Letter to the Editor- President's Actions Show Us Who He Is

When someone shows you who they are, believe them. What have we seen in President Trump?

He was slow to respond to Hurricane Harvey, late in visiting the folks of Texas and quick to make a joke at their expense. When Irma hit Florida, he spent his time on the coast but never ventured inland to places like Highlands County where honest working, blue-collar folk dealt with the loss of cattle, citrus, and uninsured homes.

When Maria hit Puerto Rico, he was slow in responding but quick to publicly shame the mayor of San Juan and to throw towels into a crowd of brown-skinned American citizens. When primarily Caucasian, country-music loving folk faced a brutal assault in cash-fueled Las Vegas, he was there as fast as he could be with a sense of dignity and remorse.

While California, a predominately Democratic state, is besieged with wildfires, he has yet to visit them, make any plans to visit, or show any sign that he legitimately cares.

President Trump- your actions speak loudly. We see who you really are. Half of America is not surprised because we knew this was truly you all along. The other half of America is either enjoying your disregard for humanity or they are doing their best to fool themselves into thinking you are an OK guy.

But you are not. What we have witnessed in our Republican President is someone who is callous, uncaring and non-compassionate. It is time for the other half of our beloved country to open up their eyes and to truly see who our President is.

Faithfully,
Rev. George Miller

The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party

Every now and then, a series of books come along that just allow the reader to do nothing but read, fall in love, laugh, smile and cry.

Alexander McCall Smith's series of "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" is one of those series. They are so predictable, but in a way that is comforting and joyful.

The 12th book, "The Saturday Big Tent Wedding" really nails everything that makes this series so good, and if it is the last book in the series, that will be fine because it feels as if all the loose ties have been tied together.

Old vans, new husbands, impetuous relationships, talking shoes and cups of bush tea all come together.

Of course, McCall Smith uses his familiar characters and simple writing style to tackle big truths. Does God forget some people? Why are some people in our lives? How often do we each get to hear what we all want to hear- that somebody likes us, just as we are, whatever our faults may be.

A joy to read; this book is a perfect summer read and addition to a wonderful series.

"In the Company of Cheerful Ladies"

In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
By Alexander McCall Smith

Smith continues to write about nothing, yet everything, at the same time. He has allowed his characters to continue developing. Mma. Makutsi solves a case; get a 25% commission and goes out to buy new shoes (with a buckle that will attract men’s attention!). She also finds love and in the touching last scene, is proposed to, although in a rather unusual way.

Mma. Ramotswe goes toe to toe with her abusive ex husband, Note, and temporarily faces the reality that her van has been stolen. There is also the addition of Mr. Polopsti, a man wrongly jailed who can not get a job…until the day Mma. Ramotswe hits him with her little white van and convinces Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni to give him a job.

The soul comes pouring out on the last page, when Mma. Makusti, glowing over her marriage proposal thinks about love. “She had so much love to give-she had always felt that- and now there was somebody to whom she could give this love, and that, she knew, was good; for that is what redeems us, that is what makes our pain and sorrow bearable- this giving of love to others, this sharing of the heart.”

"The Full Cupboard of Life"

Number 5 in the "#1 Ladie's" series. Very enjoyable, in which (spoiler alert), Mr. J.L.B. and Mma Ramotswe finally get married. But first there's business about jumping out of a plane to raise money for the orphan farm, the death of Mma. Makusti's brother to AIDS (done "off camera") and Mma. Makusti moving into 1/2 a house that she now rents (a very touching development for my favorite character).

As usual, lots of bush tea and fruit cake is consumed and there's jokes about having big bottoms and Mma. Ramostswe is allowed to really have a keen sense of humor. Reading these books are about visiting old friends in which the pace and plot of the book serve no purpose other then to make on smile and feel good, even when talking about difficult issues.

This book, like all the others, celebrates the land, traditionally built people who are healthy, beautiful and like to eat, respecting one and another, being humble and not taking oneself too seriously.

There is also a funny scene where Mma. Ramotswe play on the mechanics vanity by making them think an anonymous love letter left for "Mr. Handsome" was perhaps written by a man.

Good book, great series.

