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Our Daily Thread 6-11-19

Good Morning!

Yesterday may have been Michelle’s birthday. Or today might be. Or tomorrow…… 🙂

Either way, make sure you tell her Happy Birthday!

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The only thing I’m sure of today is that the pics are from Cheryl. 

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Anyone have a QoD?

43 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 6-11-19”

  1. Morning all. Three days left of school and I’m tired. I only had 9 students today as one was sick and two more left.
    May these next three days be joyous.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Lol. Yesterday. At dinner last night, we ate such a decadent dessert, I slept only two hours and have been lying listlessly in the heat not sleeping.

    I gave up at 4 and am now reading.

    We head to the lake around noon.

    A good birthday. Thanks.

    Liked by 2 people

  5. Does anyone see Waldo? I don’t mean the baby bird. Someone else is lurking . . . go look and see.

    The bird is a brown thrasher fledgling. I’m not sure it was able to fly yet, or at least I didn’t see it do so. Some birds leave the nest by crawling onto branches, not by flying, because the nest is really a dangerous place to be. Lots and lots of critters love to find nests filled with protein, so baby birds are in a race to leave it as soon as possible, and some leave before they can fly.

    Anyway, it was on the ground next to a tree and beside my walking trail. Its parent was quite concerned and encouraged it to get to cover. Now, sometimes when I see a fledgling on the ground, I go close enough to scare it a bit, since fledglings that are scared sometimes are spooked enough to flap their wings and at least make it a couple of feet into a tree, and they’re safer if they can make it into a tree and gradually get higher. But its parent is a brown thrasher, and they are known for being protective enough of their offspring that they might draw blood. So I figured the baby is in good care, and anyway it wasb’t worth getting hurt to encourage the youngster to cover. And it was early in the day and he had plenty of hours to strengthen those wings and get to cover.

    It wasn’t until I uploaded these photos later that I saw that some of them (including this one) contain a snake. In fact one of the photos I got doesn’t have a fledgling, but the parent back hovering over the snake, probably trying to chase it away. The bird is blurred and it isn’t a good photo, but it shows that the parent did see the snake, and it shows that its concern about getting little Clueless Cutie to cover concerned more than just me!

    The parent did manage to get the little one behind the tree (not into it) and I went to the other side of the tree (still not very close to the pair) to get a few more shots, at which time the parent popped out on the other side of the fledgling, holding food and calling. “Hey look Clueless! If you come over here, I’ll feed you!!” I left so as not to stress the parent more. I didn’t manage to get any shots with parent and child, because every time I tried, the parent was too quick.

    The snake is an eastern ribbon snake. I wish I had seen it at the time, as I would have tried to get a better shot of it. I’ve never seen one, but identified it from the photo. It doesn’t seem to eat birds, and this big baby is probably way too big for it anyway. The parent might have decided that when it went over to check it out, or it may have been still concerned, I don’t know.

    Brown thrashers are about the size of a mockingbird and are expert mimics. I had read that they are even better than mockingbirds and wasn’t sure I believed it, but this spring I heard them several times, and I think they are. One near me included a frog in the list of animal songs! But mostly they imitate other birds, one call right after another. It’s impressive to hear either bird. The gray catbird is a mimic, too, but I’ve only heard it do its mimicry once (this spring); usually the catbird does its own call, a mew or a meow, or a call a bit like a rusty gate.

    Liked by 2 people

  6. I saw the snake first because of the way the window opened on my computer. My first thought was “why or why must people take photos of snakes and share them with me?” I am not as bad as I used to be, a photo of a snake made me feel like my heart had stopped beating. I can now tolerate that, but I don’t want to see one in real life.
    I may have told the story of taking Zoology in 11th grade. One of the guys had snakes and brought them to class to share. I walked into class to see the burlap sacks ties shut and writhing. I got a pass to the bathroom and didn’t come back until class was over. Mrs. Bennett let me go on that one, but later when the “Snake House” trailer was brought to campus she informed me that I would go through it or she would fail me for the semester. As I stepped up into the trailer there was a snake striking at the glass, and a stupid boy name Bart grabbed my ankle and hissed. I did go through the trailer and out the exit door on the other end, but I was moving at such a speed I cannot tell you what was between the entrance and the first snake and the exit door.
    My cousin is now married to that Stupid Boy. He is a chemical engineer and travels all over the world for Chevron.

