Where's Lisa Been???

 Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

I told ya it was going to be a crazy fall.  

We're almost through it.

First...this happened...

Photo courtesy of The Princess.  I didn't pull my phone out to take pictures...

The Artist and his Dancer married on a bluff overlooking the Tennessee River, on a lovely day with eagles hanging around.  Couldn't have asked for a more perfect setting.  And, yes, I did finish the dress on time...barely.  (If you haven't read that post yet, click through...I'm not going to retype the shenanigans The Artist pulled on his family in the ceremony, lol).  To top off the weekend, I had to be at church early the next morning to get folks registered for the quarterly baptism service.  So, yeah. Crazy.

I thought I would get stuff done the next weekend.  My Sweet Babboo was on a Royal Ranger campout, so I had the weekend to work on a project for a friend, catch up the laundry that didn't get done over the wedding weekend, clean up the sewing room, write the next Heart blog post...

But, well, a few weeks ago I listened to a Makers and Mystics podcast on which Stephen interviewed Sam Smith, who'd written an epic series about anthropomorphized rabbits.  Think Redwall, not 
Watership Down.  After listening to the podcast, I bopped over to Sam's website and ordered the books.

And then forgot about them.

Well, Thursday night, on the brink of my 'I'm going to catch up' weekend...those books came in the mail.

So guess what I did on my 'catch up' weekend....

Had a very late night, but I can report that the good guys win, albeit not without cost. and I might even have shed a tear or two in the final boss fight...er, last battle.  I found the books easier to get 'in to' than the Wingfeather series, if a bit long in descriptions in places.  Overall...good books.  

I'm calling it a mental health break, lol.

I did get the dress  hemmed for my friend (it was a rather crisis thing and she had no one else to do it.  I made her promise not to tell who did it, lol), so it wasn't a complete washout, but I did NOT get the laundry done.

Then this past weekend we went to the state Assembly of God conference center for the annual Ranger Commander/ wives conference.

We had a cold front come through, and I managed to catch the resulting mist dancing on the small lake yesterday morning.  It's such a pretty, restful place.  

We had a fair amount of free time, so I dug into another book...

this one was 'suggested' to the church staff.  It's...interesting.  I'm about 2/3 of the way through it.

The wifi/ cell signal is not terrific up on the mountain where the conference center is, but the news about the attack on Israel filtered up to us in pieces.  We had a little over 50 folks from church on a tour of Israel last week; they were headed to the airport to start the trip home when the attacks began.  They did manage to get out, after a bit of time in a bomb shelter at the airport.  They were on what turned out to be the last commercial flight to leave on Saturday, but they are all home safe.  I am gobsmacked by the details coming out about that attack; remembering a quote from the Lord of the Rings movies...'What can men do against such unreasoning hate?'  

The photo is from my trip to Israel in 2019.   When they first announced this year's trip, I told my hubby..."this is our trip.  We need to go."  But then both sons decided to get married this fall, so a trip to Israel just wasn't going to happen for us. Who knows now when or if we'll get to make the trip together. This could get very bad...but we can pray.

I don't know if I will manage to get the next Heart post up before the end of the month or not.  We still have some crazy left to get through; but at least the rest of the crazy should be somewhat fun...

All that to say, yeah, I'm still here and I'll post the next few instalments in the series when I can...around the laundry, I'm sure. ;-)

Epic Reading

 Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

My reading has been rather epic so far this year.

I did a re-read of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy to start the year off; I am not sure why but I just feel a compulsion to visit Middle Earth every two to four years.  Narnia, too, for that matter but I'm not hearing that siren song just yet.

But, just before the Easter costuming frenzy hit, I ordered a set of books I'd been hearing about for a while.

Staff got the Monday after Easter as a holiday, after a very full weekend, but I went in to work to get the data entry done and took my Monday on Thursday (offices are closed on Fridays).  My Sweet Babboo had a camping trip this weekend , so I 1) didn't set my alarm  and 2) settled in to read during mealtimes.  

Or at least, that was my plan.

So I started Book 1 at breakfast on Thursday.  Read a bit more at lunchtime, and a little bit more before I went to bed.  It was, to me, a rather awkward writing style and I struggled to get into the story but finished the book around lunch time on Friday.  Ditched the idea to just read at meals, and read while the laundry was running.  Finished book two Friday evening and started Book 3.  

The awkward writing style had abated somewhat...and I think I adjusted to it.  I stayed up until a ridiculously late hour, weeping slightly at the end of Book 3 and, against my better judgment, started book 4.

My morning coffee stretched through lunch and beyond, and, y'all, it was very nearly the ugly cry at the end of 4.

Lots to think about here.  

Now, to finish the other stuff I meant to do on my long weekend...

A Bit of Reading

 Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Under this year's reading...

I have lamented before about how difficult it seems to be to find time to just READ BOOKS.  I have blogging friends that I follow who read an amazing number of books...several per month...and I am jealous.  I am a fast reader, and I love reading...why do I have such trouble finding time to sit and read?

Because the little tyrant in my brain screams that I should be doing something else.  Something...productive.  As if I didn't have a house to clean and a budget to balance and laundry to do and a Bible to study and a journal to reflect in and people to pray for and fabric to sew and and and and...

All of it good and necessary.  So how can I just sit down and read?

Well, reading is good and necessary and I just finished the second of Chaim Potok's books written from the first-person perspective of a young man named Reuven Walter.  I read the first book in January and thought I had blogged about it...but I can't find it so either I didn't write about it or I wrote about it on Facebook or some such thing.  