"The Kalahari Typing School of Men"

Book number 4 in the "#1 Ladies Detective Agency" is perhaps the strongest book of the series, in which the author allows each of the characters to grow and change, for better or for worse. One of Mr. J. L. Matekoni's apprentices "finds religion" (even for a short while), Mr. J.L.B. finds a back-bone and stands up to the matron of the orphan home, Mma. Makusti begins a successful business and ill-fated love affair etc.

A major theme is the admitting of one's sins and finding a way to air them out and make up for past mistakes, as well as allowing people the opportunity to do so. Another theme is of mutual support, the way each person, business is interconnected.

The Lightening Thief

I recently became a volunteer for Big Brothers/Bis Sisters. My "Little" is a fan of this book, so I picked it up and was wonderfully surprised with how well done it is. Yes, it is created and read in the shadow of "Harry Potter" so it has that to compete with, and the hero goes on a quest with a guy and girl and they go to a camp for Half-Bloods. Yet still, it's an original book that deals pretty honestly with Greek mythology without giving too much adult info to the young readers, yet at the same time not dumbing it down.

The author, Rick Riordan, creates in Percy a hero diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD, who is actually the son of Poseidon. He's dyslexic because his minds wants to read Greek, he has ADHD because he sees more then the average person. He also longs to have know his father, to have friends, and find where he fits in. No wonder so many kids like this series, as it hits upon universal wants and experiences, the way "Harry Potter" did.

The kids of Half-Blood are all children of Gods. Some of them stay there forever, others are sent out for quests; that's what most of them want. The "real world is where the monsters are. That's where you learn whether you are any good or not." (pg 170)

One soleful part is when Percy is to fight against Ares, the God of War. He gets nervous, but is reminded "Ares has strength. That's all he has. Eventrength has to bow to wisdom sometimes." (229) (Where have I heard that before...)

"The Road from Coorain" by Jill Ker Conway

The Road from Coorain
By Jill Ker Conway

This book is a bit tricky, because the author aims to tell one story: growing up in Australia, from a solitary sheepfarm in the grasslands to moving into the metropolitan world and becoming an academic. But it’s true story is not discovered until the end, in a rather rushed off way: what it is like to grow up the lone girl in a family in which the mother descends into an alcoholic, depressive darkness; a world in which feelings and emotions are to be hidden and people are rewarded from true grit.

On page 151, this theme becomes very clear: “How could I tell this woman who lived for me that I did not want to live for her?”

The first part is rather long with barely any dialogue to break it up. Once Jill leaves the farm, the storytelling, visuals and story pick up. For example, on page 168 she discovers that “university study was about learning and reflection, not the cramming of texts and information. Now I had a purpose in my life.”

I also like this insight, on page 227: “Every intellectual woman wants to be loved for her whole self, to found attractive for minds as well as body…”

Though insightful, this is not a quick read or something one reads for enjoyment.

"Why Christianity Must Change or Die"

Why Christianity Must Change or Die
By John Shelby Spong

I’ve had this book on my shelf for ages, but finally read it after a guest of the church encouraged me to read it. So, after finishing off some of the other books on my “pastor’s pile” I finally got to it.

Spong is an Episcopal Bishop who basically states that we must stop viewing God from a theistic viewpoint (in other words, God is like us). He makes some good claims, such as on pg xix “…that any god who is threatened by new truth from any source is clearly dead already.”

The major thesis of his book appears on page 70: “There is no God external to life. God, rather, is the inescapable depth and center of all that is. God is not a being superior to all other beings. God is the Ground of Being itself.” (pg 70).

Written in 1998, I can see how it is an enlightening book, however, many of the things he discusses were articulated by Alice Walker in her excellent novel “The Color Purple” and have been a major part of United Church of Christ’s (U.C.C.) scholarship for decades.

Spong is right in mentioning that the church is not a place where many people today expect to seek out God (page 21). He states that we must discover if the death of the God we worshipped in the past is the same thing as the death of God (pg 41). He also does a wonderful study on how anger informs many preachers, stating that some people act as if they can not enjoy heaven unless they get to watch those in hell writhe in pain (pp 53-54).

Spong calls us to let go of the image of Jesus as a rescuer and instead as a spirit filled person, “radically, deeply, and fully alive” (page 114) who could be “present, totally present, to another person” (page 126). And because of this Jesus was a “remarkably free man. He was free to forgive, free to endure, free to be, and free to die” (page 127).

Thus, “the primary message of the Christian Church to the emerging adolescent in the Church rites of passage is ‘You share in eternity. You are holy. Your life reveals the presence of God.’” (page 193).

