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Our Daily Thread 4-7-15

Good Morning!

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Quote of the Day

“The best portion of a good man’s life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.”

William Wordsworth

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 Today is John Cooper’s birthday. From SKILLET VIDEOS 

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Anyone have a QoD?

44 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 4-7-15”

  1. Kim, and others was talking about the Apostle’s Creed yesterday.
    I mentioned that we Baptists don’t recite it.
    But Pastor Steve, in every Sunday morning service, has us repeat John 3:16 and we recite the Lord’s Prayer together.
    Interesting fact to me, and I understand why; we do it in the Old King James version of each.

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  3. I’m not a Duke fan, but I’m glad they won. I hope the Notre Dame women can beat Connecticut.. No reason, I just do.

    Notre Dame women beat South Carolina by one point. The SC girl tossed a ball at the last second and it bounced off and didn’t score. They lost.
    The girl sat on the floor crying while the ND girls were celebrating. Than some ND girls came over and hugged the SC girl, trying to comfort her.
    I was impressed.

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  5. Good morning! I just read through yesterday’s thread to catch up. Lots of interesting chat. I enjoy small doses of Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny for children when they are young. I think most realize the spirit of giving involved and appreciate that their parents took time and effort to make it happen. My husband did not have that from his parents so he never helped me make it happen for son to experience Easter Bunny and Santa. Husband’s mom said those characters were from the devil. Sad to me. I don’t hear husband saying that, but since he did not have it as a child, he did not feel any enthusiasm in being involved with it. He has never helped me do a Christmas tree at home either, but he use to enjoy doing the Christmas tree at work. This past Christmas we did not have a tree at home or the office. I don’t want to do one at home just for myself, except I might get a little one. I would do one if we had grandkids.

    We always said the Apostle’s Creed and recited the Lord’s Prayer at the Methodist church, but we do neither at the S. Baptist church unless it happens to go along with the sermon. The Methodists always ding the Doxology, too, and we’ve done it maybe twice since I have been at the Baptist church.

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  7. I spent a lot of time yesterday trying to update my Linkedin account. I am also spending chunks of time on Twitter because I am limited in following people until I get more people following me. I guess you could say I am in the midst of a growth spurt on Twitter. I have not wanted to do Facebook, and Karen’s experience is one reason. I have evolved some on Twitter and gotten into some politics but I would call it “Politics Lite.”

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  8. Good morning. The name “Skillet” seemed familiar, and I was trying to think where I’d heard that, when I realized 1st Arrow mentioned once that he went to a Skillet concert.

    I enjoyed the violin intro in that second video.

    Today in music history there were some significant firsts: the first performance of Beethoven’s Third Symphony (Eroica, meaning “heroic”) in 1805 in Vienna; the first performance in the US of Mozart’s Symphony #40, by the Brooklyn Philharmonic in 1863; and the Broadway opening in 1949 of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific, which ran for 1,925 performances.

    The Eroica Symphony is a massive work, so I’ll skip posting a video for that — you can find several different performances of it on YouTube if you’re so inclined. 😉 It’s an interesting work that launched Beethoven’s departure from traditional classical style in symphonies, as it was composed soon after he began to notice he was going deaf.

    As far as the Mozart goes, I looked around YouTube a little for different recordings of his Symphony 40 and found this neat little arrangement of part of the first movement, written for classical guitar.

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  10. Time for me to get on with the day. Piano students return again this week after being off last week. Our home routine continues as usual, and I’m going to begin going through our books to see which ones are not necessary to keep any longer, as I mentioned last night.

    Have a great day, everyone!

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  12. Just to let you all know, since I know you have been praying. I found out last night that my application for the midwifery program has been rejected. It’s not entirely surprising, as the program is competitive, and the admission guidelines were very strict about deadlines, with which the mix-up with my tests and transcripts caused problems.

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  14. Sorry to hear, roscuro. My SIL is finally ending a series of problems with his master’s degree. For the enormous cost to students, one would think there would be better professors and counselors to facilitate these issues. Now it will be late for him to even get a job in his field.

