Month: January 2021

Sunday Sermon Notes – … and it was very good

January 31, 2021

Literary Journey

Genesis 2 speaks to the creation, with the sixth day as the crowning glory. The sixth day all the animals were presented to Adam for naming, whereupon finalizing the task and resulting in a declaration from God that it is not good for Adam to be alone – the first marriage.

My pastor said today that Adam saw the pairs and the fact that he didn’t have a pair opened his eyes to this missing component. Thereby priming Adam for a place in his heart for someone else, which God then creates from Adam’s side. The act of naming the animals and being a part of Eve’s personhood was necessary for Adam to see himself as leader of the animals and a partner to this woman.

He further showed how Adam, upon waking up, said “Wow” when he first saw Eve, and they were the first case of “love at first sight.” I like this visual a lot, and although the pastor’s notions are of the romantic ilk, I believe that Adam was pleased with Eve.

The anecdote (paraphrased) that follows isn’t original to my pastor (he noted), but I thought it was an interesting way to think of God’s plan of marriage:

God created Eve not from Adam’s head, so he could not lord over her; not from his feet, so he would not trample over her, but from his side, denoting their equality, and under his arm to protect her and near his heart.

I’m absolutely certain I butchered that, but I hope you get the idea. Anyway, I like it.

The final takeaway for today’s lesson simply has to do with the strength in having God in a marriage. The triangle below represents man, woman, God, and God is at the peak. If the man and woman go up toward God, the man and woman will naturally get closer to each other as they get closer to God.

Just a little something to think about if you are married or plan to be. Love is the start of everything – but not usually without some complications on this side of heaven – and it is still very good.

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Saturday Night Cinema – Spirited Away

January 30, 2021

Literary Journey

Movie: Spirited Away

Director: Hayao Miyazaki

Genre: Japanese Anime (dubbed)

Year: 2001

Japanese hand-drawn anime film about a fantastical journey of a girl who finds herself in an earthly spirit filled world from which she has become hostage.

The allegorical plot contends with good and evil, and the characters’ ability to make choices, good and bad.

The movie opens with Chihiro, renamed Sen, inside a car with a girl lamenting the loss of her life and the changes ahead in the forced relocation to this new town they are entering. The family gets lost and finds themselves in a defunct amusement park that mysteriously offers a food feast from which the parents partake and the stage is set for Chihiro to save her parents from the slaughterhouse. Chihiro makes friends and sacrifices in order to achieve this goal, but she would not be able to do anything without the help of Master Haku, who tells her all she must do to survive and to escape the clutches of this sinister place.

The Academy Award winner took home the Best Animated Film award and was the highest grossing Japanese film in history with box office receipts of $305 million US dollars. This film held the title up until last year, 2020. That’s 19 years as the money maker!

As fairy tales go, this has the components of a good tale. Girl has dilemma, girl meets boy, boy saves girl after girl saves boy. It is a fairly common formula, but offers so much more to this basic canon. The protagonist is likeable, one to cheer on, plus villains to boo. Its plot is among the more unique, but harkens back to Grimm’s moral darkness with a Disneyesque animated beauty. It’s a fun watch, especially twins Yubaba and Zeniba.

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Fact or Fiction Friday – What Is Isn’t Always Seen

January 29, 2021

Literary Journey

It’s December and a beautiful sunny day, but cold. It’s the kinda day where you bask in the warmth of the sun through the windshield of your car because if you are outside, the warmth is snatched away by the bitter cold, instantly reddening your cheeks. No sunburn, frostbite.

Such a day as this is to be celebrated as the exception to the typical gray days of winter in Chicago. So, to celebrate, a road trip is order – Lake Geneva, here we come.

Lake Geneva is one of my favorite places on the planet, and we is me and my old friend Jock. Although I love Lake Geneva, I have never once considered going to the frozen tundra that is Wisconsin in the winter. It’s a summer place, for boat rides and ice cream following an outdoor lunch overlooking the mansion-lined lakefront.

I drive the rental car to pick up my friend and traveling companion who proffers a slim, hand-rolled marijuana stick. My, my, it’s something I haven’t done in years, so I’m not sure whether I should partake or not.

One thing about me is that when presented with a temptation, I very rarely decline. Here we go.

We drive north, the wind gets stronger, the thermometer drops lower, and we are high. We pull off to the side of the road periodically to take a hit or two of the skunky weed, it is after all a road trip, no rush. We freeze our butts off, but don’t feel it. Giggly.

