendship. And THAT is no small deal. Think so?
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Finding New Turf
One of Houston's leading neuro-surgeons, David went to work on morning, knowing that he had a mid-morning appointment for a report on a recent medical test. He went to his friend, and got the word, short and simple. "You are grounded, cancel appointments now." There was a tumor, a brain tumor, that would directly and negatively affect his ability to work.
By early afternoon, patients had been given to other specialists. By the next day, the office was closed. Sudden. But David had two loved projects: 1) Medical Bridges, a medical supply recycling effort that drew in supplies from Houston's Medical Center and carried those supplies to medical missionaries around the globe. And 2) fine woodworking. A man with phenomenally skilled hands had a work shop and a large collection of fine woods.
After his medical practice was suddenly closed, recycling picked up speed tremendously. Around the world, supplies went to hospitals and doctors making so much possible. And from his workshop, an amazing flow of really beautiful carved and turned wooden pieces.
Trite to say, but when a door closes, even a big door, God opens another. Or maybe two.
Have you seen something like that? Let me know.
B
By early afternoon, patients had been given to other specialists. By the next day, the office was closed. Sudden. But David had two loved projects: 1) Medical Bridges, a medical supply recycling effort that drew in supplies from Houston's Medical Center and carried those supplies to medical missionaries around the globe. And 2) fine woodworking. A man with phenomenally skilled hands had a work shop and a large collection of fine woods.
After his medical practice was suddenly closed, recycling picked up speed tremendously. Around the world, supplies went to hospitals and doctors making so much possible. And from his workshop, an amazing flow of really beautiful carved and turned wooden pieces.
Trite to say, but when a door closes, even a big door, God opens another. Or maybe two.
Have you seen something like that? Let me know.
B
Saturday, October 16, 2010
The Chief and Social Security
He explained a lot to me.
I asked the chief why Deer Park was so tough on speed limits. His response: "We like to meet people at that level of infraction! If we say 'HI' at that level, we've discovered there are some who will just take their criminal inclinations outside our city. It works."
A very gentle man, very polite, and he staffed the department with well-trained officers, well-disciplined, but very able to be "in charge" when they needed to be. Result: an extremely low crime rate - the word was out: "don't play it out in Deer Park."
Life should always be so direct. Even with Social Security. More and more depend on it as a primary source of retirement income. (Whether that's wise or not is another question.) And for decades, the politics have laid out the script: solve this problem, but at no cost to ME.
1. Say how terrible the problem is financially, and it is my opponent's fault!
2. Replace the incumbent, but NEVER EVER propose the simple fix that would actually eradicate the problem.
3. Stir, shake, and repeat (unless you're the incumbent, in which case blame the new challenger).
I wonder when, in the name of social responsibility, someone will simply say: "We'll balance this with a reduction in benefits and an increase in tax rates until it is solvent." It's clear the demographics have changed, the economic realities have changed, the number of workers per retiree have changed, and the former times will come no more. So, why not fix it now?
Why does it have to be daring to be truthful and accountable? Seems simpler to just do the deed.
Friday, October 15, 2010
David and Goliath
Here's a story that made a ripple!
And on NPR yesterday, the story you might have expected: a foreclosure stalled when the attorney simply said: "Show me the note." Seems you can't collect on a lien you don't actually HAVE! And the bundled and re-sold and re-sold mortgages of the housing crisis are a mess.
A BIG BANK can shudder and grow very silent if it appears that the mortgage-based cash flow could suddenly stop. Stop as in dead!
Basics matter, in banking, in huge financial schemes, just like in cooking the eggs for breakfast. There's a story in there for faithful, mission-minded theological folks, as well. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do! Just keeping things pacified, keeping people happy at all costs, doesn't serve the mission.
You ever wonder about that?
B
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
The Maya Code
Someone casually asked: "Does this calendar go through 2012?", a laughing remembrance of the possible Maya prediction of the end of the world.
By evening, I had located a Nova documentary called "Cracking the Maya Code". Scholars over a hundred year period had slowly moved to decipher the Maya writings on tons of monuments in the three major cities. First dates, then calendars, then family stories, then histories of the conflicted nations and city-states, and finally narratives that portrayed the Maya as rather ordinary people with extraordinary skills in art and communication.
