Friday, May 30, 2014

Beautiful Friday!

Thank you, Matt Warner, for this reminder from Mother Teresa...oh so good - and God knows I needed to hear this to-day:


People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.

Give the best you have...and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. 
It was never between you and them anyway.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Rainy Wednesday

...after the Memorial Day weekend, but now at 17:00 the sun is shining on us and we're up to 62 degrees Fahrenheit. The weekend was eventful and was an opportunity for us to be outside - in fact to-day's rain was the first real rain we've had since early last week...
I potted my herbs (cilantro, sweet basil, rosemary, garden sage) and my tomatoes (a hybrid cherry variety) - now the deck is complete!! Two hummer feeders are full of food for those adorable little gifts from God and I have somewhat weeded the perennial garden. The damnable queen ann's lace (I won't even dignify it by capitalizing its name) is EVERYWHERE and it's taproot is fat and longggggg. Where do they come from?!?!?!
Also I have cut the grass several times (more already this year than all of last year - kind of like the Tigers base stealing) and weed-whipped almost as many times. (I love that term as a verb, and have only recently learned to employ it as a noun. "Trimmer" was always the refined descriptive, as my pappy calls it.
Saturday was spent mostly on Latson Road trying to break the lug nuts to change a flat tire on the Grape. Head-on collision thrity feet away while I was waiting for the seven dollar can of penetrating oil to penetrate, thank God there were no major injuries.
Deja Vu again last night when the other front tire blew but this time the Grape was safe in a parking lot and God was kind enough to send out the Marcos' Pizza guy who was able to break the last lug nut! My hands are still en-scented with that penetrating oil ...

My fantasy teams are consistent: I lost again this week in my KISS league and won again my Rookie league.

Our Tigers have had a disappointing nine starts (before last night in Oakland) where their ERA was a cumulonimbus-like 9.something. Max's outing last night didn't fit in with the prior nine starts but he still didn't get the win; AL AL got the win and Nathan his 12th save.

Busy at work with several new deals and several near closing...

LORD have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
LORD have mercy.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Sunny Wednesday

'How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity'

Those words are from one of the Psalms and probably from the NIV translation I memorized much of as a protestor so many years ago, but BOY OH BOY are those words right on?!?!

Even if if doesn't seem good and pleasing at the time, wait until there is strife and division and enmity - these are not pleasant!

I have a real fear of discord, of conflict. I don't like to say things to people that I know they may find offensive or, worse yet, they may argue. I hate arguments.

But I sure do love unity.

I just don't know how to work at it or strive for it.

Actually, I think sometimes I should just go live on a mountain (a small mountain) and fast and talk to God in order to become a better person. But how would being away from people help me communicate better with people?!? In addition, I would miss watching movies and keeping track of my fantasy baseball.

So I continue in my on-the-job training, failing often.


...



Thursday, May 15, 2014

Rainy Thursday Musings

After our long cold winter, the grass must surely need an epic deluge!
The Weather Channel showed this new three dimensional map of the current systems over our great land; there was this enormous 'mountain' of moisture over the entire central US - most of it moving our way!
The second-closest bar to our home burned to the ground this morning
Dark smoke coming from Hamburg this morning

The atmosphere is heavy to-day in the office.
We are working on the on-again/off-again flame of my boss, who is buying a condo (from a friend of his, who 'worked' for him for about three months) four doors down from him. It was scheduled to close on Tuesday and there were hiccups so now we are working on some adjustments.
My boss, I should add, is being divorced by his wife, who controls not only his visits with their three children but also a business they built together.

The Tigers are coming off a three game sweep of AL East-leading Baltimore on the road. Next we go to Fenway (watch out for those thieves dressed as cops) and look to avenge the disastrous post season series of seven months ago, still obviously fresh in my memory... 

Shoutout to my niece Kacie E in France!

My fantasy stud pitcher Jose Fernandez is out for the year [sadface.gif] so I dropped him and picked up Doug Fister [smile.gif].

To-day is Thursday the 15th of May.







Sunday, May 11, 2014

On Mothers Day



To My Sister~

The one thing I’ve always noted in you, Nancy, is your loving demeanour. You are patient, you are kind, you are gentle, you do not boast, you do not keep a record or wrongs. :/ … I’m certain I’ve read that somewhere else…
Anyway, I cannot attest to the daughter you are; nor can I (even on this Mother’s Day) attest to the mother you are.
What I can speak to is your precious, welcoming disposition, and the love of Christ you live out.
Thank you for being a friend to me.
I thank God for you in my life.