Lake Geneva is beautiful, but it has lost some allure in its frozen state as the boats are gone, restaurant patios are shuttered, and no one is eating ice cream in 10 degree weather. We cut the trip short and head back to my hotel. Jock is looking to spend more of my final two days in town, but I have plans and have to beg off. Persisting, he asks “What could be more interesting than spending time with me?” Reluctantly, I tell my pagan friend, “I’m going to visit my old church.” He pulls a face and says, “I didn’t know your were a Christian.”

I brushed it off at the time, but recently I have been thinking about how loud that one little statement speaks to who I am, and who I am not.

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Lyrical Thoughts Thursday – Hot Beach Days

January 28, 2021

Literary Journey

Hot beaches, swell,

                big bodies, little bodies, everywhere.

Sailing by boats

                surf meets sand, and

                                                                Sunshine

                and sand meets surf.

Boats by sailing

                everywhere, bodies little, bodies big

Swell beaches, hot.

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Freewheelin’ Wednesday – Woman Accused of Wearing Too Much Lipstick

January 27, 2021

Literary Journey

I was surfing the national news page earlier today and noticed an article about a woman and man who ended up on their local Bridgerton, MD news when police were called by a man on the street.

The couple, Marie and Harold Lipshutz, were going out for a walk after dinner at Vino’s Italian Eatery around 7:00 EST, when, according to passerby, John Seizit, the man took the ladies scarf from her neck and started to, in Mr. Seizit’s words, “violently scrub her face with it!” She then, took something out her purse and proceeded to rub it on the man’s face, and it appeared to be cutting his face to shreds. Seizit, fearful that this man was going to die, did what any interfering, nosy citizen would do; he called the police.

Minutes later, the squad car pulled up next to the couple, and Seizit (too cowardly to approach earlier), sidled up to the action, and heard the man tell the officer, “The Italian, Guiseppe, just can’t keep his eyes off my Marie, but it’s her fault, she just wears too much darn lipstick!” Apparently, Mrs. Lipshutz didn’t take it too kindly and she decided he should wear too much lipstick all over his face.

Seizit had nothing to fear, the man wasn’t going to die from a lipstick death. Just goes to show you, sometimes it’s just better to keep your lips shut.

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Let’s Book Tuesday – Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir

January 26, 2021

Literary Journey

Book: Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir

Author: Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman

Year: 2019

So this is an interesting book about a musician that takes a gig as a violinist for a traveling show.

Writing in 2nd person was always something I enjoyed using for my shorter stories, so it was a pleasant surprise to see it used in this book. It’s so rare to see! Personally, I always used it to create an air of immersion for readers. I like to induce tension for my readers. I like drama and suspense. The reason I used 2nd person was because I wanted the reader to feel like they were plopped right in the middle of the action. You feel this way. Why? Because I wrote that you do (LOL).

At the same time, it was really odd to read Hindman’s reason for using 2nd person because it was so different from my own. She’s using “you” to indicate that her (the writer) reality felt like a fiction; I used “you” to try to convince the reader that the fiction was a reality. I think my prior mindset made it hard for me to engage with the story. I was reading it with my mindset of what “you” meant, but that meant that I was trying to become her (does that make sense?) My reality is very different from Hindman’s, so trying to put myself in her shoes, especially knowing that these events really happened, really wasn’t working. Once again, it seems like my sticking point is the non-fiction part of CNF. I think I’m going to need to reflect more on what she’s trying to achieve with her “you” to better engage with this work.

More to come next week as I read more. Why don’t you read with me!

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Monday’s are Made for Memories – Amazon Love

January 25, 2021

Literary Journey

Is there anyone on the planet that doesn’t have a relationship with the smiling box which magically appears on the doorstep?

Ping! You’re package has been delivered.

Since I purchase many types of items from the behemoth, I have different levels of response to that ping.

Ping! You’ve got shampoo – meh.

Ping! You’ve got Scott’s lawn insect killer – groan.

Ping! You’ve got your new itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini – yay! (Well, maybe it’s not so tiny)

Ping! You’ve got curtains… the curtains you’ve been waiting for. The curtains that will make your library look like a garden on the bottom with their robust pink and yellow blossoms and tiny bluebells amid stalks of greening stems and leaves; the curtains that provide the English Garden near the ground while the white spanse above softly filters the light; the curtains that will allow the reader to be immersed in a virtual garden experience. Yes! The curtains have arrived! Let’s get them up!

