dual personalities

Category: Spirituality

April 12, 2019

Hallowed be thy name

by chuckofish

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We are almost to Holy Week! I have been terribly remiss and unfocused in my Lenten endeavors (or lack thereof.)

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Palm Sunday is this Sunday! I am not the narrator this year in our reading of the Passion Narrative. 😭 No, I am back in the bit player ranks–a “priest”. 😭 C’est la vie.

But on the bright side, Sunday night we have tickets to see Ben Hur (1959) on the Big Screen, which should be awesome.

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Let’s toast that and a return to focusing on what’s important.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.
Prone to leave the God I love.
Here’s my heart, oh, take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

(Robert Robinson 1757)

2 Comments
April 3, 2019

Quietness of heart

by chuckofish

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“Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord, where I can go in and shut the door, and kneel to my Father in secret, and am at peace as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and above is trouble.”
― Andrew Murray

Sixty years of ministry in the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa, more than 200 books and tracts on Christian spirituality and ministry, extensive social work, and the founding of educational institutions—all these were outward signs of the inward grace that Andrew Murray experienced by continually casting himself on Christ.

“May not a single moment of my life be spent outside the light, love, and joy of God’s presence,” was his prayer. “And not a moment without the entire surrender of myself as a vessel for him to fill full of his Spirit and his love.”

The woodblock print is by Frances Hammell Gearhart.

3 Comments
March 18, 2019

My joy and crown

by chuckofish

When I tread the verge of Jordan,

Bid my anxious fears subside;

Death of death, and hell’s destruction,

Land me safe on Canaan’s side

Songs of praises, songs of praises,

I will ever give to thee,

I will ever give to thee.

(William Williams, 1717-1791, hymn #690)

How was your weekend? I guess it was St. Patrick’s Day, but we did nothing to mark it except indulge in an Errol Flynn marathon on Saturday night and watch The Quiet Man (1952) on Sunday night. Good choices. Hear, hear.

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On Saturday the OM and I also indulged in our first trip of the season to Ted Drewes. Considering my recent accident, I felt I deserved it.

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Look at that blue sky!

I was the reader of both lessons in church on Sunday–both good ones: Genesis 15:1-12; 17-18 and Philippians 3:17–4:1. I especially love reading from the letters of St. Paul, because I get to say things out loud that I could never say in real life.

18 For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. 20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. 4 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends!

After church I convinced the OM to go down to the Link Auction House with me for a preview of the next auction. A nice day for a drive and all that. We stopped at an estate sale at one of the huge houses on Kingsbury Place on the way home. Then it was time to go home and get ready for a visit from the wee babes.

When they first arrived little Lottiebelle was sound asleep and could not be awakened for quite awhile (no nap that day.)IMG_6588.JPEG

The wee laddie amused himself with intellectual pursuits.

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…and we had a gay old time.

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And now another busy, stressful week unfolds. Guide me, O thou great Redeemer,
Pilgrim through this barren land.

4 Comments
March 13, 2019

This is the day

by chuckofish

Good morning! There’s nothing like some Mandisa to start your day off right! And it is important to start your day off right.

This is the day which the Lord has made;
    let us rejoice and be glad in it.

(Psalm 118:24)

My mother, who was not one to scold or correct, did tell me once, when I was grousing about something as an adolescent, that this is the day which the Lord has made, and you ought not to complain about it, but, indeed, rejoice about it. And for Pete’s sake, don’t waste it! That advice struck a cord in me and I never forgot it.

IT IS A MOMENT of light surrounded on all sides by darkness and oblivion. In the entire history of the universe, let alone in your own history, there has never been another just like it and there will never be another just like it again. It is the point to which all your yesterdays have been leading since the hour of your birth. It is the point from which all your tomorrows will proceed until the hour of your death. If you were aware of how precious it is, you could hardly live through it. Unless you are aware of how precious it is, you can hardly be said to be living at all.

“This is the day which the Lord has made,” says the 118th Psalm. “Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Or weep and be sad in it for that matter. The point is to see it for what it is because it will be gone before you know it. If you waste it, it is your life that you’re wasting. If you look the other way, it may be the moment you’ve been waiting for always that you’re missing.

All other days have either disappeared into darkness and oblivion or not yet emerged from them. Today is the only day there is.

– Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

“If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal- that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.”

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden 

“Write it on your heart
that every day is the best day in the year.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day
who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.

Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in.
Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with your old nonsense.

This new day is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Collected Poems and Translations 

I may have said all this before, but it bears repeating. Write it on your heart.

And here’s a little Stephen Stills on the subject:

Rejoice, rejoice, we have no choice…

6 Comments
March 11, 2019

Such as do stand

by chuckofish

Sunday was the first Sunday in Lent so we read The Great Litany–Rite I, which I love. It is sure to knock some sense into us, right? One can only hope.