So...a flashback as to why I read them at all,  since I can't just link to the post I thought I wrote.  

On our second or third weekend trip to Gorham's Bluff (7 or  8 years ago) I found The Promise amongst the books in our room (there are books EVERYWHERE at GB; one of the reasons I love the place).  I skimmed through it while we were there and found myself wondering about the characters...the story line had a familiar feel to it...and I finally traced it down to a movie I had seen a wee bit of decades ago, with Robby Benson playing the son of a Hasidic Rabbi who did not speak to him and figured out that the book was a sequel to that story.  I didn't really get all the details because I only had like, a day, to read the book amongst the hiking and swimming and eating but one thing really stood out to me...the incredible minds of the characters in the book.  Brilliant scholars.  But, like the doofus that I was, I didn't make note of either the author or the name of the book and I kinda forgot about it.

Fast forward to January of this year; I was searching Amazon for, I think, the soundtrack for The Chosen series and the first book popped up. I read the synopsis and realized that, omigosh, this is the original story about Reuven and his friend the Hasidic Rabbi's son.  So I ordered it, and then sat up until the wee small hours one cold night and read it through.  Highly recommend, and I wish I had written about it back in January because I want to focus on book two today.  

Because, after reading the first book,  I found I wanted to go back and read the second.  I dunno why I didn't just order them both at the same time...I think it was the weight of all the other unread books sitting about that kept me from finding it and adding it to the shopping cart at that time...but I finally did order it last month and re-read it over the past three or four days.

I am going to be forever peeved at the books in the set being in different formats but I took what I could get, lol.

Once again,  I was amazed at the scholarship of the characters....their ability to recall obscure references in multiple sources in order to explain difficult passages in the texts they were studying. I at once felt ignorant and unlearned and rather stupid because I knew I could not converse with anyone on any subject at such a level and also rather jealous of the opportunity to have such discussions.  But in actually reading through the story I found much more in the conflict recorded, which seemed to be paralleled to an unreal degree in today's world.

Reuven struggles...really struggles...with his theology, finding himself lodged squarely between ultra-conservatives who  look at any new approach as heretical and threatening to people of faith, and the ultra-liberal folks who had abandoned all belief in God but felt the traditions and practices were important.  Although Reuven doesn't particularly talk about his own faith, he clearly states that he doesn't like the conclusions and cannot agree  that God is a nice archaic idea...even though he personally likes and admires the people who are promoting those conclusions.  He has a harder time reconciling the faith of the ultra-orthodox folks with their rigid and even angry behavior; there are people in that camp he honestly doesn't like much.  There are also others in the ultra conservative camp he likes very much, even though he can't understand their legalistic traditions and behaviors.

Sound familiar?  Timely?  The book was written in 1969.

I found myself identifying strongly with Reuven's struggles, for all that I am nowhere near his brilliance.  How does one influence people to love God and his Word...when there are folks who decry the very existence of God on one hand, and people who perceive any questioning and honest seeking for answers as heresy on the other?  If the second group is all too willing to condemn, cut off and reject people in the first group...and maybe even those in between...how can there ever be any bridge crossing that gap?

Potock writes, in the form of an 'aha' moment that Reuven has:

...the months of seesawing between the two worlds had finally ended for me this night with nothing but an awareness of how deep the separating chasm really was and how impossible it seemed to bridge it -- unless you were...rooted deeply enough in one world to enable you to be concerned only with the people of the other and not about their ideas.

That paragraph actually jerked me out of the story and I re-read it over two or three times as an abstract thought, apart from Reuven's dilemma.  Am I rooted deeply enough in my faith to be concerned only with people who disagree, without being hung up about their ideas or beliefs?  Because ultimately it is the PEOPLE who matter.  

There was another thought that I found in the text...and I wondered if I were just seeing it there because of my particular viewpoint or if it was something the author intended all along...but another character has a struggle that parallels Reuven's, but from the opposite viewpoint.  He was raised with tradition but no god.  The traditions of religion but no faith or substance to it.  His parents didn't understand his conflict...they were "enlightened" enough to reject the medieval fairy tales so of course their son would not struggle with them.  And...he didn't.  But he could find no real meaning to his life and he couldn't understand why his parents would subject themselves...and him... to the rejection of the people who felt attacked by the promotion of religion with no god. I saw in that the pointlessness of religion without God.  Morality and tradition by themselves cannot carry anyone through the difficulties that will come at some point in every life.  It takes a surety that God exists and that he actually does care for every person...a flat rebuttal to the troubled young man's mother's viewpoint.  

And, of course, that's the answer to bridging the gap.  Intellectual answers won't do it.  

It needs Holy Spirit.  Which was, understandably, missing from the narrative.

But it only needs a nudge to take that revelation a bit further...be concerned with the people, and let Holy Spirit take care of their ideas.

Hello August!

 Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

A pretty much unrelated pic of Miss Friss lounging about; kinda my feelings for the last few drops of summer...

School has started in these parts, but, since all the young 'uns are long past school days, we don't have to finish summer just yet...and we have summer-ish things left yet on the calendar.  So I'm not going to try and start a new study just yet; I've still got stuff left from the wedding to take care of and some other things on the burner that are just going to need some attention, so posting will likely be rather sporadic for the next two to three weeks.

I will talk just a bit about a book I read whilst I was on the blogging break.  I finished about three books that had been sitting on the nightstand for forever; unfortunately I let too much time go by between starting and finishing the books that I really don't feel like I could do them justice in a discussion (although I do want to go back and re-read at least one of them).   But I read Jeremy' Riddle's The ReSet in about a week and want to go back and look again at a couple of chapters that really resonated with me, just to get the insights in deep.

