Parts of Speaking Publishing

 This is from Jonathan Rodgers of the Habit, on reading the book The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel, a rabbi.  That phrase “realm of time” carries a lot of freight in Heschel’s book. We tend to think of time as a measurement rather than a realm. Around the new year, we see a lot of productivity tips and tricks, and they all seem to share the assumption that time is fungible. Time can be saved, time can be spent. An hour is simply a unit of productivity—or perhaps a unit of rest and recharge—but in any case a unit that is interchangeable with other units, the way one dollar is interchangeable with another dollar. Hence the saying “time is money.” But time isn’t money. Time is life. It is the realm in which we exist. Unlike the space-minded man to whom time is unvaried, iterative, homogeneous, to whom all hours are alike, qualitiless, empty shells, the Bible senses the diversified character of time. There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at ...

 I have noticed I'm getting a lot of social media input on "so-called" trauma, estranged families, adult children who have rejected their parents, and toxic therapy.  I remember in higher education circles, about six months to a year after March 13, 2020, we started to hear about 'trauma-informed pedagogy." It was all the rage. I hope it helped someone. I thought it was a bit much.  There is trauma perceived and trauma objectively experienced.  Physical assault, personal watching of physical assault and murder, injury from accidents or war, severe illness, psychological abuse - these are trauma. Those who saw, on site, Charlie Kirk's murder, yes.  Being contradicted, hearing about abuse, hearing bigotry when the person who spoke it is unaware or out of date on certain terminology. Those who watched the Charlie Kirk murder over and over on social media feeds, that is self-inflicted trauma.  Trauma is real, but like stress, it affects people differently. And ...

 From a Christianity Today update:  The archaeological excavation of Colossae has  begun . The ancient city was a significant settlement at least 500 years before Christ, but Colossae is most famous as the home of the early church that received two New Testament epistles: Paul’s letters to the Colossians and to Philemon. The excavation, supervised by experts from Pamukkale University, may shed light on the “human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world” (Col. 2:8) that Paul worried would distract Christians from the truth that “God made you alive with Christ” (v. 13). When we visited Laodicea, we could see Colosse, the source of the "cold water" on a distant mountain slope. I wondered why it was not a site being excavated. It is not a working city now, but neither are Ephesus and Laodicea. This should be part of the Seven Churches Tour! 

 From The Free Press today, in an article on "what I learned"  Emily Damari ,  freed Israeli hostage Firstly, God. I have learned I have a very strong relationship with God, and I had many conversations with Him in captivity. This relationship continues today. I have also learned to value everything I do in my life. I open the fridge: I say thank you. I drink cold water: I say thank you. I am thankful for everything—big things and little things. Gratitude is very important. I am grateful that I have the privilege of being thankful. I was thankful before, but now it’s on a different level.

  Another not-written-by-me and I may be violating something here. I recently subscribed to the Free Press and it does not disappoint. This well-known and respected Catholic priest gets it right.  Forwarded this email?  Subscribe for more Things Worth Remembering Sunday, 12.28.2025 View in Browser Things Worth Remembering: The Divine Beauty of Imperfection Gerard Manley Hopkins’s ‘Pied Beauty’ teaches us to see in every speckled, contradictory thing an icon of the God who did not disdain to be born among humanity. “The incarnation is a declaration that God delights in intimacy with his creation.” (Rudolf Dietrich/Ullstein Bild via Getty Images) By  Robert A. Sirico PAID Welcome to Things Worth Remembering, our weekly column in which writers share a poem or paragraph that all of us should commit to heart. This week, during the 12 Days of Christmas, Father Robert A. Sirico explains how Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Pied Beauty” tells the season’s quietly revolutionary story...

This essay popped up on my Facebook feed. I have read this book, and what is said eloquently here is true. No name was given for the author. I hope it's not AI. It has too much empathy to be AI. Georges Bernanos wrote this in 1936, and it's one of the strangest, most unsettling novels about faith I've ever read. Not faith as triumph or certainty, but faith as a kind of sustained suffering, a daily choice to keep believing when nothing confirms that belief, when your body is failing, when your parishioners despise you, when God feels absent and you're too exhausted to keep searching. The unnamed priest writes in his diary, and you watch him disintegrate page by page. And Bernanos never flinches, never offers comfort, never suggests that suffering will be rewarded. He just shows you a man dying slowly while trying to love people who don't want his love. The priest is young, sickly, poor, assigned to a small parish in northern France where nobody wants him. He eats mos...