The readings were excellent…

“The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); 9 because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. 11 The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. 13 For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:8b–13)

…later in the chapter Paul makes it clear that “…faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.” Context is everything.

The Gospel was Jesus being tempted by Satan. The rector’s sermon was the usual hodge-podge of quotes and stories, but he did make his point that we are not helpless against temptation. I don’t think he mentioned the word sin, but c’est l’église aujourd’hui.

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Besides going to church, I went to several estate sales, but didn’t find much. Just this little sterling picture frame…

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I went to Target as well, and it was jammed. I got out of there pretty darn fast. Then I straightened my house and puttered around. The usual.

The OM and I watched a couple of movies including McQ (1974) with John Wayne, a fish out of water playing a police detective on a personal mission in Seattle. I enjoyed it a lot even though the Duke folding himself into a Firebird is more like James Garner in The Rockford Files than Steve McQueen in Bullitt. He looked pretty uncomfortable.

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We also watched Get Carter (1971) with Michael Caine as a London gangster, who is trying to figure out who killed his brother in his hometown in the north of England. It is very gritty and violent and there is quite a bit of unsavory sex. If your idea of the English is purely based on watching Downton Abbey and reading Jane Austen books, this movie will cure you of that delusion forever.

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Guy Ritchie must have been influenced by this film, because it reminded me of all his movies. Anyway, I have to say I liked it, especially Michael Caine as the sociopath with a glimmer of character. He never looked handsomer.

Watching these two movies back to back reminded me of the fact that Michael Caine visited John Wayne many times in the hospital when he was dying in 1979. Caine would walk him up and down the hall and talk to him. They liked each other.

The wee babes came over for dinner with the boy on Sunday night. The wee laddie has glasses now to help fix his eye which still wanders a bit.

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Now all the kids in preschool will want them.

We had a lot of fun  watching the squirrels cavort in the front yard. Better than television!

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And now a new and busy week dawns. I’ll take it one day at a time.

6 Comments
February 22, 2019

Sometimes I just guess

by chuckofish

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Ah, the weekend approacheth. Thank goodness. Hopefully nobody will ask me any questions. I get enough of that during the week.

I have a few plans, but it will be another quiet weekend, probably with a good amount of time spent on my blue sofa (see yesterday’s post.)

I have a bunch of books to read.

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Depending on the weather, I may venture out to a couple of estate sales.

Plus, there is an event at the Field House on Saturday afternoon…

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…and those wee babes will be coming over.

 

Also, don’t forget that the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church remembers Eric Liddell, Protestant missionary to China and Olympic gold medalist, with a feast day today.

God whose strength bears us up as on mighty wings: We rejoice in remembering thy athlete and missionary, Eric Liddell, to whom thou didst bestow courage and resolution in contest and in captivity; and we pray that we also may run with endurance the race that is set before us and persevere in patient witness, until we wear that crown of victory won for us by Jesus our Savior; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Have a great weekend!

4 Comments
February 19, 2019

Just a reminder

by chuckofish

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One of the great causes of sadness in human life is the collision between expectation and what actually happens. The New Testament, therefore, for our joy, is relentlessly helping us to lower our expectations for this life and raise our expectations for the next.⠀
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For example, in 1 Peter 4:12, it says, “Don’t be surprised at the fiery ordeal when it comes upon you as though something strange were happening to you.” In other words, get it fixed in your head that it is not strange to have life go bad for you as a Christian. Paul, in Romans 8, said, “Even we who have the Holy Spirit groan inwardly as we wait for our adoption as children, the redemption of our body.” Even those in this life who have the Holy Spirit will experience all the rheumatism and cancer and accidents and horror that the world does. “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all” (Psalm 34:19).⠀
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The constant lowering of expectations now is accompanied with a raising of expectations later: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is undefiled, unfading, imperishable, kept in heaven for you who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice” (1 Peter 1:3–6).⠀
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Now, we know it’s going to be hard. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but oh, how the New Testament raises higher and higher and higher our expectations of the life to come. Live in hope and embrace what God gives you in this life in love.⠀
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–John Piper (Read more at desiringGod.org.)

Yes, God has a plan for you, but that plan is not for you to be happy, fulfilled, rich and famous. His plan is for you to be holy and content. It is easy to lose sight of that.

“Christ never promises peace in the sense of no more struggle and suffering. Instead, he helps us to struggle and suffer as he did, in love, for one another. Christ does not give us security in the sense of something in this world, some cause, some principle, some value, which is forever. Instead, he tells us that there is nothing in this world that is forever, all flesh is grass. He does not promise us unlonely lives. His own life speaks loud of how, in a world where there is little love, love is always lonely. Instead of all these, the answer that he gives, I think, is himself. If we go to him for anything else, he may send us away empty or he may not. But if we go to him for himself, I believe that we go away always with this deepest of all our hungers filled.”
― Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner 

(The painting is by Van Gogh)

2 Comments
January 23, 2019

Small world department

by chuckofish

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This made me laugh.