    Liked by 3 people

  8. Cheryl, so often I find things in my photos that I did not see while taking the shot and focusing in on what I thought was the main event in the scene. Funny how that works. It’s like a double blessing to find the other things.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. Hot weather. I love heat. Especially dry heat. It is such a relaxing time of year. Good for sitting under the trees, listening to life buzz around as the breeze tickles the trees. Nice to put out a kiddie pool and put the lawn chair up close and the feet in the water with a good book to read. If I had a favorite time of year….

    Liked by 1 person

  11. I second Kim. I’ve had to kill one too many poisonous snakes in my dwelling to thrill at the sight of a snake. I shudder rather. Two weeks ago, I was outside my parents’ house with Tiny Niece and a garter snake, which is completely harmless, slithered out of the flowerbed we were admiring. I made myself stay calm and matter of fact in order not to instill the same dread of slithering creatures that I have into Tiny Niece, but inwardly I was shrieking and running.

    Liked by 2 people

  13. Re: KIm’s 8:45. Elvera could have written that. She doesn’t care if it’s behind a glass, she’s still stressed out about it. I saw a small black snake slither under our deck a couple of days ago. I never told her. She wouldn’t go back out.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. Just reading about the black mambo in an African novel gave me the willies and I tense whenever they’re mentioned. Didn’t you kill a black mambo once, Roscuror? I remember gasping . . .

    The cat was such a yowling pill at 4, I went back to bed and maybe slept 90 minutes. I’m headed for coffee now.

    Meanwhile, our church is preparing for VBS next week. The theme is “The Incredible Race,” based on a trip around the world and becoming more familiar with the Gospel in other nationalities/traditions.

    We have found VBS and Sunday school curriculum to be unsatisfying on many levels.

    This morning in our emailed “prayer for VBS,” the poor director had to include this comment:

    “In working with several teachers yesterday on lesson prep… please evaluate the ideas in your teacher guides regarding color (Black and white).”

    “I think that it might fit with our theme better to talk about different nationalities and that people come from different places all over the world and have different features, rather than make such an emphasis on skin color.

    “For those of you who have the poster of the black boy with a black background and white boy with the white background, some may find it offensive. Especially the older children or some of our helpers, since the wordless book has black for sin and white for the forgiveness of sin.

    ” I might be too sensitive, so just think through how you want to convey the focus for the day… how the human race developed into people groups with different languages, cultures and physical features, but we are still one race.”

    It’s hard for me to believe curriculum writers would be so insensitive in this heightened era.

    Like

  15. You may remember me mentioning in the past that Nightingale told me that she had initially really liked X’s Mom, but came to see her as quite selfish. Her husband once had to call Nightingale to pick him up from dropping his car off to be worked on, because she was “having a bad day” and didn’t want to.

    So she is not happy with the recent developments with X’s needing help with getting his son for a visit. She texted Nightingale that it is hurting her mental health, and that Nightingale and I need to come up with a better way.

    Nightingale replied, politely and reasonably, not in an angry tone, that my being a third party was initially supposed to be a sometime thing, not the usual method. In fact, the protective order also says he cannot harass anyone close to Nightingale, so his arguing with me was out of bounds. She pointed out that this is his fault and problem, not ours, for having attacked her and threatened to kill her. I doubt that X’s Mom has heard the real story of what happened that night, so I hope she now realizes and believes how horrible that was, and why the protective order was issued in the first place.

    Liked by 2 people

  17. Seventeen year old son and I had a disagreement. He came home last night and was standing leaning against the wall. I looked up and commented I was surprised to see him as he had run away and I had been helping him pack as he had left some stuff behind. He said he had not run away. I told him that by definition, leaving home for two weeks without telling his parents where he was or asking their permission to be there, was running away. Today I noticed that all the bags I had so carefully packed have been emptied and he appears to have moved back in. If he disappears again, his stuff will not be so accessible.

    Liked by 3 people

  18. I decided to mow since it is cooler with no rain today. But that humidity after all the rain . . . Whew! I am dropping. But a least my stamina is more than it use to be. I have my third and final portion to go. I put a beach towel down to plop on for a rest. Miss Bosley always thinks it’s cuddle time when I am all sweaty. I never will understand that.

    Liked by 3 people

  20. I could live without snakes. We have rattlers here though I’ve never encountered one, thankfully. But I know some dog owners who have, hiking on the hill a block away where this time of year they are found in abundance.

    Horses, now that’s different. I love seeing horses, too. We have “horse crossing” signs posted throughout the Peninsula and one day recently I saw a couple women walking their horses along with their dogs along the side of the trail. It’s a pricey hobby for the families who live in that area, out here on the coast it’s a sign of wealth if you have horses and can afford to put your children (the sport appeals mostly to young girls) through proper English riding lessons to compete in the horse shows.

