65 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 5-26-18”

  2. Morning! What a cute pair of feathered friends up there!! It’s going to be a hot day in these parts…I do believe it will be a day of sitting on the front porch rocking chair with a good book and iced tea in hand. Hope ya’ll have a relaxing weekend…

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  4. At first, I thought they were bluebirds.
    We had bluebirds in H’ville. He was territorial. So? He saw his reflection in the window and attacked it. The bird he saw came and attacked him. They would peck at each other for a few minutes, then he would fly away. But when he came back, the other bird would too. It was interesting to watch in the springtime. But they never intruded on each other’s territory.

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  5. 6 Arrows (re: your comments to me last night) – “Like some forms of crying in front of them would be alright, but not the hard, anguished crying?” Exactly.

    In the days soon after Hubby’s death, we were more apt to weep in front of each other. As life has gone on, we don’t do that anymore. We sometimes tear up and get choked up in front of each other, but we don’t get into a full-on cry. It’s not that any of us would think that is wrong, we just tend not to. But when we do tear up/choke up, we look into each other’s eyes in a way that conveys understanding, if you know what I mean. IOW, we don’t turn away and try to hide the tears or sadness.

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  6. Good Morning. The grandparents have survived Miss Maddie’s spend the night. She was fussy and had a stuffy nose. She got a warm bath with Johnson and Johnson’s soothing vapor bath. I had gone to the store earlier and bought that and a vaporizer. Oh the smell of Vick’s Vapor Rub in the air while you sleep…that is the best! Why have I gone 18 or so years without one?
    Grandpa was up at some point with her and I was up at 3. They got up and let me sleep until 8. Did I mention how well you can sleep with Vick’s Vapor in the air?
    She is in her bouncy chair napping and Grandpa is in the bedroom taking his morning nap. I am washing clothes and watching the Pioneer Woman cooking things that I will probably never make.
    Have I told you how fascinated Amos is with the baby? He has to check on her and make sure the humans are taking good care of her. He really doesn’t like it if she cries.

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  9. Kizzie, thank you. I’ve had such a strong sense lately that I really need to be paying attention to what grieving people like yourself and your family are going through. Thank you for patiently informing me in my cluelessness.

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  10. Well, partial cluelessness (if that makes sense). I’ve experienced some grief, but of a different sort.

    Which, probably, there’s an individuality aspect to grieving, too.

    Excuse me while my mind rambles and my fingers type at the same time. 😉

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  11. I enjoyed sleeping in, thank you.

    And this is a 3-day weekend! I was asked if I wanted to cover the eating contest Monday on board the Iowa (how many shrimp can some of the nation’s top eating ‘athletes’ — yes, it’s a ‘sport’ with a national organization and everything — in 8 minutes.

    Nope.

    A freelance student writer is doing it and our former photo editor who was laid off and now does freelance for us will shoot it since he lives in town.

    My computer is acting up lately, shutting off spontaneously. It’s getting to be ‘old’ in computer years.

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  14. Maxine Waters (herself) called our city desk yesterday (our former editor answered). It was almost 5:30 p.m. on a Friday before a long weekend and she wanted to talk to someone about taking out a campaign ad. Kinda strange, but hey, ads = $$ Editor found an ad person who miraculously was still working to handle it.

    Our office is really emptying out as it’s “all hands on deck” to move folks, including all available editors, over to shore up the other newsroom that lost nearly all its staff this week. I think it will only be me and 1 other reporter — no one else — in the newsroom when we return to work on Tuesday. It’s just getting so very weird.

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  16. I get a 3 1/2 day weekend. The college closed at noon yesterday because they had to shut off power to the entire campus related to the construction work that’s going on. So they gave us the afternoon off with pay. (I guess they haven’t done that before – time off due to constrution, because Payroll had to come up with a special code for the timesheets for it.)