Our worship pastor recommended it and it sounded especially timely, so I snagged one from The Big Bookstore That Now Sells Everything.  It is aimed at worship leaders, but honestly it also applies to anyone who is creative or who leads others and struggles with walking it out for God's glory....not letting the whole thing go to one's head, so to speak.

The chapter on dreams is one that I am going to go back and re-read; he wrote sentences almost identical to some of my journal entries, which was kinda chill-inducing, if you know what I mean.  

Ultimately, everything has to die to the whole idea of personal ambition so that it can be reborn as response to the love and mercy of God...including the dreams that originate with heart desires.  Jeremy expresses concern over the performance mentality that has pervaded church ministry...that we perform on a stage (ok, 'platform' is the accepted term) for the approval of folks in the audience (erm....congregation).  How do we stay on the side of true worship without wandering over into concert performance?

He pointed out that some of the purest forms of worship recorded in the Bible (e.g., David dancing before the Ark; Mary of Bethany pouring her bottle of nard on Jesus) were met with disdain or even disgust from others who were present.  He's right, of course, but I had not thought of it in exactly those terms.

He wrote that worship that is pure in heart but imperfectly executed will be far more pleasing to God than that which is marvelously performed from wrong motives...so, who is the true audience of all worship?  If it doesn't please God, is it even really worship?

When you take into account that worship is how we live, not what we do on a platform with a microphone, that gets real for everyone...not just folks who are 'leading worship'.

I found the book easy to read and personally challenging; if you're looking for food for thought on the subject...highly recommended.

Vacations are always too short.

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi.

Well, generally speaking, anyway.  I suppose it's theoretically possible to stay somewhere long enough  to be bored and ready to come home but I have not had that experience, lol.

We had timeshare points that were going to go away in December; if we didn't use them, we'd lose them.  We only get one week every other year, and we didn't use them last year, thinking we would use them for planned family Disney trip this fall.  Ultimately, though, we decided to stay on Disney property for a number of reasons...which meant we had to use those points.

And we left it too late.  It wasn't a matter of 'where do you want to go?' -- it was 'Oh, gee, what can we get, during a week that we can use it?'

So we ended up at a resort in northern Georgia...that was about 7 miles away from the nearest town, situated near a golf course.

And since they only have two-bedroom units, and 'our'  one-week-every-other-year unit has only one bedroom, 4 days was the max.

But, you know, my idea of a vacation is to go someplace quiet and do ....nothing.  Or something. Sleep late.  Read books.  So 4 days in the middle of nowhere in Georgia really wasn't bad.

It rained the first two days and was gorgeous the other two.

I finally finished a project I started LAST year...when we went to a state park for 3 days and my hubby was half sick so we did pretty much nothing.  That was the last 'no -agenda' vacation, and I thought I could do something specific.

I'd gotten Dr Caroline Leaf's book The Perfect You   when she spoke at our women's conference a few years back.  In the middle of this book is something she calls 'the Unique Qualitative (UQ) Assement Tool'.  I was told it was a 350 - question quiz to help identify how an individual's mind operates.  I thought it would be like all those quizzes you take on Facebook...'Pick the phrase that best describes you', sort of thing, with a key at the back to explain what all the answers mean.

Ha ha and HA!.  It's 350+ essay questions.  7 modules with at least 50 questions in each module. So, I thought last spring, with three days at a state park with basically nothing to do, I should finish easily.

HAHAHA again.  I wrote like a beast, except for a couple of 'let's take a walk' or 'let's play Ticket to Ride' breaks, and I got through FOUR of the seven units.

I puttered around with it at slow moments in the interim, but when we packed up to leave over the weekend I still had the last module to do.  So, I decided that, if I got NOTHING else done while gone, I would finish that last module.

It rained Monday and Tuesday, and it wasn't until Tuesday afternoon that I finished.

Whew.

All totaled, I wrote 119 pages in a college-ruled composition book.

It's the 'Book of Lisa', y'all.

And, here's the kicker, there's no real key to interpreting the data.

Because the awareness comes as you are answering the questions...and then evaluating all the answers you gave for a particular module.  No one sees the answers but you and they don't compare to a standard.  There's no reason not to be brutally honest with yourself, which is good, because this is an exercise in introspection and self awareness.  Some areas I knew I would be strong in, I was.  Some I expected to be strong in, I wasn't.  And I could see that as I answered the questions.  Because I wrote the questions and the answers in the composition book, I can now go back and re-read and consider the impact of those answers.  I think it will take another focused effort to analyze and interpret my answers...and then apply what I learn.

It sounds crazy, just looking at that, but it really was a journey of self-discovery.  It's going to be another journey of  adaptation in some areas.

And I still have to finish reading the last third of the book, lol.

But...hey, I really DID that thing! :-)

We didn't have a view of the mountains like I'd hoped, but we did have a nice open sky.

And you all know...I love the sky...so here's a pic from vacation that seems appropriate.

Story Time

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

If you hang out on Facebook, you know there are memes and challenges and such that make the rounds...and every once in awhile, someone tags me in one.

Some I skip....because, well, it's just not something I have anything worthwhile to say on the subject..  Some I do when there's a more convenient time frame.

I got tagged in one last week that I decided to participate in.

The idea was that you post a picture of a book you love once a day for seven days...and challenge one other person each day to do the same.