    Thankfully it’s very cool this morning so I have all the windows open, letting in as much of the cool air as possible. Hoping it won’t be as hot today as it was yesterday. I think part of my dread is that our hot weather lasts so long, from July (sometimes earlier) through part of November often times. It’s nearly half the year and “fall” can be the worst. A few years ago it was in the 90s on Thanksgiving Day (not a common occurrence but neither was it completely rare). We’ve also had some 80-degree Christmases. I could deal with it better if it were a couple months and then gone.

    At least our marine layer is still coming ashore mornings and nights to cool things off. And the temperatures are supposed to go down by tomorrow. We’ve been lucky with mostly cool, overcast May and June days so far …

    Liked by 1 person

  22. Kim, you were the cook! But, I can’t say I was surprised to not see you go over and retrieve it for dinner.

    Like

  23. Michele’s comment brought this to mind. I am in charge of lining up folks to do the children’s lesson twice a month and frequently do them, myself. Emmy, 8-year old granddaughter, asked me if she could do one. I said yes but she’d have to write out a plan, which she immediately did. A few of those that I’ve done were based around M&Ms and I give the kiddos each a pack at the end. She asked me to get white chocolate M&Ms and her lesson is about us looking different on the outside but all being white on the inside – “wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.” She’ll be doing it in the worship service on June 23.

    BTW, we’re using “Miraculous Mission” for VBS this year. I haven’t seen the curriculum and have no idea what it’s about or how good it is.

    Liked by 2 people

  26. Interesting (and long) piece from Albert Mohler on the eve of the Southern Baptist gathering

    The Future of the Southern Baptist Convention: The Numbers Don’t Add Up

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    …. Southern Baptists are not immune from these trends in the larger society. Such immunity is impossible. SBC churches and membership have been concentrated in the South and Southwest of the United States, the so-called “Bible Belt.” This offered Southern Baptists some delay in the secularizing trends that more quickly transformed other regions. But geography offered only delay, not defense. Southern Baptists grew quickly and steadily when Christianity was a major shaping influence in the culture. Geography still offers some delay in these effects as compared to other regions, but the “Bible Belt” is disappearing fast.

    Second, we have to recognize that SBC trends looked great when our neighbors gained social capital by joining our churches. They gained social status and trust within the community by joining the First Baptist Church or another evangelical congregation. That is no longer the case. Now, given secularization and the sexual and moral revolutions utterly reshaping our culture, our neighbors may well lose social capital by joining our churches.

    The age of cultural or nominal Christianity is fast coming to a close. Until recently, most people wanted to claim some kind of Christian identity or affiliation, even if they rarely attended church. That is increasingly no longer the case. The rise of the “nones,” those claiming no religious affiliation, now includes about 20% of the population and 30% of Americans age 30 and under. The SBC gained millions of members it could not find and did not know due to the phenomenon of cultural Christianity. We knew it wasn’t real and most knew it couldn’t last. Well, it wasn’t and it didn’t.

    Third, looking specifically at the baptism numbers, the decline is both remarkable and lamentable. …

    … we have to acknowledge the hard fact that rates of identification with and membership in evangelical congregations is likely to fall even further. We are told constantly that millennials will not identify with groups that will not fully embrace LGBTQ+ causes. If so, biblically committed churches and denominations will decline in membership, social standing, and influence. That is just a fact. Southern Baptist churches do not have the option of theological liberalism. We are committed to biblical Christianity and the faith once for all delivered to the saints. On basic issues of conviction, there can be no compromise that is not unfaithfulness. I remain unconvinced that we have lost an entire generation. The enrollment in our seminaries says otherwise. But we dare not minimize the challenges we face, nor the likelihood that the challenges will grow harder and the pressures more severe. …

    … The basic point is this: Southern Baptists must face the truth and understand what faithfulness to Christ will demand of us now. The numbers are just part of the story, but they reveal a multitude of questions that, one way or another, this generation of Southern Baptists will answer.

    As Southern Baptists prepare to meet in Birmingham in a few days, it would seem that this is the right time to start answering those questions with both honesty and conviction.
    ________________________________

    Like

  27. I powered up my laptop to update some passwords before we leave on our trip.

    The computer didn’t recognize our Wi-Fi.

    As I trouble shot it, I had to laugh. The first recommendation if you’re running into trouble is

    1. Ask a friend. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  32. Michelle, I killed not one, not two, but three mambas.