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  17. Not sure (about ad copy), they probably supply that as it’s “their” message worded exactly how they want it worded. What was strange was that she personally called, usually aides handle all of that. She’s not great about calling reporters back for stories, though; I had to do a story on that district race probably 2 years ago at election time and I put in several calls to her that were never returned. But not really unusual, it comes with the territory of being a secure incumbent.

    Wow, I’m moving slowly today. After feeding all the animals I finally showered, got dressed and have the dishwasher going — it’s before noon, anyway.

    I had some crazy, vivid dreams last night including one where I was walking through my backyard and it was brimming with new growth, including a gigantic begonia plant (which I’d only planted a week earlier in my dream, I remember) that was taller than I was and an orange or lemon tree that was just loaded with fruit!

    Looked out there this morning and it’s all just … dirt. Hmmm. But the fence still looks nice. I need to seal that still, though.

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  18. Donna, I got an e-mail about Maxine Waters and her accumulation of wealth during her stay in Congress. The title of the link was “Poverty Warrior.”

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  21. Kim – Unless you have to live with the child. 🙂

    I wish I could spoil The Boy more than I do. But I am pretty easy on him, even while trying to keep to the rules.

    Earlier today, I was talking to Nightingale about my role as grandmother/co-parent. One of the matters we discussed was how kids tend to give their worst behavior to their parents because the parents are “safe”. But if we are doing our job well, they will be good for teachers, grandparents, and others in authority. In my relationship with The Boy, I often receive the worst rather than the good. That is a bit of a disappointment to me, but on the other hand, being a part of his daily life is a blessing and a privilege, and it means that I am “safe” for him. I know that we have an exceptionally close relationship for grands.

    (This is not to say that we don’t deal with the bad behavior directed at us.)

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  22. I bought 2 plumbago plants & a (red/raspberry ice) bougainvillea, all for containers.

    Both are very popular hillside plants here and they’re in full, beautiful bloom right now all over the peninsula. I love them wild, but they can get out of control easily so I figured I’d have a few of them in big containers to set around the house.

    The water is so blue today, dotted with sail boats. May Gray is taking a break and we have bright sunshine today.

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  23. Oh that season of babies! While it brings a smile and heart pang, it also brings a thought of exhaustion….. 😓 😳
    I guess dj’s Gray May has arrived in our state….very windy, cloudy , hot and dry….eerily dry and windy….how I pray everyone heeds the admonishment of our local meteorologist “don’t get stupid folks….high fire danger!)

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  24. Miss Maddie is home with her mommy. Grandpa and I are in bed watching 📺. We went to dinner after we dropped her off.
    I smell like a baby because I washed my jammies in Dreft. 💕👶

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  25. Well, I made the journey. I felt very fragile, but I didn’t break down altogether. Having air conditioning on the buses and train helped, I think. My attic room was unbearably hot when I got there. So, I sat downstairs (the lower part of the house is air conditioned but it never makes it to the attic). The landlady came along, and I took the opportunity to ask if they had a small window air conditioner. She said yes, and her husband installed it this evening. It is loud, of course, but at least it is cooler now, and the air conditioner can help filter the outside air.

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  26. There is a volunteer organization here in Connecticut called House of Heroes. Formed six years ago, they decided to try to honor 100 WWII veterans on Memorial Day weekends by doing some fixing up of their homes and lawns. (Not all 100 in one year. They’ve been doing what they can each year.)

    This year, my Uncle Bill, my Aunt Janet’s (Dad’s older sister) husband of 73 years, was number 100 to be honored. And another team was working on number 101 elsewhere.

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  27. So just as I was going into the dog park, I realized I’d forgotten to check back to find photos to attach to my story that’s posting at 6 a.m. tomorrow. I had checked for them Friday but didn’t find them in our media library, figured I’d check back later, found a lot of other photos for a gallery to go with the story in the meantime, and forgot all about the nice fresh art we’d taken on Wednesday.

    We have this thing now called “slack” (it’s also a verb — “I’m going to slack you”), it’s basically an internal media communications tool that all our editors, reporters and photographers are on, and there’s a special ‘weekend’ channel for raising issues that come up on the weekend. One of the editors found the photos (they hadn’t gotten into the library yet) and added them to the gallery for me, including tweeting the captions which also has to be done by writers now. Whew.

