1500

I have made it a bit of a tradition here on this site to commemorate my longevity at every 100th post. Today is post number 1500, MD, one thousand five hundred, 10111011100, 5DC. Can you feel the excitement and electricity in the air? ... Well, me neither, but the size of my oeuvre is certainty impressive, and everyone knows that sheer, choking volume beats quality every time. To everyone who stops by to visit, I thank you. The gift of your time and attention makes me feel all warm and tingly inside, or else that is a signal that my Depends brand adult undergarment has reached its capacity. I will see you at the next mandatory celebration when the blogometer hits 1600. Don't miss the festivities!

First Date

A couple at the next table is out on what is clearly their first date. He holds the chair out for her, their eyes dart nervously and expectantly across each other, and the air is filled with bursts of nervous laughter. She wears a dress that likely hasn't seen the outside of her closet in years. He wears his dress pants, crisp seam freshly ironed, along with his best shirt. After they order their food, I catch whispers and echoes of their conversation, now finding its pace. Several times I notice them, their fingers touching across the table as they find something new to attract them to each other. Just before the waiter comes to take away their plates, he abruptly stops in mid-sentence with a distracted air and remarks as much to himself as his date, "Dang you sure are pretty." She blushes, coy smile, but the reddening of her cheeks betrays her appreciation of the moment. Soon enough they pay their bill and are on their way. As they go past my table hand-in-hand, I notice that they are in no hurry, fully satisfied to linger in each other's presence.

I hope that they both recognize and appreciate this very unique and special time in their relationship. Soon enough the pretty dress will revert to sweat pants and the sharp outfit will once again become blue jeans and a t-shirt. The dreamy looks across the table at each other will disappear into the more customary, ho-hum looks of the every day. Perhaps his attitude of awe at the beautiful woman at his side will persist. Maybe she will never tire of looking in his eyes, her very paradigm of Prince Charming in the flesh. However, I know that these tingly feelings will subside unless both sides consistently recognize that love is an action verb. Pastor Craig Groeschel has an apt statement, "If you want want few people have, you have to do what few people are willing to do."

The Subtle Knife

The second volume in Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy is entitled The Subtle Knife. This story picks up immeditely where the first volume, The Golden Compass, left off. The story has introduced us to a 12 year old girl named Lyra Belacqua, who prophesy has foretold is bound for greatness in bringing about the ultimate destiny of mankind. Yet Lyra is completely ignorant of any of this. She lives on an Earth-like world in a time equivalent to our world some several hundred years ago. She was once content to roam the grounds of Jordan College in England, where the elders were left in charge of this apparent noble-born orphan. At the end of The Golden Compass, we were left with the mysteries of something called dust that has either terrified or enraptured many people of power and to portals to other universes that had been opened by one Lord Asriel, who it turns out is Lyra's father. We come to see that Asriel is a power hungry megalomaniac, but the purposes for his research and his ceaseless drive are still unclear. Is it possible that there is something more altruistic in his nature? Lyra's mother, the beautiful and evil Mrs. Coulter, is equally as driven as Asriel, but she is content to suck the world dry and throw it out when she is done.

This story is a nice piece of writing. Like many a good sequel writer, Pullman further develops the settings and the characters that he has already introduced, but he also brings in new characters and allows them to play a significant role in quite an organic manner. In this story, we meet a boy named Will who is Lyra's age. His father, an expert explorer, disappeared when Will was an infant. His mother, who seems to be delusional, is quite often helpless. Yet in her few moments of lucidity, she tells Will that he is destined to pick up his father's mantle. We also learn that some men are determined to find some old papers that Will's father left behind. Soon it is clear that these papers contain information on the location of a portal to another world. Will meets up with Lyra and the adventure unfolds as their respective destinies entwine and lay out before them. The key seems to be a knife that can open portals between worlds, but this is only the beginning of what this knife can do. It seems that it also has the powers to bring supernatural beings to their knees, but the question is, to what purpose?. The adventure comes to a conclusion in the third volume, The Amber Spyglass, that I will dive into next.