To My Mother~

It seems that I wait until one of these Hallmark days to express what is in my heart more often than not…
You were a young mother, and you are now a young grandmother, but you remain a young mother to me (and I’m sure I may speak for all three of us when I say this).
Many fifty-year-olds probably don’t even text, let alone communicate with their mother through this medium (even if it is mostly to discuss Colby returning to Jeopardy! or actresses you hate from the 1930s :-).
I thank and praise God for blessing me as He has with the people who have been in my life throughout all my years: friends, girlfriends, bosses, students – but all come and go – they are in my sphere of influence for a season.
But you, Mom, have loved me in spite of me and because of me but all because of Him and (I’m sure often enough) by His amazing grace!

So I’m thankful for you and your unconditional love. I’m thankful that you showed me Jesus – while you were a young mom – and how He can love anybody and everybody.


To My Wife~

When we met twenty years ago, you were a single mom whom I tried to impress with my knowledge of all things unimportant and my unbridled passion for getting my own way. Through twenty years of your tempering, I have found that the former is indeed trivial at best, and the latter is very grave sin (although I still cling, all too often).
But what I have also come to know and appreciate about you is the deep, deep love that you have for those you hold dear in your heart: for your boys, your parents, your siblings and their families.
This quality, this characteristic of Your Person, is a big part of what makes you so beautiful to me.

We surely didn’t know what we were signing up for when we began our journey together all those years ago. But I’m thankful for what we have shared, and for the chapters that have not yet been written. I love you.



Thursday, May 8, 2014

Prayer

Thank You Father for another day that I was able to rise on my own, wash up on my own, feed myself. Thank You for so much beauty on the way to work for my eyes to see, illuminated by Your glorious bright sunshine.
Thank You for so many colors of flowers and trees.
Thank You for the fresh air to breathe.
Thank You for cold water (and hot coffee) to drink.
Thank You for giving my life meaning, purpose.
Thank You for loving me more than I could possibly fathom.

I ask for special graces to-day for my wife and my niece, and my other niece, and my boss.
Please change the hearts of those of us who would hurt others. Fill us with Your Spirit, that we may love like Christ loves. Forgive us when we fail you.

All praise to God, who reigns above!
Praise the name of Jesus!
Praise the Spirit, Who lives in us!

 

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Saturday Prayer

Dear Lord,

To-day I join with folks all over the world in reading this piece from John's gospel: 'Jesus said to him, "I am the way , and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father , but by me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also; henceforth you know him and have seen him."'
Through Jesus, we know You.
Through Jesus, we have seen You.
Forgive me for pathetically asking so often 'show me the way' - You have shown me!

Forgive us all, Lord; as a nation, as a race  - we are sinners - forgive us and bring us all to righteousness.

In Your mercy hear our prayer.

Amen

Friday, May 2, 2014

I Found Marcel Alone

By Michel Quoist, in his book titled Prayers


It is not easy to love, and if, all too often, our loves miscarry, isn't it because of a dreadful mistake? Were not our loves simply "the clash of two egoisms"? Did we even succeed in crossing the threshold of our selves? If true love gives joy, it is bought by suffering.


"...they are no longer two individuals: they are one flesh. What God has joined together, man must not separate." (Mark X, 8-9)


"...men also are bound to love their wives, as they love their own bodies. In loving his wife a man loves himself. For no one ever hated his own body: on the contrary, he provides and cares for it; and that is how Christ treats the Church, because it is his body, of which we are living parts. Thus it is that (in the worlds of Scripture) 'a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become a single body.' It is a great truth that is hidden here. I for my part prefer it to Christ and to the church, ... each of you must love his wife as his very self; and the woman must see to it that she pays her husband all respect." (Ephesians V, 28-33)

   
It was about noon when I knocked at his door.
I found Marcel alone, still lying on the bed which was now too big for him;
His wife had left him a few days ago.