    Sometimes I hate Slack, but sometimes it’s amazingly helpful.

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  28. Someone at the dog park tonight asked me if our church would do a big special blow-out service for Memorial Day.

    How do your churches “do” secular or patriotic holidays?

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  29. DJ, unfortunately our new church does have flags in the sanctuary (not something I’ve had since becoming Reformed), but I highly doubt we will do anything “patriotic.” For sure we won’t sing any patriotic “hymns.”

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  30. We finally got several bookcases in place, and so I got to start unpacking books, and did so until my back said “Enough!” But a house feels a lot more like a home with its books in place, and so I’m happy. We also got lots more boxes unpacked as a result.

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  31. DJ, zero, zip, nada. It is Trinity Sunday, which was our theme. We always say the Athanasian Creed on Trinity Sunday.

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  32. Most churches don’t observe Memorial Day, that I’m aware of. However FBCHNC observed Veterans Day (in the early service, don’t know about the others). The organist would play the various units songs, (Anchors Aweigh for navy, etc.) and those who had served in those units would stand. In the early service, most of the men were standing at the end. I doubt if that was so in the two following services.

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  33. DJ’s question on patriotic services: For Canada Day, nothing, not in any church I have been can I ever recall seeing a Canada Day service. I seem to remember that my childhood church had flags, furled, at the front of the church, but there were no patriotic observances. I’ve been in a couple of churches which had furled flags at the front (one of them was Anglican, another independent Baptist), but very few of the churches I have been in, and certainly not the two churches of which I have been a member, have flags. For Remembrance Day (November 11) there was also nothing in the churches in which I grew up. I was just puzzled as a child as to why, at that time of year, everyone at church wore a plastic poppy in their lapel. The pastor who resigned from my family’s church did introduce a Remembrance observance in the two short years he was pastor there, and to my surprise, the city church also had a Remembrance observance last year – nothing spectacular in either case, mainly just a moment of silence and maybe a prayer and/or reading – but the pastor who resigned, as well as a new assistant pastor in the city church, have military connections, so that probably accounts for it.

    I did not like the Remembrance Day observances in either church. My family history includes active members in both world wars, but having a moment of silence in church to remember the sacrifice of those who died fighting strikes me as being somewhat pagan in perspective. I think the Remembrance ceremony had its uses for those who survived the wars, whether as soldiers or civilians – a yearly acknowledgment of the trauma surrounding those conflicts may well have helped the community to recover mentally and emotionally. But, it seems very out of place in the Church.

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  35. The Baptist church I attended this morning mentioned it, and gave thanks that due to such brave men and women who were willing to sacrifice their lives, we could all continue to gather and worship freely, as our founders intended. It was only about a minute and half, and I was happy to see them mention it.

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  36. We continued our sermon series on the 6th commandment. We also don’t do anything for the more patriotic or secular holidays, though a day like today sometimes might be mentioned as part of an overall congregational prayer (wasn’t today). No flags.

    A Quaker (evangelical) church I attended in years past, however, did an all-out patriotic service for one of the holidays, probably Veterans Day. It was all-out enough to have garnered several complaints, including from at least one member of Ministry & Counsel (the elder board). Sometimes I think the church, with its pacifist believes, felt self-conscious (it was located in a very conservative community in OC) and would bend over backwards to pay homage to the nation. There also was a huge U.S. flag on a pole in front of the church outside — which some members wanted to make bigger when the first Gulf War broke out 🙂

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  38. Like Linda, the emphasis in our church today was on Trinity Sunday. We also recited the Athanasian Creed.

    We do have flags at the front of the church, and occasionally sing God Bless Our Native Land or other songs about country. (There may be one or two others in our hymnal besides that one, I can’t recall right now, and it’s pretty common that we sing (or hear in organ interludes) that type of music around the 4th of July.) Our hymns today, though, didn’t include anything “patriotic.” They were mainly from the TRINITY section of the hymnal.