    Chas, I normally don’t care two hoots about March Madness. This year we were in Wisconsin for the Final Four, so we were happy the Badgers won. Would have loved to see them go all the way.

    We need rain. We were quite concerned with the high wins last week. Lots of small fires from trees falling on the power lines. Fortunately, they were all put out relatively quickly.

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  15. Oh, sorry roscuro — 😦

    Well, I see that: He’s ba-ack (I just watched the 2nd video)

    We also recite the Lord’s Prayer and do rotating corporate readings of the 10 Commandments, & the greatest commandment along with the Nicene and Apostle’s creeds & questions-answers from a couple of the historic catechisms.

    I miss singing the doxology, we used to sing that a lot at my last Presbyterian church but not at this one.

    We had a violinist added to our musical accompaniment (the usual piano & acoustic guitar) last Sunday for Easter, a very nice touch.

    And Hear ye, hear ye — WE are supposed to get some rain today (and snow in the mountains). Some cold front from Alaska has made its way down the coast. Meanwhile, the governor is threatening $500 fines a day for using too much water and he’s been hammering the point that showers need to be shorter … Sheesh. I have to be among the model citizens when it comes to water use, I always take short showers, down water what’s left of the lawn anymore and, living alone, do usually just one load of laundry a week (and run the dishwasher once a week).

    I honestly don’t think I can use much less than I do …

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  16. From FB:

    Timothy Keller:

    The Christian promise is not that every chapter in history will be better than the first but that in the end all things will work together for good.

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  18. Oh Roscuro, I am sorry to hear that. 😦

    BTW, FTR, 🙂 I rarely comment on the music videos because I rarely watch them. I have to put on a headset to listen to video, and our connection sometimes “streams” well and sometimes doesn’t. It’s pretty rare for it to continue smoothly enough to get through a video (even a short one) without at least one pause, and sometimes it will only give a second or two and then a pause, and then a second or two and a pause. That doesn’t work well with music, for obvious reasons. If I could just push the button and play (without the headphones and without the pauses) I probably would have watched several of the Easter-music videos. As it is, I usually watch the cute-animal videos and skip the music ones.

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  20. I’m sorry your application was rejected, Roscuro.

    BTW, Roscuro (and any others who are interested in classical music and/or medicine and/or musical outreach in foreign lands or disadvantaged areas), you may be interested in watching this video I just heard about. The trumpeter Alison Balsom gave a talk (starting a little after the 3 1/2-minute mark, after she plays a Debussy piece on her instrument) last year entitled “Music as a Healer” at a conference in the UK, Imagining the Future of Medicine.

    There is a film clip shown as part of Balsom’s talk which features the BrassForAfrica program which I found quite moving.

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  22. Thanks, everyone – I don’t mind telling you that I held my mother’s hand and cried when I got the news. I really don’t know where to go from here, but I do trust Him.

    Donna, I know what you mean about no more to reduce. Up here, electricity is the big issue. We produce so much electricity that we actually sell it at a reduced rate to the States, since it can’t be stored – but the government uses the excuse of shutting coal-fired generators and switching to solar and wind to continually jack-up the prices, though we all know that the majority of our electricity is from hydro and a couple of nuclear plants. We have three different daily rates for weekdays based on time of day and how much electricity is usually consumed at that time – low, mid, and peak (everyone has a smart meter). Needless to say, the peak and mid hours are in the daytime. Weekends and holidays are both at the low rate.

    Of course, it is businesses which consume the extra electricity during peak hours, but it is private households which are charged by the smart meter (wouldn’t want to discourage commerce and production). So, most households have learned to bake on weekends (if you have an electric stove, which most people in the country do) and do laundry in the evenings. We installed a timer on our water heater which shuts off the heater during mid and peak times. We don’t have a dryer or an air conditioner and we heat by an oil furnace. The provincial government has announced a further raise in prices and nobody is happy [Before anybody decides to use this as an example of what socialism does – this is just in this province and this provincial government happens to have a lot of corruption scandals linked to it.]. The low rate was already at 10 cents a kilowatt hour.