Foster the love of reading!  Find out who loves the same books!  Maybe find another great read that you hadn't met yet!

Of the 7 people I tagged, only one actually did it.  Four gave it a pass...not the right time for them, or they just don't do those things.  Two appeared to be confused by the instructions.

But those things should come with a warning...because I sat down and re-read 5 of the books post haste...as in, I sat up past midnight every night re-reading one of the books I loved.  Here are the 5 I re-read last week:

Granted, most of them are very short.  I didn't re-read the first two that I posted ...Silverlock, by John Meyers Meyers and  C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy (yeah, I know, that was three books but it's one story, lol)...mostly because I knew it would take more than just a couple of hours to read those, so I resisted the siren call.  But by the third night I failed at resisting and jumped in and read.

I slept really late this morning, making up for lost sleep.

I didn't chose the obvious favorites...I tried to pick books that likely weren't going to show up on someone else's list.  But all of them were books that I have loved for years...although Ender's Shadow is a newcomer to the list that I found within the past 10 - 12 ish years.

But today, thinking about the books, I realized something.  If you asked me what my top favorite books are, the ones I read over and over...the list would be overwhelmingly fiction.  Not completely...some of Madeleine L'Engles non-fiction would be on the list...but generally speaking, my old friends are...stories.  And even the favorite non-fiction are autobiographical.  Which is, of course, story that is factual.

Stories have shaped my world view in a way that non-fiction,  however good, doesn't often do. I have read many really, really good topical books, but...I rarely quote them, and even though I remember that they were good and I learned from them, I can't really articulate what it was.  I can't think of many that I have read more than once

It's no wonder at all why Jesus used story so much.  Story tells truth in a way that we can remember it.  The illustrations of story make the lessons stick.

Something to keep in mind when the creative urge comes...

Tracking the Reading, Book 2

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Maybe I should throw out the disclaimer that I'm will not be writing scholarly reviews of literature; just recording my off-the-cuff reactions to books as I read them, mostly just to document that I AM reading through my book stack.

And book number two wasn't even ON the bookstack.

On a whim, I borrowed a book from my son in law, the Princess's hubby, on New Year's Eve.  With my kids all being huge Marvel geeks, and kinda pulling me along with them (I've even been into the Spiderverse already), I thought it might be a good idea to read some of the lore that plays into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (the MCU, to the savvy).  Neil Gaiman is a name that is familiar to me, although I honestly haven't read any of his other works.  And it is interesting that his introduction to the Norse mythology was...Marvel Comics.  He, quite simply, is recording Norse mythology in a modern voice, after searching and researching and reading and studying what  there was available.

The characters really aren't like the MCU representations,  but that's ok.  They felt, well, more Norse.  More mythic.  I felt very much like I felt after reading the adventures of El-ahrairah from Watership Down....stories told over and over, with a little spice added or different emphasis made by each teller of the tale.  Some were funny, some were gruesome, some were somber.  Ragnarok is shattering and heartbreaking but there is hope.

It was an easy read;  the language is not high blown or archaic.  If you're determined that the MCU version is not to be disturbed this won't work for you...but the roots of Thor's MCU story are clearly  here.

And, to folks who might not understand why I'm talking about Norse Mythology in a Bible Study Blog...well,  it does interest me to see the difference between the gods venerated by other cultures and the God of the Judeo-Christian world.  Just my personal quirk, I guess.  And it was the second book of the year.

My general reading had fallen way, way off.  Well, my Bible reading did, too, although not as badly.  I was at least somewhat intentional about Bible reading. So...here's to 2019 and reading again.

And  now I can return the book to its owner.  That's important, y'all.  Always return the book.

Tracking the Reading - 2019

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

I've been reflecting on the pile of books I wrote about back in October.  (Pause for mental processing of how long ago that post was...I honestly thought I'd written it in early December).

I need to be intentional about getting through that stack.  So, by way of being somewhat accountable, I thought I'd do a little post as I finish a book this year.

The first one up I'd saved to read over Christmas break and I actually read it Tuesday evening, so it's the first book of the year.

And, full disclosure, I actually know the author but I'm sad to say that, although we're facebook friends and just live a few miles apart, we move in completely different circles and haven't seen each other in years, which is more an indication of how crazy busy life can be than anything else.  But I ordered my copy from Amazon, same as anyone.

And I really enjoyed the book.  Of course, I am pretty partial to anything that involves A Christmas Carol, so that was already in its favor.  Dixie imagines Bob Cratchit's back story...and does a particularly good job of answering the question, 'Why on earth didn't the poor guy just get another job?'  You may or may not agree with how she handled his relationship with Jacob Marley, but it does add an interesting layer to her story.  It was a quick read; I started reading after the kids left around 8 PM and finished it without staying up excessively late, with a smile on my face.

If you, like me, enjoy all things Christmas Carol and, like me, don't have a problem with 'how it might have been', it's worth a read.

And that's one book off the stack, to which I've added at least three more since that post...

Yes, I'm definitely going to have to be intentional about my reading this year.

The Book Stack

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Back in the day,  I was the one who read.  All. The. Time.

Those Summer Reading Clubs at the Library?  Encouraging kids to read six books over the summer?

Pfft.  I read six books the first week.

I got excited about a book that was really good.

