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How to Read Through the Psalms in 30 Days
“Other books of the Bible speak to us. The Psalms speak for us.” adapted from St. Athanasius, 4th Century Church Father (This is a repost from a year ago. Still reading the Psalms . . .) Whenever I don’t know what to read in the Bible, I read the Psalms. In the midst of our shared national crisis, even if you want to read the Bible, where do you start? It’s daunting to pick up the Bible and know where to begin. The Bible contains 66 different books, and almost 1,500 chapters. Unless a person follows a reading plan or participates in a method Bible study, how can any reader…
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Quotes Can Ease Your Aches, Quiet Your Thoughts, and Revive Your Heart
As a child, I learned the power of memorization. Memorized words increase analytical skills by forging pathways for thinking. Through the years, I have collected hundreds of quotes. Quotes from movies, songs, hymns, and for years, I memorized scriptures. For whatever reason, unlike reading or looking up a quote, the words that have lodged in my memory offer comfort. Here, I’m not talking about memorizing facts in order to take a test, perform, or take part in a contest. Rather, I have benefitted from these random quotes in my mind’s data base when words previously memorized apply to situations unrelated to the source material. Applied in different and yet particular…
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Children Need to be Seen AND Heard
The proverb “Children should be seen and not heard” dates back to medieval times and particularly applied to girls. In the presence of adults, children were expected to keep silent. Children who experience chaos and trauma especially need to be heard as well as seen by caring adults. Mountains of misunderstanding and the valleys of assumption can exist between children and adults. For the sake of young, immature minds whose imaginations naturally feed fears of the unknown, adults need to climb those mountains and cross the valleys that characterize real life trauma and chaos. When adults ignore children, remain preoccupied with their own problems, or fail to consider the way…
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Cataracts and How What You Can’t See Can Hurt You
History Matters and Here’s Why “The scholar [who has intimate knowledge of the past] has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.” –C. S. Lewis, “Learning in War-Time,” in The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses (New York: HarperCollins, 1949/2001 When do you know you can’t see well? When my husband told me that he would have to wear a patch over his eye after having a cataract removed, I pictured he would exit the surgical clinic looking like Marshall Rooster Cogburn in the movie True Grit, wearing a black…
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Friday Rom-Com: “You’ve Got Mail” and Other Thoughts about Nora Ephron
Perfect cast, a time-capsule of music for the film’s soundtrack, and a social commentary on “the Big, bad chain store,” You’ve Got Mail constructs a love story to parallel the takeover of our lives by the Internet. Early scenes show the main characters Kathleen Kelly and Joe Fox walking the streets of New York City, near misses or near hits. Which is it? Neither knows the other exists. Yet both Kathleen and Joe are connected to someone mysterious and unknown through AOL, one of the early pioneers in email communication. The attraction is magnetic and the reward is the little box on the computer screen that pops up to say,…
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Read Good Books to Enlarge Your Perspective
“The poorest way to face life is with a sneer.” Theodore Roosevelt Stories take time to unwind. Weeks ago, the first whispers about a virus that began on the other side of the world built like a wave in the ocean bringing massive changes to America’s shores. The current coronavirus pandemic has disrupted life as we knew it just days ago. This crisis exposes the thin veneer of civilization and our fragile system of daily living. Daily reports, maps of where the infection has spread, President Trump’s press conferences, health experts, fluctuations in the stock market all elicit anxiety. anxiety: distress or uneasiness of mind caused by fear of danger…
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A Few of My Favorite Books
The prompt from StoryWorth, a gift my daughter gave me for Christmas, led me to consider what otherwise I would have avoided even thinking about. “What are your favorite books?” This challenge to select from beaucoup books I have read forced me to ignore all but the top titles that came to mind without having to browse my bookshelves. To be honest, my favorite book is the book I am currently reading or else I would lay that book aside in favor of one I have read and loved. Yet there are so many books to read, too many to count in fact, and I always tell people that a…
