61 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 3-5-16”

  1. Good morning, fellow wanderers! Becca-boo had her birthday party yesterday. There were seven girls present, but only two were able to spend the night. The rest were picked up between 10-11, either because they had early sports commitments or they’re not allowed to spend the night out yet. Becca had a fabulous time. The three girls went to bed about 11:30.
    The dog awakened me at five, crying from her kennel. I got up to let her out and she immediately ran to the grass.

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  3. Morning all. The high school play performance was tonight: ‘The Curious Savage”
    One of my students was in the closing scene and most of my class was there.
    True confessions – for the first time since returning last July I had someone for dinner tonight.

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  5. With what, Chas? I’m with my computer now. I’ve had breakfast and coffee. What other “it” is there?

    Actually, I have a few things to do, other than reading and grading papers. There’s a pile of branches from last weekend I need to cut smaller, there’s an oil change due on one of the cars, and there’s a pile of recyclables to sort, load and take to the next town while it’s recycling center is open. Who says conservatives don’t care about the environment? We’ve been recycling since before it became a big Liberal issue.

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  7. Home!

    The best part of waking up . . . early . . . is four blog posts in your brain! 🙂

    We’re supposed to have miserable weather today (hallelujah!), so I’m staying in to write while my husband is off doing good deeds. 🙂

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  10. Good Morning…I’m off to “get with it “….lots to do…having dinner with sweet friends and I’m taking fruit salad and dessert….I’ll make the salad, but I am buying dessert at our favorite French bakery…..I’m looking forward to dessert!! Have a blessed Saturday….it’s way too windy here in the Forest….

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  11. Hey, here’s a question: who has a homepage that you can recommend, a site that has a useful (not silly, not celebrity-driven) summary of the news–preferably not video-driven, please? I’ve kinda just let my homepage be whatever my computer comes up with, since the point is to get on and then choose where to go, and the homepage is rather like home room in junior high. But somewhere along the line, it got changed to “newser,” which specializes in teaser headlines (“popular politician dead at 49”–um, who is the politician? you click on it and discover he’s an English politician) and video-focused brief stories. I know, I know, it’s the internet, but I don’t care which celebrity is pregnant or getting married, and I don’t like teaser headlines that don’t tell me who the article is about, and I don’t like video news. Tell me “Carson dropping out of race,” “Obama getting impeached,” “Teenage pregnancies down in Indiana” (not “surprising news from Midwestern state”), and I can click on it or not. And if I do click on it, it may include a video, but it won’t be mostly video, and the video will not start automatically because I clicked on the link!

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  12. I have nothing to get with. I have already done the outside chores with the small folk and they are busy about Saturday cleanup chores. And I am eating a bowl of teff. Today, fourteen year old made carrot juice for breakfast for the smaller folk and she made herself a grapefruit milkshake. I like teff.

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  13. What is teff?

    I slept in until 9 — luxury! It was a busy, crazy week so other than picking up around the house, maybe making some slow-cook chili and getting the dogs out to the coast or fishing pier, not a lot on my plate. Unless my friend wants to take another stab at going to that awesome downtown LA bookstore. I’d drive this time so we could miss the traffic using the toll lanes. And we finally did figure out where to park last week, but by then she was done (we got too late of a start) and said she wanted to skip it at that point.

    I was supposed to go up to see Carol today but she managed to do all her errands during the week on her own — she’s getting her strength back and now they even are sending home care people in to work with her on that shoulder with some PT, at long last — so she didn’t ask if I was coming up and I didn’t volunteer. She’s hoping to finally get back to church tomorrow, so she said she was doing a lot of reading (which helps her rest up for the walk to church).

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  15. Ah, well looks like I have a mini semi-‘date’ instead. Long-time effort to get together with someone for coffee looks like it’s finally panning out for today.

    Not a big deal, seriously, but something different for a change.

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  16. Got home late last night and slept late this morning. The Hospice Atlanta site is near Buckhead and seems pretty swank to me. I did not know what to expect. As far as I know Mary lives on. She did not move while we were there, but the staff turned her.

    I am feeling super beat. I hope my energy level can pick up.

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  17. I did get with it. One lot of bread almost ready to go in the oven, the second lot is rising. One lot of laundry hung out and almost dry, a second load in the washer, and partway through a sewing project. Electricity is cheaper on the weekend(weekday evenings are also cheaper, but one is too tired to do much physical work by then), so Saturday is the day to use the appliances.

    I have no homepage suggestions. My homepage is Google because there are no headlines to rise up and smite me in the eye when I turn on the internet. The news can wait until I’m ready to see it.

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  18. Two loads of laundry done, final round of book edits done, begging emails to friends done, shaking head at family developments continuing, husband home not yet and I’m down to preparing my bible study for Tuesday.