The main complaint I had with the book is that Spong seems to erase away whatever mystery and freedom God can have. In my opinion, by spending so much time disclaiming who and what God is not, Spong seems to create his own God that fits into his own rulebook and expectations, and then Spong wants us to think the same way and worship his definition of God. There is not a lot I disagreed with in his book, but there were many times in which I said “But God is free and God is mystery.”

But here is my bias: I would rather believe in a God who is free and full of mystery then a God who can or can not do what I say and expect.

"The Clowns of God"

The Clowns of God by Morris West

Written in the 1981, it is a pre-Divinci Code kind of book that celebrates faith while questioning it, and is both pro and anti-Catholic.

It’s about a pope who has a direct revelation from God about the end times, is declared insane, forced to resign, and the people caught up in this all. One way the ex-pope is to get his message out is by writing an anonymous book of letters to God, in which he writes from the voice of a clown in a traveling circus, using simple, every day images and idea. Like Psycho, the characters this book starts with are not necessarily the main ones, though they appear at the end.

Obviously, there’s a lot of “sole” in this book.

When asked how to interpret Scripture to the faithful, a pastor responds “As a mystery…a mystery which, under the influence of divine grace, gradually unfolds its meaning to each individual soul.”

The once-pope says “I am a persuader, not a dictator.”

Communion is seen as “A sharing of life with the source of life.” (208)

Anneliese Meissner, an atheist psychiatrist who views things from a Jungian view, talks with the ex-pope “I am forced to conclude that you are a special man with a special perception of what Jung calls the collective unconscious. Therefore, you have a magical affect on people. It is as if you are privy to their most intimate thoughts, desires, fears…So, when you talk or write about it, people feel you inside themselves, almost as a function of their own egos. As a result, everything you do or say has profound and sometimes terrible consequences. You are the giant dreaming under the volcano. When you turn in your sleep, the earth shakes.” (211)

The gospel parables use commonplace surroundings that are “like a minefield, full of traps and trip wires. They all contain contradictions, alienating elements, which bring the listener up short and make him see a new potential, for good and evil, in the most banal event.” (240)

The anonymous clown writes to God how different each person in the “circus” is, and “yet, when the show is over and we all sit at the supper table, tired and hungry, do You see much difference between us? Do you care?” (297)

Explaining why he does not believe in hell “I believe-and I have been shown only the faintest glimmer of what is to be- that the final Coming and the final Judgment itself must be acts of love. If they are not, then we inhabit a chaos created by a mad spirit, and the sooner we are released from it into nothingness, the better.” (324)

“The biggest mistake we’ve made through the ages is try to explain the ways of God to men. We shouldn’t do that. We should just announce Him. He explains Himself very well.”

Finally, “Somewhere at the deepest core of himself- the sorry fortress so beset and bombarded and ruined-there was a place of light where the Other dwelt, and where, when he could withdraw to it, there was communion of love, blissful but all too brief. It was like- what was it like?- deaf Beethoven with his head full of glories, Einstein bereft of mathematics to express the mysteries he understood at the end.”

"The Miracle At Speedy Motors"

By Alexander McCall Smith

As always, a breezy joy to read, however I am discovering how the mysteries really are not the point of the books, and never were, and the author has ways of introducing people and things that just do not matter, but are. I do love how Mma Makusti shows a love, a guilty love, for shoes, and her shoes, the old ones begin to talk to her. About how she has become “too grand for us-after all we’ve done for you!” (43) On 89 we learn how after a rainstorm people can go out and catch flying ants (termites) and eat them, enjoying their peanut-butter taste and crunchiness.

A woman tells Mma. Ramotswe her story; she signals Mma. Makutsi to out “on the kettle. The telling of a story, like virtually everything in life, was always made all the easier by a cup of tea.”