To this day, I can still remember the sorrow I felt when I finished reading Heidi in second grade...not because it was a sad story but because it was over.  I remember the awe with which I finished A Wrinkle in Time in the 7th grade, the amazement at the end of Ben Hur in the tenth grade.  I remember the gratitude I felt...not to mention complete shock...when my sister handed me a copy of The Return of the King after happening to make a trip into town the afternoon after I finished The Two Towers ...she'd heard my lament at the cliffhanger ending.  Then there was the marathon reading session I did whilst down with a respiratory virus at college to finish a borrowed set of The Chronicles of Narnia and wondered where C.S. Lewis had been all my life....and prompted me to purchase the whole set of his Space Trilogy when I happened upon it in a bookstore shortly afterward.

Oh, yes, so many good books.

I remember my grandmother lamenting in her later years that she didn't have the patience to read anymore, and it made her sad.

I'll never be like that, I thought.  Reading is too rewarding.

But.  Y'all.  There are only 24 hours in a day.

And, just for grins, I took a picture of the Books Waiting to Be Read.

Sixteen books in that stack.  And there are a couple of others that I know of that were elsewhere and aren't in the stack. 

Some of them have been there for more than a year.  More than two years....And there are a couple of others that I've had for a long time and just haven't been able to get myself to get interested in them...recommendations from a friend or some such thing...and I've about decided it's to donate them to the library.

I actually have read a bit in a few of those books; the top book is the current study in our ladies' group at church and I'm probably two thirds through. But I never thought I'd have a stack of unread books.

I haven't kept track of the books I have read this year; maybe I should.  Kinda like I keep track of the yardage in/yardage out on the sewing blog.

Part of my problem is I like re-reading old favorites.  I've probably read The Lord of the Rings at least 15 times since that first agonizing trip through Middle Earth in 1977.   Brother Cadfael and I are well acquainted...and you know I've revisited Narnia over and over.  So sometimes, the reading time is spent in familiar territory.

But there is a wealth of wisdom, challenge and instruction in that stack.

I need to be more intentional about my reading.

Among other things...

I Am Adamant Launch Team

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

I did something I've never done before.

I joined an online study group.

At least, I think that's what it is.

I got an email a while back from Messenger International, John and Lisa Bevere's ministry, offering a pre-sale deal on Lisa's latest book, along with a bracelet gift and access to online studies.  I pondered it for a while,  and, when I got the final 'tonight's the last chance!' email, I decided to jump in.

After all, it's a study on truth...and since I have concluded that my core passion is truth, I just figured it would be a good idea.

Today the package came.

She called everyone who signed up for it the 'launch team'; the package shipped the day the book was released.  I've read a bit of the first chapter; so far, I'm nodding 'Yes!'.  I'll admit to being pretty impressed by the back story of 'adamant' and the implication of that to the Rock, the Cornerstone...and it's just starting.

So I'm not sure how this whole 'launch team' thing is going to work or how much time I'll actually have to jump into the online studies/podcasts but I think it's going to be a good thing.

I'm going to need some good study after I finish the book I began last month...I need to just dig in and finish that.  Lots of blog material coming up, I think.  :-D

Current Reading Feb 2017

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi 

Friday being the one day I try to get something posted, I'll give you the best I have right now...which happens to be the books I'm reading at any available time.

Starting at the lower right, The Power of Humility by R.T. Kendall is required reading for everyone in the worship department at church.  We're discussing it at choir practice, as are the other arts ministries.

Humility is not a popular subject, but, wow this book is good.  I'm about halfway through chapter 5, as I took it with me to a couple of dr appointments this week and read in the waiting room.  Chapter 4 was on wisdom, and it was an eye opener, to say the least, to see the connection between wisdom and humility so clearly laid out.

The second book,  The Complete Book of Discipleship by Bill Hull, is from Navigators and it's the textbook for my current class in the online Master's program.  It is rich.  It's also dovetailing nicely with the choir study, since...surprise...humility is a key part of discipleship.

In other words, my paradigms are getting punched one-two, left-right.

The cover on the discipleship book is curling badly; I couldn't get it to lay flat for the picture.  My Bible was laying on the table, too, so I used it to anchor the cover on the paperback and then realized that yes, it belongs in the picture, too.

I'm still plugging along on the 3 + 1 reading, although I did get a bit behind on the trip to Indiana for my dad's birthday last weekend.  But I have so far finished all the writings of John (Gospel, Epistles and Revelation) and I'm heading into Matthew.  I'm 1/3 of the way through Psalms and I'm well into Leviticus for the Old Testament.  This is a relatively new Bible,  so I've got my 4 color pen to hand and I'm marking as I go, which keeps me paying attention to what I'm reading so I don't fall into just skimming through.

But being a bit behind on the Bible reading and definitely behind where I want to be on the schoolwork, I'm pushing to catch up.  Other things that I want to do are, well, not getting done.

But it's just for a season...right?

Reading for Growth

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

When I read for recreation, I pick up a book and find a spot and read it.  Unless it's really long...I'll usually finish it all in one go.

Case in point:  I decided to re-read The Hobbit last Friday night, so I did.  Pulled it off the book shelf sometime around 7 and finished at 10:30.  Granted, I'm VERY familiar with the story, but I did pay attention as I read and actually verified one point that was mentioned in the 3rd movie that I had not noticed on my previous readings.  So I didn't just skim through.

Anyway.  If I'm reading a book slowly over time, it's because I'm trying to learn something.

Right now, I'm involved in two classes that each have required reading.  One is deliberately taking one chapter at a time, but the other just requires the book to be read before we hit the lesson with the pertinent discussion.  The books are Choosing Forgiveness, by John and Paula Sandford (and Lee Bowman), and Administrative Excellence, by Erin O'Hara Meyer.