    My guess is that people started using so much less electricity, that they need to put the prices up in order to make the same amount of money. That happened in another municipality. The municipality asked residents to reduce water consumption, and they reduced it so much, they had to put up the water rates.

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  23. Utility companies are the absolute worst. My friend’s daughter and son-in-law work for the city of LA and recently they both got into a training program for the city’s Department of Water and Power, which is frankly one of the most hated departments in the city. The department has a long and ugly history of overcharging residents horribly, callously dealing with anyone who dares complain (that is, if they can wait through the 45-minute “hold” times) — they are generally being impossible to deal with.

    My friend’s daughter & son-in-law will basically be answering phones in customer service.

    Their starting salary? $60,000 a year.

    I guess I should apply. 🙂

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  25. 6 Arrows, considering music as healing, at times when I have been to get my mammogram at Emory, they have a grand piano set up in the large lobby area and someone plays wonderful calming music. This is the area where ladies with breast cancer spend time waiting, too. I find it to be a really good thing to have that live music there.

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  26. Donna, my friend use to work at the Sunnyvale water dept. and found it highly stressful and unpleasant. I also have a friend in the Birmingham area who has to deal with a corrupt water department. Since we had that drought some years back, I do not get the same number of showers I use to take. I would need more if I was getting a good exercise workout each day, but that is not an issue.

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  27. So sorry, Roscuro, about the midwife program. I know employment is more and more difficult to get these days. Have you checked out the Southern Baptist Send North America programs where they are doing church plants, etc?
    They may have something to interest you.

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  29. We had a morning of snow coming down. So beautiful. Still some out there, but it is raining now. They say that this may be our last rain. The snowpack is at 5% and that is what provides our water for the summer. The place where they usually go to measure the snow pack had no snow at all, just some in the distance under the trees.

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  31. Janice, there is a grand piano in the lobby at the hospital where I’ve delivered my babies. When I was pregnant with 5th Arrow, I asked one of my caregivers if I could play their piano while I was in labor, if I ended up there before my labor was sufficiently advanced, and things were going normally. I was assured that would be fine, as long as I brought along some Mozart music. 🙂

    Turns out 5th Arrow was my speedy one, so I was pretty far along in labor by the time I got to the hospital. Plus, my water had broken at home, and was stained with meconium, so I know they wouldn’t have let me leave Labor & Delivery under those circumstances.

    It didn’t work out to play piano there with 6th Arrow, either, but I enjoyed entertaining the thought. 😉 Playing music helps keep my mind off difficult things.

    I was going to say earlier, too, but didn’t have time, that the whole idea of music as therapy is an interesting one. The Bible has lots to say about music, and I find it a fascinating topic. (I know no one here is surprised I said that.) 🙂

    The name of that talk, though (“Music as a healer”), reminded me of the importance of thinking in terms of Jesus being our great physician of soul and body, and the Giver of every good gift, including music. It is through Him we have our healing.

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  33. Roscuro, it didn’t occur to me until after the fact, but I want to apologize if my 6:42 post made you feel worse (with my talking about labor and delivery after your news about the midwifery program). I wasn’t thinking about the timing of that. I’m sorry for my insensitivity.

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  34. Roscuro – How disappointing! Can you apply again next semester or next year?

    As you may know from previous comments of mine, Emily is currently studying to be an LPN. (I’ve assumed everyone knows what that stands for, but for anyone who may not know, that stands for Licensed Practical Nurse.) She would like to then go on for her RN degree. Her ultimate goal is to be a midwife, but she knows that may be years away, as the only college in the state that has a midwifery program is Yale, which is about an hour & a half away. She would probably need to be working for a while to pay off her student loans, & to provide for herself & Forrest.

    May God give you clear direction on what your next step is.

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  35. Janice – The thing about talking politics on Facebook rather than Twitter is that you can go more in-depth, explain yourself more fully, on Facebook.