On character talks about how the ancestors “are with us…They are all around us. What we have done. Their voices. The memories they have left us. All of that is there.” (57)

A scene of comfort: “Mrs. Moffat had taken her hand, for comfort, and they had sat there in silence for a long while. Sometimes it seemed as if the world itself was broken, that there was something wrong with all of us, something broken in such a way that it might not be put together again; but the holding of hands, human hand in human hand, could help, could help make the world seem less broken.” (96)

Finally, after a failed attempt for seek out a miracle for their physically disabled daughter, Mma. Ramotswe says to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni “It is not foolish to hope for miracles…No, it is not foolish, Rra. Not foolish at all. There are many miracles.” (213)

"Morality for Beautiful Girls"

Morality for Beautiful Girls
By Alexander McCall Smith

From a cultural viewpoint, we learn that anyone with a well-paid job with two or more bedrooms was expected to have a maid; to not have one was seen as selfishness. (pg 75)

Ecotheology appears in chapter 14: “God Decided That Botswana Would Be a Dry Place” in which, (page 164), Mma. Ramotswe is reminded of the values of her people: “They shared the land with cattle, and with birds and the many other creatures that could be seen if only one watched.”

166 deals with mourning, as Mma. Ramotswe visits the cows her late father left her. She missed him “acutely” and she knew “she would probably weep and they would wonder why this woman still wept for her father who had died long ago. We still have tears to shed, she thought. We still have to weep for those mornings when we went out early and watched the cows able along the cattle paths and the birds flying high in the thermal currents.”

Mma Ramotswe solves a case for a disrespectful Government Man. When he tried to disrespect her, she stands her ground and lets him know where the door is. He comes to his senses and apologizes for his rude behavior and she informs him on who has tried to poison his family. But then she remarks that ‘the real poison within families is not the poison that you put in food, but the poison that grows up in the heart where people are jealous.” (220). When the man begins to cry, she tells him “Do not be ashamed to cry, Rra…It is the way that things begin to get better. It is the first step.” (220-221)

"The Help" by Kathryn Stockett

Well-written, easy to read book that captures what it was like to live in Jackson, MS during the early-mid 60's, from food to clothes to customs to white/black relations.

This book has perhaps the best line I have read all year: "Bosoms," she announces, "are for bedrooms and breastfeeding. Not for occasions with dignity." (618 Large Print)

There's a touching scene on 515 when Skeeter's Dad tells the local Senator that he is " 'Ashamed of what goes on in Mississippi.' Mother's eyes are big, set on Daddy. I am shocked to hear his opinion...I'm suddenly so proud of my daddy, for many reasons. For a second, I swear, I see it in Mother's eyes too."

"Tears of the Giraffe"

This is book two of "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" and it is at a much speedier pace then the series. But, oh how I enjoyed it. Mma. Ramotswe and Mr. J.L.B. are engaged and taken in a brother and sister who are orphans. The girl is in a wheelchair and has a love for all things engine, which surprises, but please Mr. J.L.B. (even if he wished it was the boy who had the mechanical aptitude). This is just another example of how the author plays with gender roles, being both appreciative of the place for tradition but also the place for breaking the glass ceiling (so Mma. Makutsi!)

Page 63: Mma. Ramostwe is thinking about forgiveness, which leads her to Mandela: "But at last, when he had walked out of prison on that breathless, luminous day day, he had said nothing about revenge and retribution. He had said there were more important things to do than complain about in the past, and in time he had shown that he meant this by hundreds of acts of kindness towards those who had treated him badly. That was the real African way, the tradition that was closest to the heart of Africa. We are all children of Africa, and none of us is better or more important than the other."

Page 83, Mr. J.L.B. is thinking about becoming a foster parent and reflecting on the man who influenced him. "It was easy to make a difference to other people's lives, so easy to change the little room in which people lived their life."

Page 122 "If they could not understand how we are part of the natural world about us, then they are the ones who have their eyes closed, not us."

Page 156, Mr. J.L.B. is amazed to hear that his foster daughter, Motholeli never had her photograph taken. He reflects that she had nothing to look back at and say "That is me" and that nobody had wanted to take her picture; she was not special enough.

Page 198, Mr. J.L.B. and Motholeli are fixing a car. She says "The van is happier now." He realizes that she has "it", the thing that makes one a mechanic, for she understand the car and engine in terms of happiness/feelings.

Page 225, Mma Ramostwe is balancing the books and realizes there should be a column for happiness alongside expenses and receipts. "the figure in her accounts would be a very large one..."

Page 227 "We can all give something...a giraffe has nothing to give but tears."

"Tea Time for the Traiditionally Built"

OK, so I did things out of order. But I love the title of this newest installment of the #1 Ladies' Detective Agency. It's a little long in the beginning, but by the end I could not wait to finish it/yet did not want it to end.

