partsofspeaking

 For Lent I am giving up blogging until after Resurrection Day.  That doesn't mean no writing, just not posting and not obsessing over who is looking at it. That means I will close the tab for this on my computer.  I will be back after Easter and probably have a flood of these then. In the meantime, may we all study the Word and prepare our hearts for the joy of the cross and the resurrection.  Lent is not about giving some silly thing up, but about spiritual preparation and focus. My Franky Planner quote for the day "Truth and Life are all around us. What matters is where and when you decide to put your focus." Apt for today, from Roger von Oech (a creativity guru).  I am particularly bad about focus, so anything that can help me with that is a boon.  In the meantime, try my podcast "Dialogues with Creators," website, and books (Kindles are pretty cheap).  I recommend reading the Psalms of Asaph (50, 73-83. They are overlooked and I find them a true b...

  https://www.facebook.com/colorfulcrowpublishing/videos/5708574399264857  We have some connectivity problems, so start at 9:00 minutes.   

 When dear friends video call you from Japan while they are walking above the city and give you part of their walking tour experience?  When you discover the poetry to Emily Bronte!? (I didn't know she was a poet!) When someone tries to steal your joy and God doesn't let you let that happen? Thank you, Holy Spirit. When you get enough sleep for once? When you get to do what you love and you know it went well?

I started this blog in February of 2006. Seventeen years later I have hit post #2800. (All free, by the way!) That's about one post every three days. And I will write about the elongated worship service going on at Asbury Theological Seminary and College that some are calling a revival.  A friend sent me this with a question about what I thought of it.  https://thecripplegate.com/why-its-good-to-be-skeptical-of-the-asbury-revival/?fbclid=IwAR3YegJ_OW0ry8PGLhy14AAomyD_ztNamp0VDvQ8CfGW8s8TbLy_R69R1d8 I agree....and yet.  I think we should be glad that any large group of people can worship Jesus for ten days or more.   I think we should let God do what He wants when people are glorifying Him.  I think God does things we don't get or even think He should be doing sometimes.  I think we use the Bible as a weapon against things that make us uncomfortable more than we should, and sometimes more than we use it as a staff to lead the sheep.  I think that m...

Best Super Bowl commercial ever.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAIo-pUDl0s My female pitmix is 12 now. She is scaring us with her bad days--had one last week. Generally she is spry and enjoying life with me in my flat house with a 4-year-old lab mix male.  But this will break your heart. We all need a good cry over our dogs. I believe God created them specially for humans (but the wolves took care of them for a while first).

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRzxQEYvX3A Very dark, very subversive. Women aren't really treated like all choices are equal. There is a war against having children. Lots of articles on the rise in childless couples.  So much to discuss here. Corporations do want women to be their shills because they know they will work hard for "acceptance." Perhaps (!) even harder than men. So why not pay for abortions and fly the female employee to another state where they are freely done, no questions asked. That's going to be cheaper than if she has a baby. No paid leave for 12 weeks, for one thing. Women have let their empowerment become disempowerment. We have sold our souls. Academia is no better, not so much in terms of procreation but in women working their b--- off to be "equal." Case in point. I am attending a six-week program in Inclusivity in Teaching. Of at least eighteen members, four are men. But half of our faculty are men. They are not giving up their F...

This is post 2797. Winter in the South is a challenge. It was in the 70s and we had a big thunderstorm Thursday night. Today it was 37 in the afternoon when I was walking my dog.  So it's cold, but I have decided that freezing in my house is not virtuous, only cheap. Freezing as in 65 degrees.  I have been ill for the last few days, and consequently tired. Some kind of infection. It prevented me going on a trip five hours away I was ambivalent about. Driving alone....not fun.  I am getting ready to send my ninth novel to the publisher of my eighth novel.  Which brings me to this: I will be on Facebook Live on Tuesday the 21st at 6:00. Go to Facebook and put in Author Q&A with Barbara Tucker Also see https://www.facebook.com/colorfulcrowpublishing/videos/1250509152566680

I had decided to start balancing my new intake by reading CNN.com. In some ways I am not disappointed; there is a wider variety of stories, which was the main idea.  However, yesterday I read this one and thought, "Seriously?" https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/11/us/he-gets-us-super-bowl-commercials-cec/index.html  It's about the "He gets us" campaign and the Super Bowl. The campaign has been going on for up to a year so it's not new news. The article focuses on those who oppose it and argues (even though it's a news story and those aren't supposed to argue anything) that we should, well, just not watch them because, how dare they have a message about Jesus on TV during the Super Bowl?   But this is one that gets me:  "While donors who support “He Gets Us” can choose to remain anonymous, Hobby Lobby co-founder David Green claims to be a big contributor to the campaign’s multi-million-dollar coffers. Hobby Lobby has famously been at the center of se...

