Parts of Speaking Publishing

 I did warn you that these posts for Lent would be a slow walk through Ephesians  1:4:  just as  He chose us in Him  before the foundation of the world, that we should  be holy and without blame before Him in love, We have the cause and effect, or the choice and the result, maybe really the choice and the reason for the choice:   that we should be holy and without blame . . . "  Whoa. Wait a minute. That means nothing is held against us spiritually. "God is not going to get you for that one." Our overacted consciences do not need to wallow in despair or self-doubt that God will change His mind about us, nor do we need to spend time foolishly expecting judgment for forgiven sins. [Human consequences are another matter. I don't think the Prodigal got the money back he wasted.] Romans 5:1 should finish this discussion: Therefore there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

 5 he predestined us [ b ]  for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,   6  to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved My last post was a dig at evolution. Now we'll go in the opposite direction and talk about theological predestination! So, did the Godhead choose us, a fortunate portion of the human race, to be redeemed and left out the majority of others, or do we get to choose to follow Jesus and the path for us is marked out: that we will be adopted and live to praise God's glorious grace? Does it matter? Apparently it does to a lot of people. I used to be in the first camp, and now I am not so sure.  But from my own experience I have to say I had very, very little to do with "the choice." I was in the place to hear the gospel in a way that it made me realize I was a sinner and not such a good person as I thought. That moment in time is still very real to me...

 Now that I am retired and in my eighth decade (!) I think a lot about cognitive decline, especially since I plan to write ten or more novels in the coming years.  Two days a week I watch my granddaughter, who is the light of my life. Apparently, it's good for my brain.  https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2026/01/grandparenting-good-for-brain The world needs to make babies! It seems the conservatives and religious are the ones populating the world nowadays, but so be it. Babies are the reason we survive as a species. Of course, some leftists don't want us to survive as a species, an interesting take on the whole evolutionary idea of the push to survive and spread our genes. I'm not an evolutionist, and I am so tired of supposedly conservative writers framing all human behavior as stemming from something monkeys or rats did billions of years ago. Come on, people. You say you are conservative and are buying into the world view of progressivism when you do that. Like Ti...

 Reading an interview with Steward Brand, who started The Whole Earth Catalog and apparently a lot of other future-oriented waves of thinking.  He quotes Dylan (Bob Zimmerman, I assume). and add his thought. "he not busy being born is busy dying,” is how I think about learning. In retirement, I think that will be my motto (not mantra; I'm not Hindu or Buddhist).

 Just so you know, some of these writings are from my journal over the last two months as I work through Ephesians. That's why they move slowly. I am still reflecting on Ephesians 1:3-14.  The intimacy with God that the apostles' writing and that Jesus' words in the gospels assert is . . . I don't know the word. Mystical, mysterious, yet at the same time presented as "quotidian" reality. I like that word, but we can substitute "daily" for it. The intimacy which is so intense and blessed and awe-inspiring is not a "big event, come to a revival and get slain in the Holy Spirit every few years" type of thing. "I am in Christ and Christ is in me today and it is my job to turn daily to that reality and its benefits and practicalities. For me, the first benefit is the access to fruit of the Holy Spirit and the basic practicalities is my need for patience--not just tolerance or resignation--but true patience that God is working in the mundane...

I am going to start another series called "Serious Reading." These will include thoughts on reading, especially in the online world. I know that the Internet has diminished my reading because I do so much of it on screens rather than on the much-preferred (for understanding and memory) paper medium. I need to get back to more "book" reading v. iPad or Kindle or computer reading. I know better.  The real point of Serious Reading will be to read serious and difficult books, and I really want to read Middlemarch. It is a daunting book for the modern reader, but it offers treasures. I have only really read the Prelude so far, which I have posted below.  Middlemarch is basically about a young woman, Dorothea Brooks, who has high ideals and is willing to, at least early in life, forgo the love of a younger man for a husband to marry a man who strikes readers today as pretentious, sluggish, boring, and not very passionate for a young woman, to put it mildly. He turns out t...