    We did have a prayer for veterans today, and for a young man from our congregation who soon will deploy to Afghanistan. That latter type of prayer, of course, is offered any time someone deploys or returns from deployment, if the family has requested it. It’s not only done around Memorial Day, Independence Day, or Veteran’s Day, naturally.

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  39. Our church doesn’t do much for any holiday, being a very small congregation of 6 adults and 3 children. occasionally it will be mentioned, like on Mother’s Day, but it is not much more than a mention. Except Resurrection Sunday. Then we’ll sing a lot of songs about the Lord dying and rising again.

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  41. Veterans were mentioned in the morning prayer led by one of our elders. Thanking the Lord for their service to our country and comfort for the families they left behind. I don’t believe we have flags in our church….I know they aren’t up front anyway….I will have to look to see if there is a flag in the foyer…now I am curious! 😊 🇺🇸

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  42. We had no mention of Memorial Day this morning. 20 years ago, or two pastors ago, we might sing “God of Our Fathers” or some such around Independence Day, but not for other such holidays, and not even for that more recently under the last two pastors. What AJ described from his church sounds very appropriate.

    Under our newest pastor we’ve observed the traditional liturgical calendar much more than is usual for a Baptist church like ours. I don’t remember ever hearing of Trinity Sunday before this week, but it was observed today with a sermon on the topic.

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  43. The Baptist sermon this morning was on people who serve. The minister wants to do away with the word volunteer in the church. As members of a family you don’t volunteer you just do what is needed. No matter our financial circumstances, we live an abundant life.
    My Sunday school class is now studying Safe People. Today was the first real Sunday of that as we are still discussing the merits of reading the 23rd Psalm twice a day. So far we have discussed that The Lord IS my shepherd and I shall NOT want. You can emphasize different words as you like.

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  44. There was some turmoil in my life today. I could not get a book I wanted to read to download to my Kindle. I purchased it. It told me it was downloaded. It wouldn’t show up. FINALLY! I remembered I had gotten a new debit card with a new number. I went into my account, updated it, and my book downloaded.
    All that to say, Cheryl, I know you are happy to be surrounded once again by your books. I am glad you now have your own home with your husband. It does make a difference.

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  45. yep, what Kim said

    I’m trying to figure out how many gallons of paint it will take to paint the outside of my house (which is about 1,250 square feet, I think, plus the single-car garage). Dog park worker is coming over to take some measurements. I’m asking because SW is having a 30% off sale on their paint this week and I’m thinking it mike make sense to buy it now.

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  47. Being in a very transitional situation, my church is trying to bridge past traditions with all things new. In the past one of the veterans did a portion of the service to recognize our vets who died during the past year. The vets dressed in their uniforms. That did not happen today. It was mentioned this morning that a number of the vets were the founding members of our former church and few are left now. We are four or five blocks from the big Atlanta V.A. hospital. It was also recognized that we have our freedom to worship as we do because of the sacrifices made. We had three vet’s who passed this past year so their names were recognized. I don’t think I saw any flags in the chapel where we meet. We have in the past, on occasion, said allegiance to the U.S.A. flag and to the Christian flag.

    We have an extended worship time for when we spend extra time on things like this so it does not take time away from worship. We have been going through the book of Acts and the pastor spoke/taught on Simon who wanted to buy the power of the Holy Spirit. The pastor had looked at several commentaries and said it seemed to be that some scholars were of the opinion that Simon was not a saved believer whereas others thought he might be a baby Christian who did not know any better than to do what he did. I think he said that the former popular radio preacher, Adrian Rogers, thought he was unsaved. This was just a small part of the sermon. I had never heard this addressed before. Any thoughts?

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  48. Mumsee @ 3:10
    FBCHNC has three services. The 9:15 service is for old folks who sing songs we know. The other two services are for those who like 7-11 music.
    The old guys are veterans of two wars and many were drafted. I suspect very few veterans are in the late services.

