Minnesota: a haiku
Winter came today
Welcome back my snowy friend
Missed you yesterday*
—————
*not really
Bad Poetry Monday – 13 March 31, 2008
Why Ron Paul Scares (the Crap Out of) the GOP March 29, 2008
From Time magazine…this article.
My favorite part:
The late William F. Buckley wanted conservatives to stand athwart history yelling stop; Paul seems to want to slam history into reverse. The guy genuinely wants to abolish the Federal Reserve and start circulating gold again.
You gotta just love this guy. He’s the only person left still running against McCain. That’s just the kind of guy he is. He’s not about to drop out and give his support to someone who he doesn’t see as a decent option. And he still holds my vote.
My DNA
Here is one of the best personality tests I’ve taken in a long time:
Why don’t you take it and let me know your personality profile and if you think it matched you? The thing I liked best about it was that all the choices were a sliding scale rather than a “yes or no” or even “choose 1 through 5.” Matched my test-takingness much better.
And my results, which I would LOVE to have analyzed by those who know me pretty well (who read my blog, that is):
While I didn’t think my overall title, “Generous Leader,” matched who I am, the rest described me pretty well.
Flat Stanley Goes Ice Fishing March 28, 2008
So Flat Stanley spent a weekend with Charlie up in the great Nort’. For those of you who have never seen a frozen lake, yes, you can actually walk on it, drive on it, and fish through it! Here’s his story:
Dan U. and I took Stanley ice-fishing with us out by Union Lake for good luck. We ended up getting 15 fish. 5 apiece! He behaved once we got him to stop playing with the ice auger. All it took was a dip in the ice-hole, hehehe.
Isn’t it nice how Stanley fit into that little pocket for them? He didn’t even need a sleeping bag! Thanks for showing him a good time, Chuck!
It Eludes March 27, 2008
Why is it that when you REALLY need sleep, you can’t? For me, I guess it’s that I get stressed out, but still. I can lie there praying for an hour or two, “Lord, please help me sleep…” and….nothing. It usually happens on the nights when I work the next day, which means I have to get up at 4:30. It’s not because I’m stressed about going—I like my job. But even if I’m in bed by 9, my body will rarely let me sleep before 11. I’ve been awake since 3 a.m., so I finally got out of bed to do something productive.
I do not function well with less than 7 hours of sleep. Twice a week, I get about 4 to 5. And it’s aging me. Okay, that’s the end of my complaining for the day.
And Searching Some More… March 24, 2008
Back by popular demand (does my own thrill at what people type in to find my blog count as “demand”?), answers to those of you who found my blog by searching for the following:
winter nipples
actually,I thnk you’re looking for Scarlett’s blog…
naked climbing
man, Scarlett, are you sending your folks over here?
minnesota mom blogs
You, my friend, have come to the right place.
grace bakes a cakes for his mom games
Grace is a boy? Husband likes a cakes.
flat stanley’s mom
He has a mom? Invite her over, too! She can eat cakes.
i’m beautiful
Man, I must be conceited.
values and policies of smacking
Values: a tasty lunch
Policies: only when substance is sticky
is donna fargo a tomboy or a girly girl?
That’s a toss-up. With a name like Donna, I’d guess girly, but with a last name like Fargo, I’d go for tomboy…
photos of me
Yes, there are some on my blog
sugar pink cupcakes
WANT!
things in minnesota that start with y
Yarn
Yams
Yankton Lake
what is there to do in winona Minnesota
I have only been there once that I can remember, and the three things I recollect are these:
1. We drove to the top of a tall rock that had a look-out point.
2. We ate at KFC (yuck).
3. My friend’s sister had some sort of honors orchestra thing there.
does anyone know how to gleak
Heck yes I do!
to grandmother’s house we go leisure art
Say what?
Bad Poetry Monday – 12 (a.k.a. The Moment You’ve All Been Waiting For…)
I found it. The creme de la creme of my poetry. As bad as it is, it sparks such fond memories that I can’t help but LOVE it. I will dissect it post-poem. So here it is…
Pop Tarts: The Food of the New Generation*
Pop Tarts.
They live in my tummy.
Why?
Because I ate them.
They tasted good.
Yummy, yummy, yummy.
I have Pop Tarts in my tummy.
Strawberry is the flavor.
The flavor that tops them all! Non-frosted please.
Made of cells.
Cells are good.
Yummy Pop Tart cells.
Eat them!