Interesting side note on my copy of Administrative Excellence -- I bought it at a discount from one of Amazon's affiliates, and it was brand spanking new...except that it had been autographed by the author, inscribed to  someone named 'Sarah'.  Wondering if the name was misspelled or some such thing, so it had to be relegated to a reseller....

I'm reading that one-chapter-a-month for a professional development group I'm in through work; a group facilitated by the company that provides our data base software.  It's a once-a-month online discussion meeting for church administrative assistants/ data base admins at large churches around the country. It's interesting; I'm the only one in the group that is solely the DBA.  Others are typically admin assistants as well as DBAs...but then, I'm part-time, so it's probably about the same commitment to the DBA position.  It's a challenging group; we are inspecting what we do and how we relate to others in our offices, looking for ways to better interface with others to do what we do.  I am not really comfortable there at all... I am being stretched and having to evaluate my time and the way I relate to others in ways that, well, are showing me that I have LOTS of room to grow and mature.

It's an ouchie sometimes.  A good ouchie, but still an  ouchie.

The book is written for administrative admins in a secular office, so the emphasis is somewhat different than admins working in a church environment.  For instance, Erin lists two different ways to view one's position...either as a job that I do or as a career in which I am investing.   But I believe there is a third one...as ministry in which I am participating.  And that has a WHOLE 'nuther aspect to it.  So I'm rather struggling at times to apply the book to my particular position, although I will say that this month's chapter, 'Progess', has a discussion of fear that has been really good and translates to my life very well.

 Choosing Forgiveness is the required outside reading for my Elijah House class.  If you've been around Beer Lahai Roi very long, you'll know that I really believe forgiveness is the key to Christian living...because I think unforgiveness, in addition to being pretty much the root of most of our relational problems, in some fashion and to some degree, also keeps us from receiving the forgiveness God has for us. So I am mostly nodding and agreeing with what I'm reading.    Nonetheless, I'm being challenged to move beyond forgiveness to blessing...that is a step I had already determined I needed to make in regard to recent hurts, specifically, but it is another level to apply it to old wounds.  Can I really bless those folks whom I believed I have forgiven?  And if I can't bless them....did I really forgive them?

More ouchie.

One way or another, I am coming out of this season different than I went in. ;-)

Verse 3 - Is. 30:15

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Is it just me, or did January disappear like a puff of smoke? Today being Feb. 1, it's time for me to choose verse three for the Siesta Scripture Memory Team.

This time, I don't think I chose this so much as got it assigned.  When a verse lands squarely in your face twice in one week, from two unconnected sources...well, I figure God is trying to tell me something.

The first time was in last Friday's study challenge from Beth; she posted a photo of the verse written on a 3 x 5 card.

Then, earlier this week, I encountered the same verse a second time.  Lisa Bevere is going to be speaking at our quarterly women's gathering next Friday (woot!), so I thought it would be a good idea to snag a copy of her latest book , Lioness Arising,  and read through it before the event.   And there, on page 23, she quoted

Your salvation requires you to turn back to me and stop your silly efforts to save yourselves. Your strength will come from settling down in complete dependance on me 

Now, both ladies quoted from The Message but, while I loved the rendering  stop your silly efforts to save yourselves,  I decided in the beginning that I would do my memory work from the NIV 84, just because it's very, very confusing to carry around multiple translations in my head.  So here it is...the whole verse, as it is written on my notecard:

This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: 'In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength.  But you would have none of it.' - Is. 30:15 NIV 84

That  'but' really hits me.  I must must must learn to rest, be quiet and trust...while still doing what I am called to do.  I think the secret is going to be that I have to learn to be ruthlessly honest with myself about why I am doing what I am doing...is it because I'm called, or because I feel obligated in order to not disappoint people?  How much of it is really God and how much of it is my own silly effort?

How appropriate that I have been assigned to memorize a verse that will continually ask me those questions.

Christmas Reading

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

We did not teach our kids to believe that Santa brought Christmas presents.  (Note:  That's not a judgement against folks who do.  That's just what we were convicted to do.)    We always taught them that St. Nicholas was a man who lived a really, really long time ago who gave gifts to very needy folks because that's what God wanted him to do, and that we now play a game called 'Santa Claus'  to have fun surprising each other with gifts at Christmastime.

We didn't make a big deal out of it or try to convince anyone else not to teach their kids that Santa brought presents, but boy, did we catch it for not following the society on this one.  It's funny, because we caught it from both sides...from the people who thought we were robbing our kids of precious childhood memories because we did not 'do Santa', and from the folks who thought Santa was the embodiment of the secularization of Christmas and would have nothing to do with 'the guy in the red suit', because we 'played Santa' with the kids.  Whoda thought it would be such a point of contention?

But into this mix comes a lovely little Christmas read.  If you have never read Ed Butchart's the Red suit diaries, you have missed a real treat...a look at Santa from the viewpoint of someone who really understands what Santa should be all about. Ed is an elder at his church and he founded  a ministry  that repairs/ reconditions and supplies wheel chairs and other aids to folks who are in need of such things, Friends of Disabled Adults and Children (FODAC).

He also happens to look an awfully lot like everyone's mental picture of Santa Claus.

Consequently, he has been a professional Santa for a number of years, and his books (there is a sequel, More Pages from the Red suit Diaries, as well) are recollections of his experiences, from the physically painful to the heartbreaking to the hysterically funny to the unbelievably precious, not only at Christmas, but year 'round.   Ed writes with honesty that is a joy to read, whether it brings tears or laughter.    And he always, always presents Santa as a servant of God and a representative of Jesus.