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  49. Janice, the early church tradition was that Simon the Magician became a Gnostic heretic. Irenaeus, an early church writer who wrote Against Heresies about the false beliefs of the Gnostics around 185 A.D., mentions Simon the Magician:

    Simon the Samaritan was that magician of whom Luke, the disciple and follower of the apostles, says, “But there was a certain man, Simon by name, who beforetime used magical arts in that city, and led astray the people of Samaria, declaring that he himself was some great one, to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This is the power of God, which is called great. And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had driven them mad by his sorceries.” This Simon, then—who feigned faith, supposing that the apostles themselves performed their cures by the art of magic, and not by the power of God; and with respect to their filling with the Holy Ghost, through the imposition of hands, those that believed in God through Him who was preached by them, namely, Christ Jesus—suspecting that even this was done through a kind of greater knowledge of magic, and offering money to the apostles, thought he, too, might receive this power of bestowing the Holy Spirit on whomsoever he would,—was addressed in these words by Peter: “Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God can be purchased with money: thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter, for thy heart is not right in the sight of God; for I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity.” He, then, not putting faith in God a whit the more, set himself eagerly to contend against the apostles, in order that he himself might seem to be a wonderful being, and applied himself with still greater zeal to the study of the whole magic art, that he might the better bewilder and overpower multitudes of men. Such was his procedure in the reign of Claudius Cæsar, by whom also he is said to have been honoured with a statue, on account of his magical power.

    Irenaeus goes on to say that the Simon’s cult continues in his day:

    Thus, then, the mystic priests belonging to this sect both lead profligate lives and practise magical arts, each one to the extent of his ability. They use exorcisms and incantations. Love-potions, too, and charms, as well as those beings who are called “Paredri” (familiars) and “Oniropompi” (dream-senders), and whatever other curious arts can be had recourse to, are eagerly pressed into their service. They also have an image of Simon fashioned after the likeness of Jupiter, and another of Helena in the shape of Minerva; and these they worship. In fine, they have a name derived from Simon, the author of these most impious doctrines, being called Simonians; and from them “knowledge, falsely so called,” received its beginning, as one may learn even from their own assertions. [Link: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ante-Nicene_Fathers/Volume_I/IRENAEUS/Against_Heresies:_Book_I/Chapter_XXIII.%5D

    Irenaeus wrote his book some thirty years after Justin Martyr wrote his First Apology to the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius, circa 150 A.D., and Justin also mentions the same things regarding Simon the Magician:

    And, thirdly, because after Christ’s ascension into heaven the devils put forward certain men who said that they themselves were gods; and they were not only not persecuted by you, but even deemed worthy of honours. There was a Samaritan, Simon, a native of the village called Gitto, who in the reign of Claudius Cæsar, and in your royal city of Rome, did mighty acts of magic, by virtue of the art of the devils operating in him. He was considered a god, and as a god was honoured by you with a statue, which statue was erected on the river Tiber, between the two bridges, and bore this inscription, in the language of Rome:
    “Simoni Deo Sancto,”
    “To Simon the holy God.”
    And almost all the Samaritans, and a few even of other nations, worship him, and acknowledge him as the first god; and a woman, Helena, who went about with him at that time, and had formerly been a prostitute, they say is the first idea generated by him. [Link: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ante-Nicene_Christian_Library/The_First_Apology_of_Justin_Martyr%5D

    Justin Martyr was born in Samaria, so he may well have been speaking from first hand knowledge about the cult of the Samaritans. I think we are not told about Simon’s fate in Scripture because it is the warning of Peter that we are to take from that story. Simon’s fate was left in God’s hands, but all of us needed to be warned that greed has no place in the Church of Christ.

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  50. We have several veterans in our congregation. Including our DDay participant, Joe Meiners. But there was no mention of Memorial Day. Joe drove his golf cart the thirty yards to church this morning, but only to drop off cards to two graduates. He was not feeling well so went back home. One of the men escorted him. He lives alone in his house. He is ninety five, I believe. And never stops talking about Jesus Christ and what He has done in his life.