The author really allowed Mma Makusti to shine. She has so many great one-liners that I just had to laugh out loud. her sense of reason and her general assumptions are...oops. wait- aren't those things I have been accused of as well? OK, so I have a little Mma Makutsi in me as well. But I love her.

There's not a lot about Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni in here, because the story is really about Mma Ramostwe and Mma Makusti and the mystery they solve is really just a means to an exploration of life. And how a cup of bush tea can settle anything.

Poverty and AIDS and adultery and drought creep in but are dealt with matter of fact, making the joyous spots that much lovelier.

The soul of the novel is all over its pages. Page 41. "People believed in all manner of things, in the face of all the evidence, but if they did not, well, what then? What if we stopped believing in things that we could not prove? We has to believe in something, she thought. We had to believe in kindness, and courtesy and telling the truth; we had to believe in the old Botswana values-all these these could not be proved in the way in which one could prove that nothing made a difference to colds, and yet we had to believe in them."



72: Mma Ramotswe sat quite still. All of us. Until you hear the whole story, you dig deeper, and listen, she thought, you know only a tiny part of the goodness of the human heart.



127: We are born to talk to other people, she thought; we are born to be sociable and to sit together with others in the shade of the acacia tree and talk about things that happened the day before. We were not born to sit in kitchens by ourselves, with nobody to chat to.

Page 189 is an observation about how some pushy people can make others uncomfortable and say/do things they normally would not. "She regretted that remark the moment she had made it. It was a bad mistake to tie yourself down to deadlines-it was a bad mistake to make promises in general- but there was something about Mr. Molofololo's manner-his pushy, rather hectoring style- that led to this."

On 212 the book ends with a wonderful surreal bit about Mma. Makusti's new shoes talking, and then the rain coming down, and you know what? It all made wonderful, sense.

I can not wait to read the rest of the books in this series.

"The No. 1 Ladies' Dective Agency"

After watching all of season 1 of the HBO series, I ran out to the library to get this book and found it such an enjoyable, quick read. Almost all of the cases appeared in the series. Sadly, my favorite character, Mma Makutsi, does not appear that much (but oh how she does in book 7 which I am reading now!).

The author, Alexander McCall Smith, does not shy away from Mma Ramotswe's abusive relationship with her ex-husband, and it is that sorrow and violent experience (especially the death of her 5 day old son and the death of her father) that underlies so much of what is going on.

Yet, so much light bursts forth from these pages that one can not help but to smile. The dialogue is crisp and clean, and if you have seen the TV show, you can just see all the characters.

Bravo to Mma Ramotswe and her traditionally built self!

The pages of soul are as follows:
page 48, he father notes that people were like their cattle: wretched, thin people had wretched, thin cattle; dishonest people had dishonest cattle that would cheat other cattle of food.

104: "he is not a good father this man, because he loves his four children too much- he wants to own them. You have to let them go. You have to let them go."

124: I am just a tiny person in Africa, but there is a place for me, and for everybody, to sit down on this earth and touch it and call it their own.

160: ...at night we are all strangers, even to ourselves...

180: She made it sound so simple that he found himself convinced that it would work. That was the wonderful thing about confidence- it was infectious.

196: Women can't be bothered with all this fighting. We see war for what it is- a matter of broken bones and crying mothers.

All in all, this is a very good book, worth settling down to with a cup of bush tea.

"The Almond" by Nedjma

Another $2 treasure from Books-A-Million. This is about a Muslim's sexual self-discovery, a poetically written piece of erotica that gives insight into the Muslim world a divorced peasant woman's point of view.

Sensuality and spirituality abound. I enjoyed page 122 in which the main character thinks about "the beggars who stretch out their hand toward God and are rebuffed by distracted and stingy people. I gave bread every Friday to the old people covered with blisters and dressed in rags at the entrance to the mausoleums."

Is this what it means when we ask "Give us this day our daily bread?"

And then, check out 230-231 as Driss, who is dying, coming to God in prayer. It is too long and at points vulgar to repeat hear, but it begins "God of the butterflies and elephants, You know I am worthless. You gave me Maari, Abou Nawas, Jahiz, Mohamed Ibn Abdillah, Moses, and Jesus, and I don't know how to be grateful...."

"How's Your Romance" by Ethan Morrden

...and sometimes a book in the dollar bin is there for a reason...