    Frankly, that’s not enough. I’m on it . . . but I think I’ll eat lunch first. 🙂

    Then write, research, edit, write, research, find chores for my husband, write, maybe cook dinner and then go out in the what is supposed to be pouring rain to watch vacation slides a friend took 35 years ago of EGYPT! (I’ll be in Egypt circa 1916 if I ever get around to writing).

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  19. One load of laundry done, roast in the oven and sides waiting to be prepared, some cleaning done (more needed), some editing done (more needed), some playing/working with photos done. I’m finally making sense of what I want to do for an Etsy site, though I haven’t even begun to create one. But I’ve been matting photos, making photo cards, scanning said projects, and sorting out how to “package” products and how to price them, and I think I finally have it all figured out.

    So while I was at it, I took time to choose mats for the photos I may enter in the fair this fall. I have way too many to start with–18–and at some point I need to narrow that way down. How many is a reasonable number of entries in the same category from one person? Four? Five? I’ve only entered once, and that was one piece. But I do see the same person’s name on several different entries sometimes, so clearly that’s acceptable. But I want to enter only the really good ones. Two are really obvious “yes” but beyond that I really don’t know.

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  20. Our Bishop’s wife was the speaker this weekend. She spoke of all of us Wandering in the Desert. She taught on the sign posts along the way and told stories to illustrate. One of the stories had most of us in tears..
    Over 30 years ago they had burned out as foster parents but the call came that there was a 5 day old baby boy with a heart condition and clubbed feet. They brought him home when he was six days old. Rules were they could name him, but could not apply to adopt him. For many reasons they named him “Michael”. They loved him for 6 months before the devastating call came that adoptive parents were waiting on him. It devastated their whole family because they had of course fallen in love with him.
    The whole way on the plane she begged God to let her keep him or give her a sign that it was going to be OK. As they met the new parents they baby cried and her husband reached for him. she accidentally called her husband by name which was against the rules. Finally she had the baby down on the floor showing them the therapy for his clubbed feet. The baby and the adoptive father locked eyes. Several times the father was spoken to but ignored everyone staring at his new son. Suddenly in frustrated the new mother said “Michael! He’s looking at you”. All was good. The foster parents had named “their” baby after his “father” he hadn’t met yet.

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  21. Haven’t done much today – just taped off the boards that will be the last box of our bathroom cupboard – a project delayed due to husband’s illness. I might have the energy to paint in a while, but I’m not counting on it.

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  22. I have not gotten much done so far besides talking to my brother or rather listening while he talks. My ears got about overdone with listening yesterday. Although I love all the conversations with church lady friends, I am by myself a lot lately and not use to long extended conversations. Any time I do something out of the ordinary it wears me out. I think that is a trait of being an introvert. I try not to be so hard on myself about it now. God made me as He did for His purposes. I don’t have to feel guilty for being a Mary in a Martha culture. 🙂

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  24. Janice, I don’t usually get so much done on a Saturday – though I try to bake one batch of bread. My energy ebbs and flows. When it flows, I try to use it. It has been at the ebb since Christmas. I would sit down and try to sew and end up just staring confusedly at the pattern. However, I’ve been trying to get back into some kind of routine, as I get depressed when I don’t have anything to work at.

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  25. What a sweet story Kim….the Lord is so gracious and kind. I once named one of my babies Nicholas….after all it was Christmas…when the adoptive parents finally met their son….I told them what I had named him….they smiled at one another with tears in their eyes….that is what they named him…oh that precious little one whom our Father loves so much ❤
    Another of my babies was named Joshua by his birth mother….it just so happened that one of my friends adopted him….when I brought him home from the hospital, my friend asked me if the birth mother had called him by a particular name….I said yes she did….then I asked her what they were going to name him….Joshua was her reply….oh how my heart skipped a beat, knowing what a blessing it would be to this precious birth mother in the knowing of his name….

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  27. Google is my homepage.

    I have accomplished little today. I’m not completely over being sick, and we’ve had little sunshine the last several days, so that combination has sapped most of my strength.

    I did get a little figured out regarding how to divvy up our income tax refunds — how much to keep in checking, where they were automatically deposited, how much to transfer to savings, and how much to put into cash envelopes at home. There’s probably a simpler way to do it, but I don’t know what it is.

    I read a couple chapters of a book I have checked out of our church library, Hope for Families of Children on the Autistic Spectrum. So far the book has been ok (I’ve read five chapters), but the parts I read today didn’t really do a whole lot for me — didn’t change my blah, gloomy outlook that’s been my little shadow today.

    The good news is that my piano practice on the Chopin nocturne I’m performing in May went remarkably well this morning, even the measure where half the measure I’m playing 9 against 6, and the other half is 20 against 6. The 20 against 6 rhythm has been my nemesis, but today I came pretty close to nailing it. I’ll take that. Beats staring at a wall, which has been most of the rest of my day.