    6 Arrows – My parents had that South Pacific album, & I listened to it on my own quite a bit.

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  36. Karen, I don’t think we had that album (the only one we had was from The King and I, if memory serves), but I’m pretty sure South Pacific is my dad’s favorite musical. He’d sing little snippets of “Some Enchanted Evening” from time to time.

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  38. My dad enjoyed musicals a lot. I did, too. I especially enjoy Gene Kelly movies, such as Brigadoon, which was my favorite movie for many years.

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  39. I played in the pit orchestra for Brigadoon, as well as for several other musicals while in college. Those were fun times. 🙂

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  40. Well, almost an hour to bedtime now. I’ve been trying to go to bed closer to 10:30, rather than 11:00, which used to be my usual time. I’ve been thinking, too, that I want to get an hour of screen-free time in before bedtime, rather than the half-hour I previously aimed for.

    That’s the extra-wordy way of saying it’s about time to shut down the computer for the night. 😉

    Good night!

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  41. 6 Arrows, no need to apologize 🙂

    Karen, I don’t know. Midwifery here is a separate profession to nursing, requiring a four year bachelor’s degree in midwifery. It has only recently been reinstated as a licensed medical profession (it had been disbanded for several decades, due to concerns raised by physicians) and midwives are very defensive of their credibility. As a result, there are some odd rules about getting into a program. I believe I can only apply once more (there are only three universities which offer the program, and as they work together, I can only apply to one at a time). Some provinces still do not have midwives at all, so my options are limited as to where outside the province I could go for training. The States aren’t really an option either, as I have so few financial resources – and I would need a nursing degree, and I only have a two-year diploma.

    It is not easy. I have been told repeatedly, by teachers, coworkers, once even by my own doctor, that I have the talent and could acquire the skill in any branch of the medical professions. When I don’t have medical work, I ache to be able to do it. I do find it hard to be out in the workforce – people can be mean – but I even enjoyed my little job of helping my elderly client get up and eat breakfast. However, every avenue I try to follow closes up. I often wonder if I’m doing something wrong, but then I think that if I was, I would know what I was doing wrong. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m even having trouble contacting the nursing regulating body to apply for reinstatement of my full license. I said to my mother more than once, it is as if I’ve become invisible.

    There is another difficulty I have, in not having had a regular high school education or diploma. I don’t have any difficulties academically, but I don’t know always how to weave my way through the system – part of the mix-up was due to my ignorance of the intricacies of applying to universities. In retrospect it is amazing I even got to college. My mother, who had a year of teacher’s college was the first in her family to get anything above a high school education and my father only finished high school. We are from the working class, and breaking into a middle class profession is proving immensely difficult.

    Finally, I don’t know how much longer I can wait. I’m already thirty, and my health isn’t as good as it should be. The last couple of nights, I’ve woke up with that darkly familiar suffocating feeling and had to take my inhaler and cough up the fluid in my lungs. My strength has returned to normal, but I tire more easily than I used to. I feel so weak and helpless. Perhaps that is a good thing – His strength is made perfect in our weakness.

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  42. I just got caught up on yesterday’s thread – good discussions.

    My Easter Sunday church experience at my folks’ church was a complete let down. The worship team was in their own little world – not leading us into worship at all. All the songs seemed to be about me, me, me, not praising or worshipping the One who rose from the dead. The message was based on the road to Emmaus where Jesus appeared to one of the disciples AND HIS WIFE!!!!! Has anyone read anything about that before?!!!! I sure haven’t read it in the Bible. When I commented on that at supper, my sister suggested she was sure the pastor must have researched it.

    Then to top it all off, the final song was a new song to the WHOLE congregation. I was so bold as to look all around. There were about 10 people out of 250 or so singing and the rest looked so very detached from everything.

    Thanks for letting me rant. 😦

    Other than that we had a great little holiday visiting my family – even son and girlfriend came down for Easter dinner.

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  44. kare- I have no idea where the pastor got the information about the two on the road to Emmaus, but could he have meant the the wife was the wife of the Cleopas, the named disciple? According to Matthew Henry, Cleopas may have been the uncle of Jesus (the brother of his earthly father, Joseph).

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