 If you can access it, this article is amazing:  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/13/the-dubious-rise-of-impostor-syndrome?utm_source=pocket-newtab I have to confess I have never experienced this syndrome, and therefore I thought there might be something wrong with me.  Ah, ha! That's a form of irony. Anyway, I worked hard for any success I achieved and figured I had nothing to hide in that realm; my work was an open book, if my personal life and background were not. And anything I did achieve was all God's doing anyway, so it wasn't ultimately about me.  This article interrogates the concept,which was never called a syndrome (and therefore a form of mental illness), only a phenomenon, and as it turned out, so common among a certain type of woman (white, mostly) that it couldn't be "pathologized."   To me it seems like it was an inverted form of narcissism or at least self-obsession. Or, for some, a form of shame. "You'll be revealed as not ...

 I found myself exhausted today, so my feet are up and reading (it's hard to accept this need when one has a type A personality). My choice, before going off to work on some writing, is The Making of Biblical Womanhood.  It is a controversial book, I'll leave it at that. My reading it is not an endorsement or agreement. But it did make me stop, reflect, and, as one of my doctoral professors said, interrogate. The context was that, according to Barr, in evangelical circles, a woman can't justify her ministry unless she is first and clearly a wife and mother.   I have to agree with that ethos existing, at least in white, northern European, middle-class versions of evangelicalism that tend toward Reformed theology. It is not the case with people of color (or very much less so) or churches that tend toward Wesleyan theology.  My daughter-in-law is Hispanic and ordained in the Church of God, case in point.  But since I exist in the aforementioned white, northern...

A friend posted this on Facebook, from Elizabeth Barret Browning Only he who sees the beauty takes off his shoes.   That's very nice, but a little backward.  No. I say only he/she who takes off his/her shoes sees the beauty.  The lenses, the eyesight, the worldview matters. We can debate it: chicken or egg? Does seeing or what one sees come first?

 A movie most people don't know about, which shows up on TCM sometimes, is On the Beach. It tells the story of several people living in Australia. All of them are Americans. The situation: the Northern Hemisphere has been destroyed by nuclear weapons, and the fallout is moving south and will eventually take Austrailia., There is no escape; they are waiting for their deaths.  There is some good bits in it. Gregory Peck stars as a high-ranking submarine officer whose family has all perished while he was underwater with his crew. Ava Gardner is his love interest, a rather dissolute beauty, and there is Fred Astaire, not dancing a step, and Anthony Perkins (not being weird in this one, but a straight forward officer on Peck's ship.) They are waiting, dealing with the coming end of life in Australia when the winds bring the fallout, against the backdrop of how the Australians are dealing with it. (One flaw is that it is too American-centric, of course.) In one arc, the submarine go...

 Everybody needs to read Psalm 73 on a regular basis. I am going to post it here, and then comment in a separate post.  It starts with the conclusion: Truly God is good to Israel, To such as are pure in heart.  And then begins Asaph's story   2  But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled; My steps had nearly slipped. 3  For I was envious of the boastful, When I saw the prosperity of the wicked. Asaph explains his dilemma or perhaps source of doubt, which is profound. 4  For there are no [ a ] pangs in their death, But their strength is firm. 5  They are not in trouble as other men, Nor are they plagued like other men. 6  Therefore pride serves as their necklace; Violence covers them like a garment. 7  Their [ b ] eyes bulge with abundance; They have more than heart could wish. 8  They scoff and speak wickedly concerning oppression; They speak [ c ] loftily. 9  They set their mouth against the heavens, And their tongu...

Isn't the term "homeless pets" an oxymoron? On another note, I love Venn Diagrams. They explain (depict) so much. But here's one (two groups) that are concentric circles: God's sovereignty          My Life  I am participating in a course on Inclusivity in Teaching. I feel like the course should be called "Lingo Bingo." A lot of redefined words in a chart we have to get in line with. Lots of thoughts on this one. In case someone just sees me as a big snark about inclusivity, there are some important ideas in the course and faculty desperately need to talk about these things. I am just not sure why we have to have so many more words and a whole philosophical system for simple concepts like "accept people for who they are" and "don't exploit your position as professor" and "people are more than their skin color" and "make sure your students have the learning resources they need." I heard a great Talmudic expressio...