October 2009
Monthly Archive
Thu 29 Oct 2009
The Internet turns 40 today! I learned a little I have never heard before from an Internet article on National Geographic.
What you might call the 40th anniversary of the Internet—can give thanks to the simple network message that started it all: “lo.”
On October 29, 1969, that message became the first ever to travel between two computers connected via the ARPANET, the computer network that would become the Internet.
The truncated transmission traveled about 400 miles (643 kilometers) between the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Stanford Research Institute. The electronic dispatch was supposed to be the word “login,” but only the first two letters were successfully sent before the system crashed.
Internet Turns 40 Today: First Message Crashed System – National Geographic online
There you have it.
Two firsts. The first Internet message, the first crash.
Two birds with one stone, can’t beat that!
Tue 27 Oct 2009
I suffered a bit of discouragement this morning. Just one of those things. Pretty small actually but it was the straw that discouraged the camel. (I wonder if any camel has ever been subjected to the last straw?)
Anyway, as I stepped out for a few minutes and spent time in meditation to my Pandora radio station the thought occurred to me about the Psalms. In many, many instances the psalmist begins in a very discouraged or disheartened state. His cry is for justice, vengeance or to somehow make the mixed up, crazy world right. In some of these Psalms he almost works himself into a frenzy. What’s with that?
In my blog post of last week
Prescription for Healing I examined a passage of scripture that talks about praying, confessing and being healed. Aren’t the Psalms very much related to this topic as well? The psalmist visits the depth of the emotional anguish, faces it head on and cries out for rightness in the world. It’s in the midst of this
emotion that he meets his God. Going to those places and looking at them for what they are, then bringing in the only one who is able to heal all wounds, right all wrongs and offer unconditional forgiveness is the only way to bring rightness to a world so gone wrong.
Interesting how God works.
Fri 23 Oct 2009
The last two days have fared well in the quest for hidden treasure.
Two days, two caches per day!
It’s great to be me!
When are we gonna get there? I’m hungry. This car smells weird.
Riley Poole, National Treasure (2004)
Tue 20 Oct 2009
Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. James 5:13-16 – New International Version (NIV)
Today I began to look at this passage through different eyes. My memorization of the book of James has brought me to this passage at this time and, I believe, for what I am to glean from it today as I search for answers that questions that have arisen in the last week. Here’s my 30,000ft take.
Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray.
Seem like a no brainer, but how often is prayer my last resort? Pretty clear from the context it should be my first response.
Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise.
This is not new, throughout scripture I am encouraged to praise; to taste and see that the Lord is good. What other response could there be as I look at each and every blessing. As the old hymn goes – count your many blessings name them one by one. This exercise alone puts so much into perspective.
Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.
Isn’t sickness at its root a form of pain? We can be physically ill or our soul could be in anguish and pain. The solution: have the leaders pray over you and anoint (symbology to call out for the Lord’s blessing) you. Might this take the form of leading you in prayer rather than simply praying for you?
Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.
So often I have looked at this verse without examining the “therefore.” Confess our sins to each other “so that” I may be healed. My sins can keep me from being healed. Nothing new here except that recently I’ve been challenged to consider sins committed against me which in turn caused me to sin in response to my pain. As I said, my newness of thinking comes from “therefore.”
In the context of sickness (in its various forms), if someone were praying for me – leading me in intercession – might I experience greater healing? I know that if I commit a list of offenses in my marriage to give my wife a blanket “I’m sorry” does not carry nearly the weight of my articulating the specifics offense(s). If someone were guiding my thoughts to the specific “crimes” for my mental discipline (as they concurrently prayed for my healing) wouldn’t this lead to better accountability and understanding? Therefore as I forgive (or asked for the forgiveness of) each offense it has specific personal meaning and isn’t a blanket “I sorry” or “that’s ok.”
And this moves me into the confession of sins. What is the context of this confession? Am I truly articulating a confession by glossing over it? Or is visiting the sin, looking at it full in the face what is needed to fully comprehend it?
The implication is that no confession leads to no healing. What is righteousness? What is it that makes prayer effective?
Might we, as Christians, have lost something of the meaning of this passage? Might we have lost a greater understanding of physical processes required to keeping that computer in our skull operating the way it was intended?
Personally, I do not feel this is always required as a path to healing but what about those things I get stuck in? What about something so apparently innocent as anger at the driver in front of me cutting me or others off? What I do with that situation time and time again may be a rut of its own.
Mon 19 Oct 2009
When is looking back a good thing and when is looking forward a better thing?
Many, if not all of us have been around people that “live in the past.” You know what I am talking about. That person that is constantly revisiting the hurt and pain as if they were afraid it would go away if they don’t pay it a call regularly. Or that person that always sees that past as a better place and there’s nothing good about the here and now. Likely most of us have been in one of these places a time or two in our lives.
This can all be good. That’s how we learn and do something different in the future. For the last few years I have been fond of the phrase “the past is the best predictor of the future.” I don’t know where I got it, maybe I made it up. Unless something changes here and now we will continue to live out the past. Therefore it makes sense to peer into our own history for analysis and use that to do something different, something better.
If this thing (looking at the past) is both good and bad, how can I discern the difference to know when I’ve crossed the line from good to bad?
Tue 13 Oct 2009
I have conducted an informal survey over the last few months and I have found that 100% of everyone that I have polled agrees that the Burger King is creepy, at best.