    Oh, and I prayed for the requests on today’s prayer thread. That is a privilege to do that, and adds a bright spot to a day.

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  29. The two anon entries just above were me on 4th Arrow’s tablet.

    A blessing from today: I enjoyed a delicious taco salad prepared by 3rd Arrow for lunch. Good food, and five children sitting around the table with me, is very nice.

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  30. For 6, and the rest, your weekend read: http://www.christianitytoday.com/behemoth/2016/issue-43-march-3-2016/messy-secrets-of-perfect-pitch.html
    On the article’s contents: I use the phenomenon of conflicting overtones creating ‘beats’ to tune my violin, as their presence when I play two strings together indicates the strings are out of tune. Also, all that section about having to bend the piano’s tuning is because every key has a slightly different tuning. On the violin, I have to adjust how I play each note when I change keys, shifting my fingers slightly higher or lower.

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  31. My friend who has taken Mary to many doctor appointments just found out her own sister died last night. Unbelievable, and I just got off the phone with her. I said a comforting prayer as she really needed that.

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  32. Roscuro, thanks for that article. Fascinating. It brought to mind all sorts of things I want to comment on, but I’ll chew on it longer this weekend and get back to you later. 🙂

    In the meanwhile, this week while I was looking up some things about rhythm to help with one of my students who has some struggles with rhythmic fluency, I came across this video that made me think of you, Roscuro, with your being a musician and with your knowledge of and experience with different cultures.

    Michelle and others would find this interesting, too, I think.

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  33. Tonight we had the roast pork I asked about earlier in the week. Younger daughter was working, but including older daughter’s fiance there were four of us, and we all thought it scrumptious. I served it with asparagus and baby potatoes, with everything cooked in the oven with garlic (my husband’s favorite spice), and served it with blackberry wine. There’s enough left for a dish for church and another meal for everyone, so I probably won’t freeze any of it. If it were just my husband and me left at home, I’d need to freeze some, since it was a lot of meat.

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  34. Oh, I’m so sorry Janice, glad she had people around her & what a relief to know where she is.

    I have some slow-cook chili going, but (typical of me) I got it going a little late.

    Very, very cold at the dog park late today. A storm is heading our way …

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  35. 6, that is interesting. I had come across the wheel method before, when I was teaching a student from Central Asia, and trying to get an idea of his musical background. It looked so complicated. Then I heard the tama and sabar of West Africa, which is really complicated, as they play a series rhythmic variations on a given rhythm. Watching that clip helped to simplify it a little. He didn’t mention the nine beat rhythm, though. I can’t remember if I linked this clip here (I know I did on FB), but this is a demonstration of the nine beat:

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  36. Cheryl – I don’t have a homepage because I have my options set to bring up the tabs I already had open. I keep certain tabs open all the time.

    So what comes up first when I turn on the laptop is whichever tab I was on before shutting it down. I always leave it on the tab that has my BibleGateway reading plan.

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  39. And the dogs love the rain, too. When I let them out early this morning, they decided to stay awhile — when they came in they were both drenched.

    So paw prints everywhere … Sigh. And Tess snuck in (I was trying to keep them confined to the kitchen) and got onto my bed. As if the house weren’t messy enough already!

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  40. When people become members of your churches, is there any recognition of the fact? (I’m assuming all our churches have some kind of membership class & requirements to become members.)

    In the church we attended for 20 years, when someone became a member (& usually there were more than one at a time), it would be announced during a Sunday service, & they would come forward, where they would be prayed over. Then the others in the congregation would go up to shake their hands or hug them. (We were a small church, so that didn’t take too long.)

    The former pastor at my current church didn’t do anything like that. After Lee & I had taken the membership class, we waited to hear something. Finally, one Sunday, when Pastor Kris was in the foyer, I asked him about it, & he said that yeah, we were now members. It felt like something was missing.

    So it was nice this morning to see 17 new members announced, & come forward.

    Pastor Billy is making changes, but he is making them slowly, so as not to shake us up too much. (Lee & I wouldn’t mind more of a shake-up, but we see the wisdom in how he is handling things.) He says he believes the Lord is leading us to “refocus” as a church on three basics – worship, growing in Christ, & fellowship, & everything will be revolving around these for the next year.

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  42. Our church has new members attend a membership class and then they are invited up and introduced to the congregation. Our church is too large for everyone to greet them, but at least you know who they are next time you see them 🙂

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  43. We have membership classes, recognition at the end of the service, and everyone is invited to come forward and shake their hands or hug before going home. I don’t always stay to do that, but if it looks like not enough others go up then I will.

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  44. Here we welcome anyone new and returning from furlough. We also say goodbye to those leaving. We have been known to give a standing ovation to those leaving who have served here for quite a long time, especially translators.
    In the tok pisin service they pray over anyone leaving, even going to the village, as they understand the uncertainties of travel.