Amazon, always at the fingertips. The thought enters my mind that I need hooks, prang, you’ve got hooks. Oh darn, my earbuds stopped working, thank you Prime. You need it, they’ve got it. Just pick up your iPad (or phone or laptop or anything that gets you to the internet) and Amazon’s smile turns to a gaping mouth that spews forth innumerable options, beckoning – come in my dear, while it eats you alive. It’s a kind of hell, where the devil laughs, “muhahahahahahaha!a Come buy… I have all the answers for you.”

This same devil beacons the lumber scavenger to the Amazonian jungle. Men (and women?) who think that these natural resources are theirs for the taking, and they, rape the majesty that is the namesake of store of the future – a future without trees, but surrounded by an endless supply of things. Hopefully, we can still breathe.

creative non-fiction, commentary,

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Sunday’s Sermon Notes – The Value of a Million Bucks

January 24, 2021

Literary Journey

Solomon, known for his wisdom, speaks in Ecclesiastes 2 about how meaningless having everything one desires is. As I read this passage today, I couldn’t stop thinking about how, we as a society, and me in particular, think that having money will offer us the dream life. I have been watching The Amazing Race for the past year (roughly an episode a day), and I like to think I have watched the 28 seasons (so far) for the excitement of challenge and travel, which I do, but I also know someone will win one million dollars, so I pick a winner at the start of every new season. Likewise, they all say they love the travel and the race, but they too can’t help but imagine a life where they are the winner and have a million bucks.

When we feel good, we say we feel like a million bucks, but the vast majority of us do not know what it would feel like to have a cool million, (Is it really cool?) and anyway, nowadays even a million doesn’t seem like what it once did. Perhaps it’s time to start to say, “I feel like a billion bucks,” when we feel great, cause inflation means that cool million feels only like measly hundreds of thousands. No one wants to say, “I feel like a few hundred-thousands.” It just doesn’t have the same ring.

The Amazing Race is just one way to join the Millionaire’s Club, and I bet you can think of several and probably have your own dreamionaire fantasy.

Yet, Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived they say, says even if you got all the money in the world, you would still not be satisfied. In a world of retail therapy, half-million-dollar ranch homes, and keeping up with the whoevers, those millions are just sucked up anyway, and we are left, after all the things purchased, going through the spinning doors, chasing the material-satisfaction mirage on the horizon. And Solomon, after going through many open doors, says there is only one door that needs to be opened, and it will fulfill that empty space in ways a gazillion dollars never could. Best of all – it’s free.

Don’t you love free?

I do too!

Don’t you love peace?

I do too.

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Saturday Night Cinema – Antebellum

January 23, 2021

Literary Journey

Movie: Antebellum

Director: Gerard Bush, Christopher Renz

Genre: Horror/Thriller

Year: 2020

Deep South politics are the order of the game in this intriguing story. The plot takes you on a rollercoaster ride that seemingly has no stopping points. As you travel through the darkness, with moments of illumination, finding yourself teetering at the hill, then you plunge down onto another twisty turn, and dip into mystery.

Antebellum has a message that is at once obscured and overt simultaneously, but doesn’t quite come into maturity. It may, perhaps, get you to think about the ramifications of self in a luminosity of time unknown previously, but even if it doesn’t, the ride will keep you awake.

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Fact or Fiction Friday – Intent

January 22, 2021

Literary Journey

The curtain fell, and the earth rose, compressing the gap called day. I sit in my canvas cave reflecting on the last hours, and of what the next hours bring. Exposed in my sensitivity, the elements take center stage, for now, and I, I am but a speck locked away behind the fragile toothline guarding the way in, keeping me safe within.

It sure is dark outside. The leaves rattle unseen. The army follows its invisible trail, greeting its brethren in its search, unseen in the midst of grass, leaf, and twig. The moon has stayed home tonight, and with it, its light, closeted for the night’s black. The only things seen are the tiny pinpoints in the deep sky, and the soft hue that silhouettes my hovel.

The day took its toll. After finding the one I love most, cold. I cannot bear another sigh, another cry. I slunk away unseen. This dark night, so black, black and cold, wraps its arms around me. I am alone here, there.

Tonight, I wait, and wonder if tomorrow will change the events of today. For tonight, I hide safely within myself, within the cloak of night. Outside – in my temporary shroud. I hope they don’t come for me, too.

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