You know who I am talking about. The Burger King mascot guy that wears that scary mask. There’s just something about that painted smile that says, “You better watch out or you’ll find me under your bed some night.” Does anyone out there disagree? Please speak up and be counted if you do.
So that leads to to Chicago. I am sitting in O’Hare airport today and there’s this big creepy guy looking at all the passersby. Don’t the marketing execs at Burger King know that this image only invites the creepy underground that prefers to remain anonymous? Does he really promote burger sales or just scare the living daylights out of young and old alike?
I am extremely interested to understand the demographics this character appeals to.
Mon 12 Oct 2009
Today is Columbus Day, at least by our current reckoning. In all actuality Columbus landed in the New World on October 21, 1492. In the Julian to Gregorian calendar shift of the 16th century October 21st became October 12th to drop 10 days and re-sync the calendar to the correct season.
Maybe it’s all this confusion that has created apathy in what was a few decades ago a standard state and federal holiday. Today it’s relegated to a reason for bankers to take a day off because they are so overworked since the advent of ATM’s.
What in the world does all this have to do with the heart? I’m glad I asked that. Just as so few are even aware that this day has any special significance, an apparently equal number are oblivious to the condition of the heart.
The heart. That’s an expression that has changed over the centuries. At one time when one spoke of their deepest feelings the phrase was more like “the gut” or “the bowels.” Bottom-line it is a way of identifying the difference between head thinking and something more from the soul or essence of a person. It’s the “us,” the real “us.”
Ever notice that “the heart” is taken for granted in our society? I ask how someone is their doing and I get “fine.” I don’t really care, I don’t really want to hear. Or do I?
That’s the risk. I share my soul with you and what will you do with it? Will you hurt me with it? Will you reject me and go about your business? Or do you really care? What has life become when the heart is relegated to the status of a holiday that celebrates an event that occurred 517 years ago?
Wed 7 Oct 2009
Wouldn’t life be so much easier if we said what we thought, if we asked what we wanted, and if we could do it all in a way that the recipient felt valued?
It is so hard to read between the lines of the unspoken. One can think the unspoken is so easily understood from the clues on the lines that between the lines cannot be possibly mistaken. Recently in a household near me a thought occurred to me. Three hours later, but it did occur. I was asked a question, I answered to the best of my ability. No response. Usually means that thread of dialog is complete. Time to move on.
Now three hours later I ask myself, “Maybe you didn’t ask anything, maybe you didn’t ask something.“
Was there a request cloaked in that question? Was there not? It’s as if the onus of responsibility to state a request was moved from the requestor to the requestee (me) – now it’s my job to probe and see if there was more there. Very inefficient if you ask me.
Wed 7 Oct 2009
Allegories, metaphors, analogies what’s it all about? What’s the difference? Over the upcoming months I’d like to become for familiar with the following terms. Not just to use them, mind you, but to identify when they are used.
- Allegory – a symbolic representation
i.e. The blindfolded figure with scales is an allegory of justice.
- Alliteration – the repetition of the initial consonant. There should be at least two repetitions in a row.
i.e. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
- Allusion – A reference to a famous person or event in life or literature.
i.e. She is as pretty as the Mona Lisa.
- Analogy – the comparison of two pairs which have the same relationship.
i.e. shoe is to foot as tire is to wheel
- Assonance – the repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence.
- Climax – the turning point of the action in the plot of a play or story. The climax represents the point of greatest tension in the work.
- Foreshadowing – hints of what is to come in the action of a play or a story
- Hyperbole – a figure of speech involving exaggeration.
- Metaphor – A comparison in which one thing is said to be another.
i.e. The cat’s eyes were jewels, gleaming in the darkness.
- Onomatopoeia – the use of words to imitate the sounds they describe.
i.e. The burning wood crackled and hissed.
- Oxymoron – putting two contradictory words together.
i.e. bittersweet, jumbo shrimp, and act naturally
- Personification – is giving human qualities to animals or objects.
i.e. The daffodils nodded their yellow heads.
- Pun – A word is used which has two meanings at the same time, which results in humor.
- Simile – figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like, as, or as though.
i.e. She floated in like a cloud.
I will be seeing many of these in a study I began last week, and as I encounter and point them out to the class I’d like to use the correct name. It’s a lot better than calling everyone Joe.
Please let me know if there’re any I’ve missed.
Wish me luck as this is not one of my strengths.
Mon 5 Oct 2009
For the past 9 years I have used journaling software to record my thoughts. There has been some success and not. Virtually all entries to this blog have been created in that software then uploaded to my blog.
To date this has been a somewhat tedious process since I have been forced, due to technical reasons, to do all formatting (I.e. Italics, bold, blockqoutes, hyerlinks, etc.) manually in the journal entry – then upload to the blog, then verify I did not miss a tag. Did I have to go through all that work? Nope. I could have simply logged into this blog and created my entry with much less hassle. Aside from the inherent backup my system created it also allowed me to create entries offline for later upload once I was ready.
Today I upgraded my journaling software and this is a test of functionality.
— Begin test here:
This entry to bold.
This entry is italicized.
This entry is underlined.
This entry is in strikeout.
This is indented.
The following is an unordered list:
- One
- Two
- Three
That would be enough for now. Resume normal entries.
— End test here.
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