    Ah, VBS… I cringe now when I read VBS material and the part of me that still remembers the shy, socially awkward child that I was want to crawl into a hole and hide. I went to Sunday School, AWANA, VBS, and the Children’s Institute (ATI) and I am still very ambiguous toward children’s programming in Christian settings. I am not against any kind of appeal to children -after all, Jesus made his disciples bring the children to him – but much of what passes for children’s programs is trite, condescending, simplistic, irrelevant, and downright humiliating to children. When I taught a Sunday School of three energetic boys, I ignored the premade lessons and concentrated on teaching the Bible story in engaging ways, having simple conversations with them about what we learned, and encouraging them to memorize Scripture. I was in my very early twenties then. Now I would teach the same stories but tell them within the overarching narrative of salvation, and I would still have basic discussions about the story, and encourage memorizing – songs can be an excellent mnemonic device – and reading the Bible.

    Liked by 2 people

  33. One night recently, while lying in bed and wanting to remember three specific things I realized I wanted to talk to Nightingale about, I made up a mnemonic saying to remember them all.

    The next morning, I told myself I should have made up a mnemonic saying to remember the other mnemonic saying, because I had completely forgotten whatever it was I came up with the night before, along with whatever it was I wanted to talk to Nightingale about. 😦

    *******
    Wrote this on the “private room” thread, but then decided to share it here, too:

    Thursday is the last day of this school year for The Boy. He is really struggling to get through these last few weeks, and this last week – not academically, but emotionally. He wants to be with his mommy. (I seriously wonder if X has told him that he is going to get custody of him, or something similar.)

    Haven’t mentioned this in a while, but even with how challenging he can be, I really love this little boy. He is so precious to me. ❤

    Liked by 1 person

  34. I teach Bible just like Roscuro said. I never even get out the teacher’s guide. I use the scriptures and read them and then we discuss. Of course there is always lots of background info. The lessons went from Peter in prison to Paul. So I included Paul meeting Jesus and what he had done previously.

    Liked by 1 person

  36. VBS: I first heard about God and my sin in VBS. I spent the summer with my brother at my uncle’s in Victorville and we were sent to VBS. We were fourteen and fifteen so it was for older children. I am glad.

    I have since helped and taught VBS but I do not remember having much guidance as to how it was done and I don’t recall any premade material. We taught what we thought needed to be taught under some general concept.

    I had not known of pre made VBS until coming here. I suspect it is up to the teacher, how much to stick to the program and how much to branch out. I really don’t care for the songs being taught by video. There seems to be a general lack of enthusiasm in the children.

    But, I don’t teach or help anymore so I won’t complain about how they do it. I am glad they do something. It is eleven year olds only interaction with children her age other than the library and swimming pool. We won’t be letting thirteen participate this year.

    Like

  37. VBS: we had it last week, and the church wrote it ourselves. It went well, and we had lots of church people to help.

    The new photo: that is a new fledgling Carolina chickadee. Its parent was in another tree screaming the bird version of “Hide! She can see you!” but baby animals tend to be pretty clueless their first day or two out of the nest. My husband commented about some young fledgling once that it was too “lazy” to pick up its own food, because its parent was picking food up off the ground and giving it to the baby. I said two weeks ago that baby was an egg, and it has just gotten out of its safe nest where it had food brought to it. Within just a few days it has to learn how to fly well, how to hide, and how to find food. That’s a lot to learn in a few days, and its parents continue to provide most of its food for a few days while it learns. Young animals make very easy prey for other animals with their own babies to feed. Learning to flee from danger (including how to use its wings or legs to take it to safety) is a more basic lesson than learning to feed itself. Learning to feed can come in a day or two. Learning to fly well, and how and when to seek cover, will keep it alive long enough to get to those other lessons.

    Liked by 1 person

  38. It always amazes me that in just twenty one days, a chicken goes from what we fry for breakfast to a fully formed fluffy little chick, able to eat and drink and walk and run.

    Liked by 1 person

  41. Thirteen year old is about five foot nine and a bully. He always manages to torment a little child, no matter how much I warn the people in charge. And I always end up taking him out for at least a day. He needs to stop. He loves VBS. Maybe because he gets to pummel little folk. I have to watch him closely at church. And then there was the time he was seen hovering over the offering plate…..

    Like

  42. You might think with eight older brothers, he might know better. But because of his uniqueness, none had the heart to call him on his stuff. Did him a huge disservice by not pummeling him.

    Like

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