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  55. Our church had a moment of silence and a brief prayer which included the mention that even if we were to lose all our freedoms overnight, we would still have our spiritual freedom in Christ.

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  57. Sunday is still a particularly hard day for me. (It was the day Hubby and I would be most likely to relax and spend time hanging out together.) I still cry every time I’m in church, at various times in the service.

    A little while ago, I sent Nightingale a message (she and The Boy are upstairs watching a movie) in which I explained this to her, and also said that my custom had been to try not to have to do the same kinds of chores I do the other six days of the week, particularly cleaning up the kitchen. I would plan an easy, quick dinner, or prepare something the day before to be heated up in the microwave. But Nightingale has been doing the cooking, and she tends to not do anything in a simple manner. (Well, to her it is simple enough, but not to me.) So I end up still having a mess to clean up.

    So I decided that I needed to tell her how I felt, and I also requested that they leave me alone as much as possible on Sundays (or at least after she gets home from work on the alternating Sundays that she works), and that I will have dinner by myself.

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  58. Kizzie, glad you texted her – but eating dinner alone is ok for you?

    I ate on the patio tonight (baked turkey breast) with 3 animals hovering the whole time.

    I took the dogs for a nice walk late today at the marina, sweatshirt weather but it was a beautiful day, sunny, blue skies and water, strong winds, gulls congregating on the beach and boats laden with surfboards, paddleboards and diving gear bobbing in their slips waiting for the next run out to sea or to Catalina Island. I talked to one woman who was waiting for her husband, they were headed for the island to scuba dive but she said she’d never slept on a boat as small as the one they were taking out.

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  59. Yes, DJ, I am fine with eating alone on Sundays. I sometimes do that during the week if they are out for some reason at dinner time. I eat in the living room, watching TV. I don’t mind it.

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  60. Done with graduation. It was a good ceremony, but a long time sitting (had to arrive an hour early, and it lasted an hour and a half), a lot of people, and now I’m pretty tired. (But I managed to take care of getting dinner, washing up, transcribing a sermon for my husband, and sending him the pictures from graduation, so now I feel free to relax.)

    Our son was recognized for being in the top 5% of the class (which I assume is about 340 students, since 17 were in the top 5%). And they pronounced his name correctly, which was nice (since people who don’t know him usually get it wrong). They had a really good singer for the national anthem, and the choir/orchestra did really well with the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

    Each senior crossing the stage got some kind of silvery stick about a foot long, in addition to the diploma cover, and I was puzzled about what in the world they were. Until the end of the ceremony, when they were given permission to use them, and purple and gold confetti erupted in a huge cloud over the senior class. Much better than throwing caps in the air, though someone is going to have a lot of sweeping up to do.

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  61. Kizzie, I too make an effort to keep Sunday simple, and I don’t wash dishes on that day. Often that means my hubby washes them Monday morning, but sometimes it means I do, but there rarely are many since I don’t “cook.” It took a while for my husband to “get it.” I’d ask what he wanted for supper (meaning leftovers, a sandwich, or a can of soup), and he would tell me “Chicken stir-fry sounds good, if you could make that.” Sometimes I would make it, but sometimes I would tell him, “I don’t cook on Sundays. We can go out, or I’ll make something simple.” He seems to have come to accept it, maybe understand it. I just want one day that I don’t cook and I don’t have to apologize for not cooking–it’s my day off.

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  63. Mermaid birthday party followed by adult birthday we missed last week meant two cakes.

    Our family always eats spaghetti on Sunday nights (a family tradition going back at least 165 years), which means we make the sauce the night before and it’s ready. I think it makes Sunday simpler. Others don’t agree.

    I can’t leave dishes in the sink all night, so work very hard to get the kitchen clean while I’m cooking and when it’s over. That’s what the dishwasher’s for. 🙂

    My Sunday differentiate for many years is I don’t do laundry. Not such a big deal now, but in the middle of prime kid growing years, I did at least two loads a day, six days a week.

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