  Paganism may have some value. The Old Testament and New are a chronicle of a struggle between paganism (nature-based deities rather than one God over all and unbound by nature), idolatry (worshiping before statues, pictures, and figures as if the god is in the idol) and polytheism (multiple lesser gods) and a a monotheistic narrative about a Father God who sends His Son to redeem us. There are many descriptive lines in the monotheistic narrative. In my life, everything that is non-monotheistic or non-Judeo-Christian is evil. It leads to horrible treatment of others and children, for example. I am not saying the non-monotheistic is good, but that there may be good that comes from it. One, it has rich narratives in the mythologies. Two, those narratives explain human conditions. Three, we can appreciate nature if we keep the occult parts paganism (tied into nature) in check. And we can see the limitations of it and how Judeo-Christianity fulfills it. This is not new; C S L...

 On my trip to Turkey, one of the high points was Ephesus. I cannot put into words, at least not easily, what it meant to me. Knowing I was walking down a street Paul, John, and Timothy, among others, walked was transcendent.  I have chosen Ephesians as my next study, and I plan to take it slowly, even pedantically. You all (faithful readers?) will not get all of my reflective pedantry, but only some.  1:3: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We skip over that as a greeting, like "Howdy you all, God bless you!" So much more.  The centrality of "our Lord Jesus Christ" strikes me here. While some think Paul saw Jesus during His earthly ministry, I think he would have said so. It was in the Damascus Road experience that he met Him. However, many of the people reading this original letter (which perhaps was a circular letter for more than just Ephesus) were alive when Jesus was. Contemporaries of Jesus were still living, about thirty years later. The...

 Our pastor has preached an Advent series on "Christ was born for this ________." It was s Christological study of Hebrews 1, Philippians 2:5-11, John 1, and this week, Galatians 4:1-7. These passages provides word for filling in the blank in many ways. to speak to humankind forgiveness of sin to provide an example to represent God to man redemption adoption  and many more. To learn by the things which he suffered. To glorify God. To change history. To bring in a new kingdom, or the right one.  Which led me to a reflection this morning.  I have, at times, been tempted by my own thoughts that take me places I don't need to go. Why should we be surprised or amazed by what God did in the incarnation, cross, and resurrection? Didn't He, in a way, have to do it? That sounds presumptuous and ungrateful. It's not; what I am saying is, how else was this going to get fixed? God made the world, knowing the future. He set it up. And based on His parameters, we were incapable...

 Three years ago, at a time when my family was coming out of a time of struggle and estrangement, I spent Christmas with my son's in-laws in Greensboro, NC.  They are Mexican. In case a reader takes issue with that description, some explanation. Hispanic is a federal government designation for people of Spanish-speaking background. Each country of which that is true has a different history and culture. Colombians do not celebrate Day of the Dead. Peruvians do not have tacos. In fact, not all Mexicans observe Day of the Dead. Twenty-five percent of "Hispanics" are Protestants and probably as many are not religious. Yes, Roman Catholicism is the leading religion, but not practiced by all. So when I say they are Mexican, I am honoring their heritage.  The days I spent with them saw an Arctic blast in the South. It was 8 degrees there, and here; we even enjoyed a nice snow on the 26th, the day I came back to Dalton. Their vicinity's electric company had to have rolling ou...

In the top ten of ways to honor God and relate to others, the tenth is to not covet.  To not covet means there is such a thing as private property. To not covet one’s wife makes it clear any envy for what you don’t currently “own” is ingratitude and discontent. Our society is based on coveting and wanting what we do not have. A bigger house because they exist and others whom we admire or aspire to be like have it. Same with cars, clothes, Christmas decorations, pets, anything. A year of not coveting, perhaps? What would that do to the American economy? More, what would that do to your stewardship and even more, peace of mind if we only bought what was needed at the moment?  