So what's it all about as we uncover the realities of the Maya? Mystic prophets of the end-times? Not so much. Ordinary people in a complex culture? Yes. Made more mysterious by persecution, book-burning, and a total, brutal suppression of language and culture for over 400 years; which is more of a critique of Spanish Christianity "purging the devil" than of Mayan culture.
Reflecting: what IS the role of disciples of Jesus? Should we be the New Crusade to wipe out what we don't understand? Should we convert at the point of a sword? Should we be respectful in conversation as we learn? Should we be strategic evangelists seeking to love, honor AND persuade folks to draw close to Jesus?
Seems to me that the old "wipe out the enemy" (old world) strategy has no usefulness at all today. We're back to the oldest option for disciples - to love new acquaintances into faith in Jesus. Seems like that's well-recommended! Even on high authority.
Human Nature's Hard-Wired Reach for God
An early morning surprise on NPR: the stories of people willing to die for their musical expressions, often totally unseen by anyone outside their own countries. Oppressed and often silenced, they share their music underground, expressing religion in opposition to rulers.
Much of the world is caught up in the Sunni/Shiite struggle for the heart and leadership of Islam. And, like an underground aquifer flowing out of sight, there is the music of a different passion.
http://mideastunes.com/ opens a window. The majority of the middle eastern world is under the age of 25. The musical expression becomes actually nothing less than a religion itself, so passionate that some are willing to risk death to perform it, and to listen to it.
Familiar to our ears? Probably not. Traditional religious behavior, in a deep sense, absolutely! Does this have anything at all to do with God? Without a doubt!
The highest and most grand proclamation of the New Testament is that God loves the world. The whole thing. Not JUST my part. Whether it is the best-informed or the least informed, the human spirit that reaches out for Him pleases Him. Whether that reach agrees with ME is probably of no concern to God at all; it agrees with HIM passionately.
Mid-East Tunes. What an unexpected spot to launch a discovery!
Monday, October 11, 2010
I just posted on another blog I write, called NewParable. Told an old family story about watching my grandfather sharpen a razor blade - - he'd use them for weeks before he'd replace one. The word "Gillette" was in my text.
I published it, and returned to the editing screen.............. and there on the margin was this:
Whatever I type, there's an automated reader! If I send an e-mail, an advertising mechanism has an ad for me before I finish typing. It's a weird world, friend.
And in this world of too-much help, all of us need to focus on making up our OWN mind, marching to the beat of the RIGHT drummer, and giving VALUE to the REAL values of life.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
The Guide
In Budapest, she took up her little banner and led us from the bus to the patriotic Hero's Square, and began. At once, we realized that our guide was NOT politically neutral, intended to hit LOTS of "hot buttons" and was passionately patriotic.
As we toured squares and churches, we asked each other, "I wonder what faith our guide holds?"
Bit by bit, as we weighed the conversation, she talked about the decline of the church, and the heritage days of shamanism. Soon, the opinion began to firm.
From a Catholic family, raised during the strictest days of Communism, never much to practice Catholicism, intensely patriotic with a love for Hungary's older heritage..........she had a deep respect for shamanism. And what religious element continued within her materialism was that ancient thread.
The individual and community spiritualism in Hungary that endured the barbarians, the Huns, the Romans, the Turks, the Holy Roman Empire, the Nazis, the Communists, and now endured modern materialism took the shape of the "old reliable" and surfaced in her conversations.
She might only pray when she needed to, but when that happened, it seemed clear that it would be in the framework of the old gods.
In our time, the football coach might say: "We gonna dance with who brung us." In every time, people go with what they trust. In our culture, materialism seems to be winning the day, with a polite nod to the Christian vocabulary, but material to the bone! In a culture,like Hungary, that has been tossed from one set of absolutes to another, one of the systems will win.
So, the question: for her, who has every good reason to trust nothing OTHER than shamanism, does God turn away from her or still do His very best to love HER? She'll never use the LANGUAGE of either church or mosque, BUT..........................................
And Jesus said: "I have other sheep not of this fold..........."
A very provocative short statement in John's Gospel............................
Judge? Nope. Just do my best to walk by the light given to me.......................
And wonder the BIGGEST question for disciples.................... am I being trustworthy in the sight of those around me??????
Bryan
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