Gilligan's Island

My church is presently in a sermon series entitled "Seven Sins That Will Kill You Dead", where each week we are hearing a discussion of one of what are commonly known as the seven deadly sins. Pride, anger, envy, sloth, lust, gluttony, and greed. An important part of the sermons is a discussion of how to recognize and combat each of these sins in our lives. My pastor explained that the original design of preparing this list of sins, which actually are not called the seven deadly sins in scripture, was twofold:

1. To help people learn the Bible
   
2. To help people become introspective
   

Just after the series began, something happened that I knew was not a coincide, namely, Russell Johnson died. For those who are so young as to make me physically ill, Mr. Johnson played the "Professor" on Gilligan's Island. He was the one who came up with the ideas to get the shipwreck survivors off the uncharted desert isle through the use of coconuts and shards of bamboo, only to have Gilligan mess everything up. Then the Skipper hit Gilligan with his cap playfully and the whole cycle started anew. In a news piece I learned that the creator of Gilligan's Island, Sherwood Schwartz (who also created The Brady Bunch), purposefully crafted the characters of the seven stranded castaways such that each had a direct relationship to one of the seven deadly sins. I had a bit of trouble finding a unique assignment of sin to castaway, but what I came up with looks like:

• The Professor - Pride
  
• Mary Ann - Envy
  
• Ginger - Lust
  
• Mr. Howell - Gluttony
  
• Mrs. Howell - Greed
  
• Skipper - Anger
  
• Gilligan - Sloth
  

I felt certain after I had spent several weeks doing this research on the folks aboard the S.S. Minnow and watching countless reruns of the old episodes on TV Land, that this was really the goal of my pastor all along. Also, to be clear, I do not have any evidence to link this sermon series to the death of Russell Johnson.

Quick Hits 13

Sometimes I hear an utterance or catch a quick visual of something that sticks in my mind. As this sensory input rolls about in my head, several different outcomes are possible. It might be the case that after a moment of consideration, the input is deleted as uninteresting, trivial, or too much for me to deal with. However, another possible outcome is that the input keeps demanding my attention. It somehow wants me to wrestle with it and give it more than just a passing notice. In such cases, they can end up here, in my blog series called Quick Hits.

Does love mean that we do what is in the best interest of someone or does love mean that we do what they ask of us?

What do you think?

A Love Worth Giving

I was in the library the other evening while my daughter looked for a book for a homework assignment. While I waited I decided to go pick out a book for my devotional time. I had a few moments, so I puttered about the "spirituality" section. Maybe because it had been a long day and I didn't want to think about my selection too hard, I gravitated to the books by Max Lucado. I have read more than a dozen of his books. Most are kind of vanilla, shallow, and ultimately forgettable, but I have two of his books on my list of favorites. One is He Chose the Nails and the other is On the Anvil. Well now I have a third, namely his work A Love Worth Giving. This book was beautifully written and came along at a very important time for me personally. Perhaps that is why is resonated with me so strongly.

The book contains 16 chapters, each focusing on a different aspect of love as expressed in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

Of course, according to 1 John 4:19, "We love, because He first loved us." And His love, if we let it, can fill each of us and leave us with a love worth giving. I recommend this book as a great addition to your devotional time.

Meet Market

For nearly ten years I was a professor at a major university. One of my service obligations was to act as the chairman of the Graduate Admissions Committee for my department. In that position I was responsible for reviewing all of the applications for admission into our graduate school program. Each year I had to select 20 to 25 of the most promising applicants from the 300 or 400 submissions that were received. Each prospective student was represented by a manila folder containing information that reflected their entire life's work to that point. Page after page of transcripts, standardized test scores, application forms, admissions essays, research work, and plans for their future. Because my time to review each folder was limited and because I had learned what to look for to select the best prospective students, I could make a reasonably accurate judgment of an applicant in about 2 to 3 minutes. It was kind of a daunting and surreal process deciding a person's fate based on years and years of their work in just a few minutes of my time. One pile of haves, another pile of have nots.

Recently I had a flashback to those days as the committee chairman. My pastor recommended that I consider using an online dating site to meet women. On most of these sites each person is represented by a photograph and a few bullet points summarizing who they are and what they are looking for. At the bottom of each screen you can click on a button that says I am interested or No thanks. With most of the women who were suggested that matched my profile, I was clicking on the No thanks button within 2 to 3 seconds. I was placing a person's entire life into my pile of haves or have nots after the merest of consideration. Initially I figured that this was not unreasonable given that my time is finite and I have a lifetime of experience in knowing what I prefer. Yet for someone already prone to judging people and dismissing them too quickly, this process was only reinforcing an already negative trait in me.