Stewardship

October 21, 2018

Year 3, Day 294 | No Comments

Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

Stewardship is fun if we make it so. It is a serious game relating to life. It has many of the same entertaining features found in competitive sports, but the opponent is really in each of our own persons. The score isn’t kept by the number of times an inflated bladder is carried by strong men over a goal line, or athletic women can serve aces on a tennis court. The game is fraught with patience in the participant, some sacrifice to get into the game, some wins and some losses, wisdom related to markets, costs, discipline, budgets, percentages, affirmations and negations, values and shopping. The list, like do many, may also be extended. The evidence of a person’s stewardship… Read more

Learning Mentoring

October 20, 2018

Year 3, Day 293 | No Comments

Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

We analyze mentoring, not only to know what it is, but to sift through concepts commonly held about mentoring or alleged mentoring – so to discover the importance of what is really an ancient and excellent idea applied to modern life. Every mentored person ought to become a mentoring person. Our first mentors ought to be our parents. Ministers and athletes often refer to the parental mentoring. In the busyness of our lives the concept and practice has significantly declined. It is great loss. However, there has been some evidence of renewal in the education of retired people to become mentors to the young generation. Many relate to it and many do not. Some appealing and great literature accents it…. Read more

Learning Leadership

October 19, 2018

Year 3, Day 292 | No Comments

Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

The media offer considerable space to the assertion that much of man’s problem quotient is the lack of leadership. There are many titles in the business world related to leadership, often with special emphasis on biographical illustrations. One was devoted to the application of Lincoln’s example of leadership applied to modern business. Lincoln advanced the nation with a gifted cabinet, wrangling and ego-driven. There are many books related to leadership, especially related to the military from ancient times to the present, some so new they can’t be fully evaluated until the test of history has been applied in time. I have: read widely on the subject of leadership; led (for good or ill) in groups and institutions; preached or spoken… Read more

Culture Shifts

October 18, 2018

Year 3, Day 291 | No Comments

Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

Times are a’changin’. During the l950s, more than a million women were asked who would comprise the ideal husband. The answer, in part, was: . . . . behave like a sheik. . . . keep some mystery about himself. . . . tell his wife that he loves her. . . .lie a little white lie if he feels it might buck her up. . . talk and listen to her. . . . stay out of the kitchen. . .do what he promises to do. . . . make enough money so she does not feel compelled to go out and work. . . . help with the gardening and the lawn. . . . take her out… Read more

Specificity

October 17, 2018

Year 3, Day 290 | No Comments

Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

In a scientific age we continue seeking truth, and we seem to do better with the issue than did the ancients. They had neither the tools we now have, nor the ease of language forms now available. What they did have they appear to have moved along, even if slowly, in their emerging generations, finding how to formulate ideas. Their cultivation of language was strong in meaning. Studies of ancient languages show us how rich those languages were even with paucity of some words. We now use a number of words to express the meanings they held in one word or phrase, and even then we may miss the meaning. The problem becomes greater because we use language in so… Read more

Substantive Sermons

October 16, 2018

Year 3, Day 289 | No Comments

Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

At this editing I have been 30 years in semi-retirement. On averages, ministers and professors have long lives – similar to each other in earthly context. I have served both fields holding them in tandem – mutually helpful. In the event that one might take some satisfaction in long life, I am reminded that the averages for these professions are nearly matched by comedians. I hope the serious humorist is near the top of that group. Like the humorist, I want to present life as true, pleasant even in conflict, often incomprehensible without God. Without humor a person is in real trouble in conjuring life balances. But I digress. Each day for me begins with the usual habits or preparations… Read more

Elections

October 15, 2018

Year 3, Day 288 | No Comments

We return to the search of mankind for freedom. Socially, in western nations it is presumed to be more fully promised under democratic procedures than in a court of royalists, or a confederacy of tribes, or a disorder of anarchy – or in combinations of systems. Democracy is dependent upon an effective means for discovering the will of the majority of the population. This is presumed to be that the nation will find an effective way to determine the will of the people. In this there is, for democracy, laws and guidelines for gaining the votes of individuals. Even if there is nothing better than a well formed plan to legalize authority in the electorate, there are problems, sometimes becoming… Read more

Family Mystery

October 14, 2018

Year 3, Day 287 | No Comments

The support of the family, by the individual person, family unit itself, and the larger society is likely the major influence for gaining what might be called the good society. The family is the microcosm of the larger society, and provides a miniature model of what that society may be – good or ill. It is also a favored creation of God in which he nurtures life and in loving care makes a workable unit of persons, persons serving each other in love, and illustrating in the unit the hints of the family of God beyond nature. It is also illustrated in the dysfunctional family – the splintering away from the family of God. The family is a basic idiom… Read more

Education and Christianity

October 13, 2018

Year 3, Day 286 | No Comments

Section of Adoration of the Magi, artist unknown

We return on this Page to a very important theme: Values. Each year the Minneapolis Star-Tribune publishes a supplement on the best companies in the state to work for. It is an excellent and somewhat extensive narrative about the treatment of employees, and the consequence for the business relating to the values of the various companies, owners, and employees of the winning corporations. Don MacPherson, president of the Modern Survey stated: Our research has found that employees who know and understand their organization’s values are 30 times more likely to be fully engaged than someone who works at an organization without values or who is unaware of the organization’s values. We have found that having values makes full engagement possible… Read more

Depression

October 12, 2018

Year 3, Day 285 | No Comments

If given the assignment to live my marriage of fifty seven years over again, what would I do differently than I did? There are several large changes I would make, some of which would focus on my thinking, beliefs and conduct, and some on those of my wife. On this date, which marks her birth date, I concentrate on a negative factor she faced. She called it depression, and I accepted that identification. My failure early on was that she ought to get over it. The reasons from childhood she gave for it were no longer applicable. Consequences should dissolve. That was naive of me, and I got over that, but took away time to address realistically the context of… Read more

Monthly Archives: October 2018