Parts of Speaking Publishing

 I am not giving much narrative here. This set is from Goreme, including a Kebap restaurant with a fun tradition of baking the meat in the clay jars with bread on the top and breaking them for the patron. You can take away the clay pot, and I have one.  These are from old Christian settlements in the area. The inhabitants dug caves in the soft rock and generations lived there.  Below is a communal table for Lord's supper. The underground city, which goes 200 feet down. I couldn't do this trip. Got panicky in the tiny tunnels with hundreds of other people.   Church built by an Ottoman to make peace with Orthodox community in middle ages. Beautiful but not open.  Rock formations and a monastery later turned caravan lodging place (during Muslim rule) at the Selime Cathedral.  These photos are from Ilhara, a canyon where Christians lived in seclusion. It is a beautiful spot because there is a river at the bottom of the canyon that allowed for growth and ag...

 " But Mary kept all these things and  ponder ed  them  in her heart." Do we ever really think about this short verse? After everything that Mary experiences, she pondered rather than blabbed?  What would Mary have put on social media if it existed?  Why do we have to tell everything all the time? I recently got back from Turkey, and we were working with a person who has to keep their status as a Christian on the down low. We were asked not to post anything on social media. I only posted on photo of a mosaic in the Hagia Sophia. I am posting now but keeping away from any "faces" or specifics.  I am pondering about my trip more than writing or talking about it. For example...no, to give an example would not be pondering. So I have resolved not to talk about that particular matter.  How much did Mary ponder about the scorn and sideways glances she probably received as an unmarried pregnant woman? How much did she want to talk about it but could not,...

 A person close to me, unnamed, was ranting about Christianity Today being "woke" because of one of its articles on Charlie Kirk. I just said, "hummmm" like I do a lot with this person.  I did find one of their first articles unnecessarily harsh, maybe snarky. The man, a fellow Christian, had just died violently--not a time for criticisms, as relevant as they might be at a later time because of Kirk's devotion to Trump.  As I wrote elsewhere, ten seconds after the bullet killed him,. Jesus was embracing him and having a talk with him about his priorities. Or not. How much of our lives in eternity reference our lives here?  We don't know.  I have read CT since the 1980s, back in the day of "Eutychus and His Kin," penned by Warren Wiersbe of all people (who I can testify had a wicked sense of humor that he kept under control from the pulpit, as he should have). It has strengthened and informed me and at times infuriated me. One was a story on how wo...

 From September 25 to October 5 I was on an eleven-day tour of Turkey with members of the church I attend and some others of the same persuasion.  It was life-changing. I do recommend Turkey as a destination, although in a group.  We spend three days in Cappadocia, where I did not ride in a hot air balloon. I don't regret it. If I had wanted to do that, I would have found another way before the end of seven decades of life. Heights and derring-do are not my thing, plus it wasn't in my budget or part of the original itinerary. They do look pretty cool on the morning skyline, though. Cappadocia is a land of volcanic formations where over 3,000 years people have found a way to live in the caves that they carved out of the soft rock. The group went into an underground city 200 feet deep--I feared a panic attack in the narrow, low passageways and changed my mind after two levels). Other than that I did everything the young whippersnappers did, walking ten or more miles on seve...

Over the last few years I have developed the habit of watching the British series Father Brown on our local PBS stations. Living in Northwest Georgia, I have access to the Chattanooga station (WTCI) and the state system of Georgia, WGPB. I won't get into each's separate merits, and the quality of both will be affected at least short term with the ending of federal funds to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.  (That is something I generally support not because of CPB's and PBS' more progressive content but because the federal government has its fingers in way too many things).   However, my first and continuing response to Father Brown as a character and show was and is that "G.K. Chesterton is rolling in his grave" at the way the showrunners and writers have reinterpreted a pre-Vatican II, English priest. I decided I watch it for mind relaxation and humor at Bunty and Mrs. McCarthy, not to know anything about Catholicism in England, Chesterton, or even g...

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