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  45. Our new members come before the congregation where they take their vows — being asked 4 questions followed by corporate prayer & applause (it’s a subdued, Presbyterian applause, of course). New members also are re-introduced & feted at the next monthly potluck.

    The questions are:

    1. Do you believe the Bible, consisting of the Old and New Testaments, to be the Word of God, and its doctrine of salvation to be the perfect and only true doctrine of salvation?

    2. Do you confess that because of your sinfulness you abhor and humble yourself before God, and that you trust for salvation not in yourself but in Jesus Christ alone?

    3. Do you acknowledge Jesus Christ as your sovereign Lord and do you promise, in reliance on the grace of God, to serve him with all that is in you, to forsake the world, to mortify your old nature, and to lead a godly life?

    4. Do you agree to submit in the Lord to the government of this church and, in case you should be found delinquent in doctrine or life, to heed its discipline? (Directory for Worship, V.5)

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  46. Janice: sorry for your loss.

    Today is our seventeenth anniversary. Hubby is at the rodeo with the girls…I dislike going (it’s incredibly noisy and crowded)–so we let Lindsey bring a friend instead of me attending. Scott gets four free tickets through his job. As you recall, we celebrated our anniversary a couple of weeks ago.

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  47. Donna, we have similar questions, but worded a bit difference. We promise, for example, to submit ourselves to the discipline of the church and to study its peace and purity. New members have given their testimonies, and taken their vows, before the elders, and they are officially already members, but they answer the questions publicly, before the church, and then the elders shake their hands and welcome them.

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  48. A funny thing from our church business meeting earlier this evening: The amount of interest on one of our accounts was $6.66. 🙂

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  49. We just had another kid. Complete surprise. The little folk are in charge of seeing to it, getting it started nursing. It has been an adventure.
    I tell fourteen year old girl to get a bale of hay and bring it down.
    I tell fourteen year old girl to put the hay in the little red shelter where all the goats shelter.
    She: Where do I put it?
    Me: In the shelter.
    She: Where do I put it?
    Me: Take the hay out of the wheelbarrow and toss it on the floor of the shelter so they can eat some and use it as bedding.
    She: What you want me to do?
    Me: Pick up the hay. Walk to the shelter (three feet from her). Put the hay on the ground in the shelter.
    She Ok.
    I go over to put the kid in with its mom. The little folk have picked up all the hay and stuffed it into the kid box with the doe. She can barely move. No room for the kid. Pull all of the hay out.
    Me: What did I tell you to do?
    She: Put the hay on the ground in the shelter.
    Me: Why is it in here?
    She: They told me to.
    Me: Who did I give the directions to?
    She: Me.
    Me: And you need to follow my instructions, not the people who are supposed to be doing something else.
    She: Oh

    And so it continues……

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  50. Cheryl, that may also be the case with our church (that the formal vows have already been taken with the elders). That makes sense — but it all follows their being in the new members’ class and then being interviewed by the elders in private.

    Our pastor usually prefaces the questions with saying that the first 3 questions are ones that any Christian should be able to answer “yes” to — the last specifically has to do with their responsibility to the local church they are joining.

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  53. Our tiny church has no membership per we. We believe a person who put total trust in the Lord and wants to meet with us is welcome. I believe we are all members of the church universal. Also whichever local church one decides to attend is where he should pay tithes.

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  54. Interestingly that was one of the issues that lost our church many attenders back in the day (I’m told) when it was going through it’s big transition.

    No-membership churches have become the norm in the U.S. in recent years when ‘evangelicalism’ was on the rise.

    The thinking (among our elders) was that church membership sets up a spiritual accountability that is biblical and good for both the church and us as individual Christians. The church is then responsible to its members and the members to the church.

    If there’s no formal membership — as a friend explained to me once — there’s no accountability and the church certainly is in no position to exercise discipline when serious breaches occur.

    Non-members then just go elsewhere (where they’re also non-members).

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  56. Most of the churches I have attended have had membership, and it has been explained to me that way. Husband became a member of our last church but they really let us down when we needed them. There was none of the accountability I had been told came in when membership was part of the deal.
    I believe I am a contributing member of whatever assembly I am with. I try to exhort the people in Christ and am encouraged by them. I expect to be able to speak up if I see something amiss and expect them to speak up if I am doing something amiss. How Christians should always interact.

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  57. mumsee, I’m sure that happens, sadly, where churches fail their members.

    I’m wondering if the trend toward no-membership, however, might be related to the no-marriage (just living together) cultural trends that have swept through the U.S. and the west in the last several decades.

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  58. Another privilege/responsibility of membership is voting for board members, or being able to be a board member. But non-members can be involved in everything else, I think.

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  59. I was encouraged to vote on the new pastor. Though I don’t attend family meetings as the business meetings are called. My children generally need to get out and move around by then.

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