My mother-in-law is a collector of Santas and Santa-themed items, so when I spotted a copy of the first book several years back in a Hallmark shop, I picked it up for her. Of course, I skimmed through it a bit before I wrapped it...and the next year I bought one for myself.

I read through it every year during Advent; but really, it's not just about Santa and Christmas -- it's a great testimony of how God gives truly unique gifts and abilities to folks and how, by following Him in faith, we can put those gifts to work in unusual ways.

(Disclaimer...no one connected with Mr. Butchart or his publishers asked me to do this or even knows  I'm writing...I' m just sharing something that touched me with hopes someone else will enjoy it as much as I did.)

Merry Christmas, everyone, and thanks for spending some time with me at Beer Lahai Roi!

Reader's Reflections: The Shack

I mentioned in the Random Dozen meme a couple of weeks ago that I was in the midst of reading The Shack, by Wm. Paul Young. I finished it last week, and thought I'd take today's post to talk about it.

It's not a comprehensive book review or anything like that, but those of you who have read it know that this is one of those books that provokes conversation! I'll try to word this so it won't spoil things too much for others who still have it on the list to read.

I really didn't have trouble with Papa being Elouisa. As Elouisa says, the purpose in taking on that personage was to completely wreck Mack's preconceptions. Which it did, so the purpose was accomplished.

I found a lot of things that were spoken by Elouisa/Sarayu/Jesus to be things I've often thought or even recorded in my journals; in some cases the thoughts were expressed much better in the book than in my head. Those are things I want to go back and underline, once I've actually purchased a fresh, un-grapejuice-stained copy for the Princess and feel free to mark this book up.

But do you know what the book stirred in me more than anything?

Jealousy.

I found myself fighting the concept that someone as normal as Mack...sure, he'd been through a horrific tragedy, but that degree of tragedy is not uncommon to man...had such a visitation. Some part of my brain kept asking, 'What's so special about him? How come he gets such an amazing gift? His sorrow was great, to be sure, his life a mess...but he was not unique in that.

Then I had to wonder why I was jealous of a fictional story character.

And in wondering that, I found that I have been neglecting my own invitations from 'Papa'. Not to go to some remote place and have a supernatural experience, but to just set aside some part of my day to spend in His presence. Who knows what secrets I would be privileged to share if I would just answer those invitations...right when they're issued...instead of trying to work a Quite Time into the schedule somewhere?

Sort of like what happens when I fix a nice supper for my family, but one of my older kids has an obligation somewhere and just grabs a bite on the way out of the door. I've just been grabbing a peanut butter sandwich and scurrying off, rather than sitting down to the meal. How can I be jealous of someone who took the time to belly up to the table and eat?

You see how the book provoked me.

I'm looking forward to reading it again...with a ink pen in hand, for underlining and making notes.

Now, if you'll excuse me...I think I hear Papa calling. ;)

Summer Reading

Every year, just before we hit the road for our annual pilgrimage back to the Hoosier state to check in with the family, we hit the bookstore to pick up any of the summer reading books we don't already have around the house, so the kids can use the long car rides for something productive. Last year, we picked up the book on the Actor's 'must read' list, then stood in the store looking over the pretty dismal options for the optional reading... some were known to be deadly dull, and some were on topics that I just didn't think were really good for him (I actually took a sharpie marker to a couple of paragraphs in one of the books he had to read before passing it on to him, and I do not deface literature lightly...the graphic scene detailed there really did nothing to advance the plot of the book and certainly wasn't appropriate for fifteen year old kids, IMHO). It's tough to have high standards... ;)

We finally selected one from the optional list that looked interesting. Neither of us had heard of Ender's Game, a sci-fi novel about exceptionally gifted kids being trained to fight a desperate battle, and I read it first before passing it along (the usual routine when dealing with unknown authors...the book I mentioned in the first paragraph is a good example of why...). It was thought-provoking, highly imaginative and very well written. We both enjoyed it very much.

We haven't tackled this summer's list yet (don't even have the home visit on the calendar yet!), but on a chance trip to the bookstore I wandered through the sci-fi section looking for a different book and found that the author of Ender's Game had written a second book...not exactly a sequel, but a retelling of the same story from the point of view of one of the other characters. Interesting concept...and I brought the book home.

And sat up until 3 am two nights later reading it straight through. Yeah, I really regretted that the next day...

But, that book *did* have a sequel, so when the bookstore sent me a coupon for %15 off of any purchase, I stopped by and picked up the sequel.

Also very good.

And, in the 'Author's Notes' after the story, I found that there are *two more* books in that little series.

So, yeah, I am watching the inbox for another coupon...

And the other book? The one that took me to the bookstore a few weeks ago and led to that first purchase? Stephen Lawheads' Song of Albion trilogy. I got the first book, but the other two were not available at either one of the bookstore's local stores, so they are en route from Amazon.

I haven't done much recreational reading in a long time. Wish I didn't have to give up sleep to do it... ;)

Why So Many Bibles?

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

A few years back, I taught the Book of James three or four times for the local Christian Women's Job Corps site, and one of the questions that came up in class was 'How do you pick a Bible? There're so many...which one is right?'

So I kinda came up with an explanation of why there seems to be a bazillion different Bibles, when there's only one Word of God, and I thought I'd share it here.

