Home

Details
Category: Musings
Hits: 11378

Or manic, maybe?

Some days she comes to me, all electric-giddy and lovey-dovey with a basketful of fresh - if half-baked - ideas.  She offers them to me freely and even provides the warming instructions.

Other times she's cold, stingy, melancholy, and I might not hear from her at all for days.

I try to draw her out of her bunker by reading to her.  Sometimes she jumps out smiling and yells, "We can write like that!  Yeah!"  Sometimes it only takes a few paragraphs of someone else's powerful prose to cause her to hunker into a corner and whisper, "Why did I get stuck with you?"

I never know what to expect when we wake in the morning.

Details
Category: Musings
Hits: 11035

Imagine with me:  what does world peace look like?  Is it simply the absence of war?  During the Cold War, a policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) worked to keep the world at relative peace.  Is that what we need?  What about policies like containment, isolationism, diplomacy and peace treaties, or…a One World Government?

 

Maybe you think the answer is that we pull our troops out of Iraq, make nice with Kim Jong Il, or let Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blow Israel off the face of the globe.

 

There are lots of people crying for peace.  We hold peace rallies, peace marches, peaceful protests, hunger strikes and fund raisers, political elections; all to call attention to the one thing everybody wants but nobody can fully comprehend.

 

I would love to live in a world of peace.  But, am I – are you - really willing to pay the price? 

 

All the peace activism in the world is not going to work because peace is an effect, a condition, the result of one action – and that action is love.

 

Love.

 

Whether you regard him a philosopher, a teacher, or God, Jesus summed it up in one line:  “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”  Maybe you don’t want to hear about what Jesus said.  How about another philosopher, John Lennon, “All you need is love.”

 

Love. 

 

Sounds a little corny, does it?  What does that mean, anyway, love my neighbor as I love myself?  What if I don’t love myself?  After all, I’m not pretty enough, fit enough, rich enough, smart enough, not fill-in-the-blank enough. 

 

The truth is that we all love ourselves more than we realize and every decision we make in our day is based on loving ourselves first, others after that, and God if there is time.

 

In John 15:13, Jesus said something like this:  “Greater love has no man than this: that a man give up his life for his friends.”

 

Few of us will ever find ourselves in a position to physically die for a friend.  But there is a practical application to what he said that is even more offensive to us than the word love:  that is submission. 

 

Submission has been long regarded a dirty word.  To willingly submit – especially to someone you don’t like - is so contrary to human nature that the very thought causes a tightening in our guts, a rising of our shackles. 

 

What does ‘submission’ really mean?  Do we lie down and let people walk all over us?  No.  Submission means looking out for another’s interests before your own.  And don’t you see how profound that is?  If everybody were seeing to everybody else’s best interests, then there would be no lack, no fear and no mistrust.  Everyone would have all they need or could want.  Everyone would enjoy peace.

 
  • Submission requires self-confidence; it is neither boastful nor proud,
  • submission is an act of strength, not weakness,
  • submission is an act of love.

World peace must begin as a personal choice.  Each of us must put the needs of others ahead of our own, regardless of how we feel about it.  Put aside your personal freedom and rights for the sake of another.

 

It’s like the effect of butterfly wings on the universe.  You may never see how it develops, but little by little, that imperceptible whisper will grow into a breeze, then a gust and finally, a gale force.

 

World peace begins with the laying down of self.  And that, my friends, is one heavy price to pay.

 

Details
Category: Musings
Hits: 11012

Dieting sucks, if you'll pardon my Shakespeare.

Chuck and I began the Nutrisystem program 46 days ago and I'm down 11 lbs.  I'm happy to be down 11 lbs. - downright giddy.  But why does losing weight take. So. Long?  This is the point where I start to wonder if the end is worth the means.  Do I really care if I'm a little on the heavy side? 

Yes, I do care.  I'm tired of looking frumpy and slovenly.  I'm tired of being depressed, fatigued and achy all the time and wearing a wardrobe that looks like a carry-over from the Eastern Bloc (evening vear?  svim vear?).  Chuck calls my side of the closet the Mao Tse Tung collection. 

When I was thinner and only needed to lose 3-5 lbs. at any given time, I'd simply fast for a couple of days and be done with it.  I've tried to convince myself that I could just fast for 30 days and be done with it.  I wonder, when Jesus went to the desert and fasted for 40 days did the devil tempt him with Quarter Pounders and Twinkies?

The problem is that I hate regimens.  I've always been good at planning and making lists and taking notes, but bad at discipline and follow-through.  I've trained myself to believe that I work best when I have a pressing deadline; when I'm forced to cram weeks of leisurely work into a few days of sleepless torture.  This behavior actually worked through college and my professional career days.  But, I gotta tell ya, there just aren't many deadlines pressing down on this housewife and home schooling mom.

Enter the sloth.

After the first 28 days of our diet, I slacked off on my daily food diary.  And, you guessed it, I started skipping, substituting or outright cheating.  So, I'm back to the diary...it really does help keep me honest.

Chuck has lost more weight on it than I, mainly because he doesn't always get all of his food in with his schedule.  He also does not cheat; if he doesn't have time to eat the prescribed meal, he skips it.

Neither of us has begun an exercise program, which I know is essential to weight control. 

One regimen at a time, please.

 

 

 

Details
Category: Musings
Hits: 11618

Okay!  I'm it!  I've been tagged by Diane to participate in this, my first meme since I started blogging again. 

What is a meme?  Given ten minutes of internet research and my limited capacity to retain scientific terminology, here's what I've gleaned:  The term was first used by ethologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene to describe a kind of cultural gene; a mental virus if you will, which propagates and permeates and evolves our culture through a process of behavioral natural selection.

That's as far as I got before my eyes started to cross. 

For our purposes, we'll define it as a blog-based chain letter.

This particular meme calls for links to my 5 favorite personal blog posts according to the following rules:


Link 1 must be about family.  Easy.  Since my early blog was primarily family related humor, I picked one of my favorite stories.

Link 2 must be about friends.  I haven't written much about friends, but this got a laugh out of its subject, my friend Kim.

Link 3 must be about yourself.  Well, it's all about me, right?

Link 4 must be about something you love.  I love writing and this is short-short was inspired by an interruption during my writing time.

Link 5 can be anything you choose.  This is a short story length fiction piece based on a real story and was a cathartic exercise for me.  I've not tried to have it published, but many people have emailed me to say that they could relate.

Now, who to tag?  See, this is exactly why I never volunteer to be a Pampered Chef  hostess, either, because I just don't know who to ask. 

I'll get back to you on who to tag.  Maybe I'll tag 20 random blogging strangers.

 

 

Page 8 of 15

Main Menu

Login Form