 This one choked me up. Too many people I watched for so many years. Rob Reiner, Robert Redford, Gene Hackman, Diane Keaton, Terence Stamp, Joan Plowright.  https://www.tcm.com/articles/now-playing-newsletter/59801/in-memoriam

 When I was in Turkey, I saw the sarcophagus of Alexander the Great in the Archaeological Museum of Turkey in Istanbul. (A day we walked over eleven miles and saw everything I would want to, except maybe the Topkapi Palace. Last night I watched Rick Steves' most recent show on Istanbul, which was a nice "walk down memory lane." He did not include the archaeological museum, which is wonderful, but did include Topkapi Palace and, unfortunately, shots of himself in a Turkish bath. My eyes still hurt from that.) All that to say is that I saw paint on Alexander's sarcophagus! Not a lot, but very clear peach-colored paint. Dispatch Media sent me in this direction, and it is a must read for anyone who thinks the Greeks and Romans painted their sculptures to look like children's garish toys.  Article

  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  2  He was in the beginning with God.  3  All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.  4  In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.  5  And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not  [ a ] comprehend it. There was a man sent from God, whose name  was  John.  7  This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe.  8  He was not that Light, but  was sent  to bear witness of that  Light.   9  That [ b ]  was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world. (Or alternately translated, "that was the true Light , which coming into the world, gives light to every man.") 10  He was in the world, and the world was made through Hi...

 Jesus was born in a cave. The songs say "He should have been born in a palace," but that really makes no sense. To identify with humans, He would have to be born in humble surroundings. Ninety-nine percent of the world is, if you go back to the beginning of humankind. Hospitals? Not even in the last 100 years--my mother would be 97 and she was born at home, no technology, no medical staff, and nominal cleanliness.  What kind of a savior would have been born in a palace?

 Dispatch Faith has a better reflection than mine on Advent and Darkness Hannah Anderson quotes Fleming Rutledge: Advent is the season that, when properly understood, does not flinch from the darkness that stalks us all in the world. Advent begins in the dark and moves toward the light—but the season should not move too quickly or glibly, lest we fail to acknowledge the depth of the darkness. As our Lord Jesus tells us, unless we see the light of God clearly, what we call light is actually darkness … Advent bids us take a fearless inventory of the darkness without and the darkness within.”

 If you have come to this blog as a reader--please comment! I'd love to talk to you. 

I am revising a book on Daniel and Leadership that I published (self) in 2017. It needs revision. This will (at least partly) be an addition. It is a little disjointed at this point but has the sources.   Daniel and the Christmas connection. Matthew 2 is the narrative. Who were the “magi?” and where did they come from? Babylon was the seat of astrology. “ Babylonian astrology is the earliest recorded organized system of astrology, arising in the 2nd millennium BC.” “ Astrology   is a belief in a relation between  celestial   observations and terrestrial events.” (from Wikipedia) In the Renaissance (about 1500) Europeans moved away from astrology to astronomy, and astrology was eventually viewed as a pseudoscience. No doubt Christian theology from the Reformation had something to do with this. Daniel uses the term “God of Heaven” a great deal, and I believe this is to place the God of Israel over any of these celestial signs and wonders that the Babylonian...

 The Life Group literature is about Daniel this month, and it came to me to teach the three lessons. Tomorrow I don't expect a full group and class is cancelled on the December 28. So this is my casual but factual lesson.  Daniel is actually mentioned in other parts of the Bible. Ezekiel 14:14 , 14:20, 28:3 Even  if  these three men, Noah,  Daniel , and Job, were in it, they would deliver  only  themselves by their righteousness,” says the Lord  God . even  though  Noah,  Daniel , and Job  were  in it,  as  I live,” says the Lord  God , “they would deliver neither son nor daughter; they would deliver  only  themselves by their righteousness.” Ezekiel 28:3 (Behold, you  are  wiser than  Daniel ! There is no secret that can be hidden from you! A message to the prince of Tyre, sarcastic, judgment. Ezekiel lived in Judah and then Babylon and this proba...

 The four gospels all start differently.  Matthew: like a good Jew, with a chronology of "begats" to link Jesus back to antiquity and Abraham and Adam.  Mark: Let's get this part started: John the Baptist's ministry.  Luke: Let's get some context here; Why I'm writing this and when it started.  John: Takes a totally different approach; he goes back to Genesis 1, in a way.  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  2  He was in the beginning with God.  3  All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.  4  In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.  5  And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not  [ a ] comprehend it. As I wrote yesterday, tomorrow is the darkest day of the year. Yet light shines in physical darkness; "the sun comes up, it's a new day dawning" as the song goes; "His me...