When you walk into the local Christian Family Bookstore or Lifeway store, or whatever the local equivalent is for you, most of the different Bibles you'll see are basically different packages of the text. That is, it's a basic Bible translation that has been published with commentary and/or study guides/helps. Things like 'The Women of Faith Bible' or 'The Spirit Filled Bible' or 'The New Scofield Bible' are the same word, but different helps/notes/etc. These aren't purchased necessarily for the Biblical text but for the additional material included. And there are different *physical* packages: paperback, imitation leather, hardback, full-grain leather. You can spend a lot or a little on a Bible, depending upon how it's packaged.

But the other big difference in Bibles is the translation. King James Version, Revised Standard Version, Amplified Version, The Message...there's a bunch of them out there. What's the difference?

The church I grew up in was very mistrustful of any translations other than the good ol' King James. And the King James translation was a very good one...in the early 1600's, when *everyone* actually spoketh like thateth. And it was very controversial in its day. In fact, in the 1500's, in England, possessing a common English translation of the Bible could land you in jail...or burning at the stake. The argument against it was that the religious folk of the day believed it would be 1) sacrilegious to publish the Word of God in the crude and common language of the streets and 2)dangerous to make the Word of God available to the uneducated, common folk. They feared that the people were too ignorant to rightly interpret what they read, and they didn't want heresy to start (of course, this would have the advantage of keeping the power in the hands of the religious leaders, but there were some folk who really believed that the only trustworthy scripture was the Latin translation). So the Religious Establishment fought the translation of the Bible into English. But the translations were done...sometimes at the expense of the lives of the translators (If you haven't read Foxes' Book of Martyrs or the updated version of it that DC Talk published, Jesus Freaks, check it out. You'll be astonished at the persecution English believers suffered at the hands of the English church in the 1500's for the sake of an English translation of the Bible). It took the edict of King James to make an English translation authorized and a number of Biblical scholars representing different factions of English faith united to make the translation, which was largely based on the work of the earlier, persecuted translators.

The word of God does not change...but the English language changed. Now, the old standard is the KJV...and the new translations are sometimes suspected of being irreverent or incorrect. But if the translating is done from original language, free from denominational bias, using all the available resources and fully annotated, there's no reason for it to be any less valid than the KJV. And it will be understandable by folks who don't have the patience to wade through Shakesperian English.

Anyway, here's a sketchy view of translations:

There are basically four levels of translating: Word-for-word, literal, idiomatic (sometimes called 'dynamic equivalency') and paraphrase.

Word-for-word translations of the Bible are usually interlinear versions in which the Greek or Hebrew text is written with the English word directly above the word it translates. You'd think this would be popular, but the plain truth is that English is different from most other languages in its sentence structure; A word-for-word translation of John 3:16 reads "For thus loved God the world, so as the Son the only begotten he gave, that everyone believing in him may not perish but may have life eternal." And, um, that's pretty awkward. Plus, often there is not a one-to-one correspondence between languages; for instance, in Greek, there are at least 4 different words for love: agape, storge, phileo, and eros, all of which refer to different types of love (unconditional, familial, brotherly, physical). But in English, we just have one word -- love. We love our spouses, love our children, love our country, love pizza, love that new dress, love that movie...etc...all the same word. So to get the distinction between the different words as written in the original, there have to be some more descriptive terms added.

Literal translations try to stay as close as possible to word-for-word, but with reasonable sentence structure and include: New American Standard (NASB) and, to a certain extent, the King James or Authorized Version (KJV or AV) and the New King James Version (NKJV). The Amplified Version is an especially useful literal translation, using words in parentheses to clarify the meaning of the original language. However, the many parenthetic phrases do make it a bit tedious to read.

Dynamic equivalence (idiomatic) translations strive to reproduce not only the content but the emotion of the text; reflecting the fact that the writers of the Bible used the language of the common people of their day. Idioms, translated literally, do not always convey the real meaning (consider the phrase, “I’m hooked on chocolate,” for instance). The New International Version (NIV) is a dynamic equivalence translation, as is the New Living Translation and the Message.

Paraphrases focus more on the general meaning of the text and not the details. These are works intended to introduce the reader to the concepts and characters of the Bible but do not support development of doctrine. Paraphrases include the Phillips Bible, the Living Bible and the Contemporary English Version (CEV). These volumes emphasize ‘readability’; for instance, the CEV is written so that people who read at a third-grade reading level will not encounter difficulties with grammar or vocabulary.

Something to keep in mind, though is that a literal translation, while being technically accurate, may not quite render the original scene. Case in point: In 1 Samuel 20, Saul is angry with Jonathan for releasing David from a feast. The literal KJV, Amplified and NASB, as well as the idiomatic NIV translate Saul's outburst in verse 30 as 'You ['thou' in KJ) son of a perverse and rebellious woman!' But the paraphrase Living Bible renders that 'You son of a b----!' Now, I'm quite sure that the literal translation of the Hebrew is what is in the first four translations. But which one do you think really reflects Saul's state of heart and mind most accurately to today's audience?


Here's a just-for-fun example of the various levels of translation, hopefully making correct use of my long-dormant high school French:
Consider the French phrase: "Oui, nous n’avons pas des bananes."
Word-for-Word translation: Yes, we have not of the bananas.
Literal Translation: Yes, we do not have any bananas. (verb still negated but more readable; quantity clarified)
Idiomatic Translation: Yes, we have no bananas. (verb positive but quantity negated)
Paraphrase: Yeah, we’re plumb outta bananas. (nothing negated but conveys same meaning)

They read differently, but they all convey the same meaning. So start where you are, with a translation that's readable; God will meet you there.