Love them!
Give some to me cuz…
I love them too!
———–
Tell me, where can you find better poetry than that? So honest. So raw. So cutting edge.
In high school I ran with a very…creative crowd. My friend Jana and I would spend almost every day at each other’s houses. While some of our friends held down summer jobs, we made creativity our job. We would bake cakes and color the batter four different colors, then swirl them together. We built villages out of legos. We golfed almost daily. We made many, many collages. We drew cartoons (man, if I could find those, that would be another awesome post). We made apple pies in creative forms and ate it for breakfast. We watched her sister practice riding her unicycle from our perch on the roof. We went ice-blocking. We played tennis*. And we wrote bad poetry about rubber chickens and beatniks and food we liked (case in point) and obviously, about whatever we were learning in science (hence the mention of cells). Jana probably grew up and continued being artsy and cool. Me, I’m average. But I revel in memories of when I was artsy and cool…
*While the content of this poem reflected my opinion at the time written, keep in mind that this was before I knew a single thing about nutrition. All I knew was activity burns calories. And I was active. The end.
**The fact that we played golf and tennis makes us sound like we were preppies at a country club, which is not true. We played golf for free (well, on our parents’ membership, which cost only like $250 for the whole family for the entire season), and we played tennis at the public courts near my house where you had to insert quarters to buy time on the lights at night.
p.s. I now prefer my Strawberry Pop Tarts frosted on the rare occasion that I eat them.
The God of Peace Brought from the Dead the Good Shepherd March 23, 2008
This morning Pastor Piper’s sermon title was “The God of Peace Brought from the Dead the Good Shepherd.” His sermons have been pretty outstanding the past few months, as he’s focused on the new birth and what it looks like. Here are some notes from today’s (text: Hebrews 13:20-21):
Humans were designed to be sheep. We are to be shepherded. Who is our shepherd? Rev. 7 says “the Lamb slain in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd.” Note that our Shepherd is also a Lamb.
Being an exegete, Pastor Piper asks questions of the texts he reads and seeks to point us back to scripture in exploring them. Today he asked four questions:
1. Who is it that is my Great Shepherd?
- Per verse 20, our Lord Jesus
- Many people consider their pastor their shepherd and become disillusioned with the church as a result. Pastor John said that we have ONE shepherd, and he is not him—it is Christ alone. For those pastors who cause their flock to become disillusioned, God has these words, found in Jeremiah 23 and Ez. 34:
“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture…I will attend to you for your evil deeds” and
“The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the wild beasts.”
- Isaiah 40:11 says, “He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.” Christ as shepherd never abuses or manipulates his flock the way worldly leaders sometimes do.
2. How can it be that Christ is our Shepherd today?
- Two obstacles prevent us from believing it is possible:
- He died!
- I don’t deserve Him!
- Per verse 20, he was brought from the dead by God “by the blood of the eternal covenant.” In the NIV and NASB, this phrase is rightly placed before “brought Jesus from the dead.”
- The “eternal covenant” references the new covenant. By the purchase of his sheep by his own blood, Christ satisfied the wrath of God. Because it was the perfect sacrifice, it achieved God’s acceptance and He raised both Christ and us, His bride.
3. What does it mean for me today to be shepherded by a great Shepherd?
- Per v.21, by this blood he will “equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ.”
- This doesn’t mean He will equip you to be rich, be healthy and be successful in business, but to DO HIS WILL.
- He did not buy a one-time prayer from me that will save me even though I’ve lived a filthy life without a second thought about Him after that prayer. He bought my perseverance. Jer. 32:40 says, “I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.”
- He never asks you to do anything He doesn’t provide for. He’s going to work in us, as the text says, to keep us.
4. Why did God set it up this way?
- We don’t want to be like sheep. We want to be like God ourselves, having control and glory and the world revolving around us.
- But according to the text, God set it up this way so that HE would get the glory. Verse 21: “through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.”
- When we start getting haughty and thinking this should be the other way around, that by our serving Christ somehow we deserve glory, we need to remember that if we’re really His sheep, we’re happy being His sheep. We get the care, the protection, the provision, the joy of being loved in such a way, and God gets the glory for doing all of that for us. There’s no way that we could do that job. As Pastor John put it, “Here, please provide for the Creator of the Universe’s needs. Would you provide Him some love? Would you care for Him? Would you protect Him? It doesn’t work that way. You don’t want that job. You want to be the sheep.”