Poor Ethan has a story to tell but he gets in his own way, writing in a style that doesn't say "read and enjoy me" but "try to follow where I am going."

The sub-plot with Red is good.

There is the idea of always carrying a dollar in one's pocket to give to someone in need, coming from a family that "impresses upon its tender offspring the importance of service." (pg. 236).

But the one line I liked was on page 149: "That turned out to be a mistake, but without bad decisions life writes us no stories."

"Women Who Eat" edited by Leslie Miller

Sometimes you can find the most wonderful book for only a buck. That's what happened with the anthology "Women Who Eat" (2003). A collection of stories by foodies for foodies, capturing all essences of cooking, eating and food memories, almost every story tied into how food and relationships coexist with one another.

I highly recommend this book, especially being moved by Amanda Hesser's "Fundamental Pleasures," so much so I read her essay twice in a row. On page 39 she quotes from Edoudard de Pomiane's Cooking with Pomaine: "For a gourmand there is no need to produce complicated dishes with fancy names. Prepare for him raw materials of good quality. Transform them as little as possible and accompany them with suitable sauces and you will have produced a meal which is just right."

I loved that line and thought of how well that applies to just about everything. Simpler is better. So how can I follow the words that I agree with?

"My Life in France" by Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme

I saw this on a library shelf and was immediately taken by the lovely photo of her and Paul wearing their Valentine hearts.

This book is for anyone who is a "foodie", fan of "Julie and Julia" or loves France the way the ladies of SATC love NYC.

The book is a bit long in the middle, as it becomes clear that as much as one loves food, sometimes (gasp!) there is more to life and memory then what one ate. But the real soul of the autobiography is the life that Julia and Paul had and how she may have been in her late 30s before she found her calling, but once she found it, she went for it, loving and living everything French, food and friends.

If you are a fan of the movie, there are parts you will immediately pick up on, and there are parts in which you realize the film fictionalized things for the art of storytelling.

You get a sense of Julia's strong work ethic, one which demands precision but allows for mistakes. She relates to the poverty the French went through due to the war and how perhaps that influenced their love of food. And her final pages play very well with what happens as beloved people age, get sick, frail, die.

It is also clear that Julia became Julia because she was raised upper middle-class, fell in love with a wonderful man who stood beside her all along and she came into opportunities that were a mixture of pure chance but also due to her persistence, work and spirit.

As someone who wishes he could eat as cruelty free as possible, there is something about how much animal flesh plays a part in the book, but one gets a sense that Julia neither romanticizes the animals or trivializes them. She talks of eating all kinds of birds and cooking animals in their blood. I wonder how the animals were raised and treated in France at the time.

Oh, and if you want to learn how to make the best eggs? page 60

Ready for some buttery soul?

How to survive in France? "Just speak very loudly and quickly and state your position with utter conviction as the French do and you'll have a marvelous time!" (x)

Page 63: "I had never taken anything so seriously in my life- husband and cat excepted- and I could hardly bear to be away from the kitchen. What fun! What a revelation! How terrible it would have been had Roo de Loo come with a good cook! How magnificent to find my life's calling, at long last!"

Page 71: She makes a horrible lunch and eats it with a friend. "We ate the lunch with a painful politeness and avoided discussing the taste. I made sure not to apologize for it. That was a rule of mine. I don;t believe in twisting your self into knots or excuses over the food you make. When a hostess starts in with self-deprecations...it is so dreadful to have to reassure her...besides, such admissions draws attention to one's shortcomings...Usually one cooks better than one think it is. And if the food is truly vile...then the cook must simply grit their teeth and bear it with a smile- and learn from her mistakes.

129: in regards to teaching, her husband Paul tells Julia one must be willing to "play God" for a bit, in other words to be an authority.

181, some very blue-humour, courtesy of their friends who detests incompetents "You can't fertilize a five-acre field by farting through a fence."

234: Paul, on getting older and developing health problems "One thing that separates us Senior Citizens from the Juniors is learning how to suffer. It's a skill, like learning how to write."

243: a phrase from a diplomat "Remember, no one's more important than people." In other words, as Julia writes, friendship is the most important thing, not a career or housework or one's fatigue and needs to be tended and nurtured.

244: "You have to do it and do it, until you get it right"

274: "...it was important not to rush, push too hard , or to take people's goodwill for granted."