The boy and daughter #1 are training to run in a half marathon in April. I salute them. I would be happy to be able to walk a half marathon, but it ain’t gonna happen. (My achilles tendons have not recovered as it is from my trip to Israel.) Well, I ride my stationery bike every morning for half an hour–the best I can do–while listening to my favorite Calvinists discuss scripture on Youtube. The half hour flies by!

One result of this foray into the evangelical world is that I discovered what became of a girl who was in the class above me at school growing up. I happened to be reading about Wheaton College in Illinois one day when I found out that one of its Presidents had the same last name as this girl.  I recalled that she (and her older sister) went to Wheaton. (Wheaton was not a college many people from my school went to, so I remembered.) They were a very religious family and their lovely daughters were always impeccably groomed and conservatively dressed. (Remember: this was the 1970s!) They were not concerned with being cool like the rest of us, but went about their business in a focused and serious way. Hmmm, I thought, I wonder if her grandfather had been the President? As it turned out, he was. (The libraries at both Wheaton College and Covenant Theological Seminary bear his name.)

This girl went on with her education and received a PhD in English literature from Vanderbilt. She is now an author and speaker who has taught literature, directed women’s Bible studies, and “loves working with women in studying the Scriptures.” She directed The Gospel Coalition’s women’s initiatives from 2010 to 2017. She is not just riding her stationery bike and listening to panels with the likes of R.C. Sproul and John Piper. She is on the panel with them!

It is a small world, n’est-ce pas? You can read one of her articles here.

Have a good day!

4 Comments
January 14, 2019

“See, what you have to ask yourself is: what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, that sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky?”

by chuckofish

Well, we did, indeed, have a little snow on Friday night.

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I did a little shoveling, but the boy brought his snow blower over and did most of our driveway…

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He made short work of what would have been a major effort/pain for me to do. I did some more shoveling on Sunday…by then the snow was heavy and icey. But it felt good to get out in the cold and do some physical work.

I spent the weekend reading M Train by Patti Smith, “an unforgettable odyssey of a legendary artist, told through the prism of the cafés and haunts she has worked in around the world. It is a book Patti Smith has described as ‘a roadmap to my life.’”

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Like me, she is a person who sees signs and miracles in the world. She rescues objects and keeps talismans that are full of meaning for her.

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She wears vintage clothes and watches detective shows and visits cemeteries to pay homage to specific graves, usually of literary figures or artists. If I ever go to Tokyo I will, like Patti, want to have dinner at the restaurant Mifune. In other words, we are on the same page.

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–Reading Ibsen?

–Yes, The Master Builder.

–Hmmmm, lovely play but fraught with symbolism.

–I hadn’t noticed, I said.

He stood before the fire for a moment then shook his head and left. Personally, I’m not much for symbolism. I never get it. Why can’t things be just as they are? I never thought to psychoanalyze Seymour Glass or sought to break down “Desolation Row.” I just wanted to get lost, become one with somewhere else, slip a wreath on a steeple top because I wished it. (M Train)

I also delved into Sam Anderson’s Boom Town, “The fantastical saga of Oklahoma City, its chaotic founding, its apocalyptic weather, its purloined basketball team, and the dream of becoming a world-class metropolis,” which DN gave me for Christmas, because he knows that OC is on my top-five list of places I want to visit. Isn’t it great to have a son-in-law who picks out books for me? I mean really.

The wee babes frolicked in the snow…

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…and they came over for Episcopal souffle on Sunday night. Can you believe how grown up they look?

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Can you say, “chip and dip”?

And now it’s back to the rat race…have a good week!

Here is Patti Smith’s lovely elegy for her friend Sam Shepard.

*Graham Hess in Signs (2002)

7 Comments
January 10, 2019

Walking the walk

by chuckofish

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Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. (Matthew 7:13-14)

It has been a very busy week at work, so I only have a few things to share today:

News from the Duh Department. Science-approved!

She makes a good point.

I was so happy about this–not because Alabama lost, but because Coach Dabo Swinney won. He stood firm when The FFRF demanded that Clemson — a public university — not only require Swinney to “cease” his allegedly unconstitutional religious activities but also that it “train” the coaching staff and “monitor their conduct going forwards.” As it turned out, Clemson backed their coach, and at the end of the College Football Playoff National Championship game he was able to say (as reported to me by the boy), “all the credit, alllll the glory goes to the good Lord number one, and number two to this great group of guys.”

Have a good Thursday. Tomorrow is Friday and then on to the weekend! It is supposed to snow here in flyover country. Do I have enough milk, eggs and bread, peanut butter and guitar strings?

6 Comments