It hurt me, Lord, to see that poor fellow so discouraged, that house half-empty.
A presence was lacking,
A love was lacking.
I missed the bunch of flowers on the mantelpiece, the powder and lipstick on the wash-basin, the bureau scarf on the bureau and the chairs properly arranged.
I found the sheets dirty on a bed wrinkled like an old face, the ash-trays filled to overflowing, shoes scattered on the floor, a rag on the easy-chair, and the blinds closed.
It was dark, dismal, and stuffy.


It hurt me, Lord.
I felt something torn, something unbalanced, 
Like a mechanism gone wrong, 
Like a man with broken bones.

And I reflected that what you had planned was good,
And that there can be no order and beauty, love and joy, outside of your plan.




I pray to you tonight, Lord,
for Marcel and for her
and for the other one
and for the wife of the other one
and for his children
and for the families involved
and for the neighbors who gossip
and for the colleagues who judge.


I ask of you forgiveness
for all these lacerations, 
for all these wonds, 
and for your blood poured out, because of these wounds, in your Mystical Body.
I pray to you tonight, Lord, for myself and for all my friends.
Teach us to love.




It is not easy to love, son.
Often when you think you love, it is only yourself that you love, and you spoil everything, you shatter everything.

To love is to meet oneself, and to meet oneself one must be willing ot leave oneself and go toward another.
To love is to commune, and to commune one must forget oneself for another, 
One must die to self completely for another.
To love hurts, you know, son,
For since the Fall -- listen carefully, son -- to love is to crucify self for another.



Reprinted from Prayers, by Michel Quoist, translated by Agnes M. Forsyth and Anne Marie de Commaille, Sheed and Ward, New York, 1963.

Mad Max

Grabbed this AP photo from mlive.com because it reminded me so much of a famous pose...


Mad Max, with the low whip and high k to bb ratio
"The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side."

tee hee

Thursday, May 1, 2014

May Day

Many years ago, the custom at Greenfield Peace Lutheran School, 7000 West Outer Drive in Detroit was for the students to run away from the teachers on May Day. I don't remember how it started or when (late grades), but I remember two years specifically, running and hiding ALL DAY from the teachers. The first year was an absolute joy, to finally be doing something I was good at (avoiding) as opposed to something loathsome and detestable (sitting quietly in hard wooden seats). I remember sweating and hiding with peers inside the building and out, breathing hard and laughing at the physical ineptness of those I respected for their ability to recite the list of all 39 prepositions. That day absolutely flew by; so much so that the bell ringing to end the day actually drew several 'awwwe man's.

So, spring time of the following year approaches, and I, like Ralphie drooling over his anticipated official Red Rder carbine action two hundred shot range model air rifle, was so disposed toward May Day. The Day came, and we began school as usual. 'When do we get to run?!?' was all I could process. I don't remember at what point our teacher began the commission: 'All right everyone, we're going to participate in the eons-old Schultzonian tradition of May Day. Please remember the two rules: don't run inside the building, and don't run on the grass.' That was all it took. We were gone - scattered in all directions. We plunged into the cornucopia quivering with desire and the ecstasy of unbridled avarice.

There were close calls I remember, but I used my quick-wittedness to escape capture. One time, I even ran through the shrubbery in front of school as a shortcut to get away from the kindergarten teacher. I was immediately scolded through an open window, 'David, stay off the grass!'. 'But I wasn't running on the grass, Mrs. Filiatraute, I was running on the dirt!'

Pant, pant, pant, ... hide, hide, scamper, scurry, ... walk real fast down the hall to get a drink then back out where I could run, run, run!!! OOOOOPS - Mr. Nagle, the hump-backed sixth grade teacher lurking behind the large bush just outside the doors!! Quick sidestep right (every-body-clap-your-hands) and then a dash toward freedom down the shrubbery dirt again. Until I got to the main double doors and was met by the principal, whose countenance carried an 'I'm sorry I have to do this' look. 'David, inside.'
'Why?!? pant, pant'.
'You were on the grass.'
'I wasn't on the grass, I was running on the dirt!'
'Inside.'

Oh, life is like that. Sometimes, at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at it's zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.

And, honestly, I remember no more from that day, or from any other May Days for that matter.

Perhaps my iniquity put the nix on the whole May Day celebration thing, I surely don't know.

I do know that 5/1 is a great day to be alive, breathing, and vertical - thank You Jesus!!


Quotes not attributed to me are from the motion picture (1983)