297: "The great lesson embedded in the book (From Julia Child's Kitchen) is that no one is born a great cook, one learns by doing. This is my invariable advise to people: Learn how to cook- try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless and above all have fun!"

299: Paul thinks the closing of their French home each year is a death, but not to Julia. "To me, life moves forward." On 300 Julia gives up her beloved home when Paul and all her family and friends are not longer able to enjoy it.

302: "I learned why French food is an art, and why it makes such sublime eating: nothing is too much trouble if it turns out the way it should. Good results require that one take time and care...a careful approach will result in a magnificent burst of flavor, a thoroughly satisfying meal, perhaps even a life-changing experience."

"Christianity for the Rest of Us"

As part of a five week book study I read "Christianity for the Rest of Us- How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith" by Diana Butler Bass.

She has 10 signposts of renewal:

hospitality, discernment, healing, contemplation, testimony, diversity, justice, worship, reflection, beauty.



Page 6 : I also believe that lively faith is not located in buildings, programs, organizations, and structures. rather, spiritual vitality lives in human beings; it's located in the heart of God's people and the communities they form."



Page 22: because we are a mobile community it is important to talk of roots and commitment



45: churches decline when they neglect Scripture, prayer, discernment, hospitality, contemplation, justice.



52: "Tradition connects Christians to the past, practice is the calling in the present, and wisdom pushes towards a future of eternal love."



63: Deanna, a church member- "i definitely need constant and continuing conversion as I am such a superb sinner!"



67: how as a church can we take tragedy (like an unexpected death) and turn it into redemption



72: What if Jesus is not a Mapquest sort of map, a superhighway to salvation?



Hospitality: 81. how do we transform a tourist into a friend? 85. Could we host a Tent City for the homeless on our front lawn?. 86; when hostility is converted into hospitality then fearful strangers become guests (Nouwen).



Discernment: Move from asking I-questions to God-question.



Healing: 104: To find harmony is to find balance, to touch the center point of wholeness. 106. healing is ancient. What's new is that churches are practising it (such as Christian Reiki)



Contemplation: 118: silence in the midst of all the noise we have in life, out of our fear of nothingness (120). 123: the First sign of openness to the Spirit is how much Roberts Rules of order dominate the church proceedings.



testimony: 131 it is a process of releasing control and risking that testimony can outshine the sermon. 141: testimony is not about God fixing people, it speaks of God making wholeness out of human woundedness, human incompleteness.



diversity: 148 serves as a sign of God's love for all humanity, 149 even Israel is not singular, it's made up of 12 tribes. 151 ubuntu theology- I can not be without you. 152- without different points of view, without different types of people we can't be the kind of church we are called to be.



justice: 165, a pastor wonders "how the church of Jesus could produce so many ministers willing to fall on their swords over issues of sexuality, but unwilling to notice the demonic gap between the rich and the poor."



Worship: 174: the idea is not to create anything but to simply invite people into a sense of openness and attentiveness akin to sitting on the dock not knowing if the bass will swim but ready for it if they do. You can use the material of everyday life (art, music, film) and assume it is an entryway into the sacred. teenagers and unchurched may love it.



Reflection: 185. Middle age creeps in and you realize4 one day the party will be over.



Beauty: "touching the divine. Page 208. why the Trinity, not one in two or one in eighteen, because one in Three is so elegant. 209, the teenager who believes in the Virgin birth because "it is so beautiful it has got to be true-whether it happened or not."





Church can transform lives. For example, 220, the man who spent his life dishonoring the living would now honor the dead (he goes into the funeral business), from taking advantage of others to serving others.



to go from wanderer to pilgrim, a woman has crosses traced over her body (225) creating healing touch.



228: Americans possess no stable identity. Nothing is inherited from the past, few family ties bind and all forms of personhood must be chosen and often chosen again.



231 all across the globe people think they find meaning through what they buy or aspire to buy.



234: the congregation is a place of transformation. and (241) should always be in state of change and transition.



247 people come to church not because of some marketing tool but of what we are doing.



251 do we open our doors and serve whoever enters in?



262 are we looking down at the poor or seeing them on equal standing?



271: when the church no longer has all the cultural power do we then get to explore what that means?



280: lent is a season that invites us to ponder those things that keep us feeling separate from God.



281: Transformation is the promise at the heart of Christian life.