Two small but telling incidents from the weekend:
1. For lack of planning exactly how much time I needed Saturday morning to bake my breakfast casseroles for the Cherry Creek Chorale‘s retreat/ rehearsal, I ended up with one beautifully-baked set and one goopy set. I always say, “Oh, they’re so easy–all you have to do is open cans!” But that’s not really true. You have to grate cheese, and whisk together eggs and milk, and open cans, and even opening cans takes some time.
One of the greatest bars to my happiness and productivity is the failure to control the use of my time. (Notice that I didn’t say “control my time,” because time itself cannot be controlled; it just ticks away. Deep insight here.) So I’ve signed up for Laura Vanderkam’s time tracking program that will take place next week. (Good example of here of my lack of time control: when I typed in “Laura” to get the correct spelling of Vanderkam’s last name and the address for her website, autosearch came up with “Laura Ingraham.” Since I had gotten into a sort-of-argument with a friend last night while watching THE BRONCOS WIN THEIR FIRST REGULAR-SEASON GAME and it had become obvious that I thought “Dr. Laura” and “Laura Ingraham” were one and the same, I couldn’t resist doing a little internet-diving on Ingraham and now it’s 10-15 minutes later. See?)
I was half-listening to an NPR segment a couple of days ago and heard a woman talking about her international work in prisons, including quite a bit about Rwanda and the aftermath of the genocide. The story reminded of me of the book my cousin wrote about his own experiences as a Christian missionary there during that horrible, tragic time. I was sure that I had written a review of it for this blog, but a search under every possible term has yielded nothing. So here it is, a thoughtful, well-written book by a godly, sincere man who is still working faithfully in that country; I just got the most recent edition of his newsletter a few days ago. He has indeed had his faith tried in the fire, and it has come forth as gold.
If you think that such a book must be kind of depressing, I would encourage you to read it and have your preconceived ideas overturned. Gary is quite a character and his personality comes through even though his brother Randy was the actual
Are you familiar with the story of Mary and Martha in the Christian New Testament? I have always been fascinated by it. In a nutshell, here’s what happens:
Read this book! Although focused primarily on political matters, I’m including it here as well as on the “personal and political” page because 1) it’s the main work I read last week, and 2) whip-smart writing is always a happy thing to read, no matter your political persuasion.
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hardback and audiobook cover
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Kindle edition cover
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Too Dumb to Fail: How the GOP Betrayed the Reagan Revolution to Win Elections (And How It Can Reclaim Its Conservative Roots) and/or How the GOP Went from the Party of Reagan to the Party of Trump by Matt K. Lewis, Hachette Books, 2016. Visit the author’s website (and access a great selection of podcasts) at MattKLewis.com.
Not a huge event. I wasn’t putting on a wedding, or a political convention. History was not going to be changed in any way if we ran out of food. (It might have been if someone had gotten sick from the food, but that didn’t happen.) We probably ended up with around 100 people, and while the last 10 or so people didn’t get any salad everyone got a burrito. And there was plenty of dessert. All in all a very successful evening. People lingered and lingered, always a sign of a good party.
So I ran across the notes I took on a sermon preached back in June at our church. There are only a few sentences, but they’re very powerful. Here’s what I wrote:
Normally, of course, I post a weekly entry about a book, movie or podcast that I think my audience would enjoy and/or profit from, but this week I’m sharing my experience of seeing something that in the end is pretty terrible. So you can read what I have to say and then decide for yourself whether or not it’s worth your time. I’ve been posting over on my “personal and political” page about Dinesh D’Souza for the past two days, so if you want a little background on him you can go here and here.
Has it ever occurred to you that there are two distinct and contradictory streams of thought about women in our modern culture? That thought has been nagging at me for awhile now, but lately it’s come into sharp focus, and this book helped with that process.
Imagine this scene: A conference room at some high-powered law office. The announcement is being made of who has made partner. It’s been a long and somewhat bitter process, but now it has been decided: out of two women and three men the choice has come down to one of the women. She is poised, articulate, and superbly dressed in her power suit. She is known for her abilities in the courtroom. From now on she will be paid, in money and respect, for the position she has earned. Meanwhile, just outside the window of this conference room is a billboard advertising
