Has Your Internal Engineer Muted Your Voice?

(Note: This was drafted in June so the reference to Christmas was originally a reference to my last birthday--which only emphasizes the point!)

Do you remember hearing your own voice recorded for the first time? Almost everybody responds the same: “Do I really sound like that?”

My first "gig" as a vocalist was at age six, soloing “Sunbeam” in a Sunday morning church service. That was followed closely by an appearance in my mother’s Christmas production

Facebook or Blog?

So...I've decided to blog. More. I really do enjoy Facebook, but mostly to keep up with what all my friends are doing. As a writer, I find the space given for posts on our beloved FB, to be more of an irritant than an invitation.

Cultural Consciousness, Societal Schizophrenia & Suicide Tourism

"We sat there on the couch and watched him die!" she exclaimed.
A young woman I spoke with recently, had viewed a program on a public broadcast channel about the current trend in euthanasia known as "suicide tourism." It is travel for the purpose of ending one's life in a place that has fully embraced and actively facilitates assisted suicide. There was something about boarding a plane on a one-way vacation to Sweden for the sole purpose of dying that troubled her.

Barnacles

I have the flu today, apparently. I don't get sick, but I am...with a screaming sore throat. Wow. So I have time to crank out some thoughts. I want to tell you about a new recording artist. Listen to Andrew Peterson's "All You Ever Need" (from Resurrection Letters Vol II) on his blog at www.andrew-peterson.com, posted Sept. 29, 08. Dr. David Alexander (President NNU) said of well-intentioned vocabulary, turned treasured tradition, "Some of those phrases had become barnacled over for me." Me too. Like any good silver becomes tarnished with time and exposure causing it to appear worn, cheap, used up, some of those meaningful--and accurate--orthodox expressions can undergo the same phenomenon. This song about "the blood of Jesus" (it's on my list of barnacled phrases for evaluation: keep, toss, rename) helps me to reclaim the essence of that beautiful, messy, redemptive truth--without the barnacles.

Oh, and Happy New Year. Yes, I did watch the ball drop, along with 3 of our 8 grandkids. And, yes, I prayed in the new year--watching Robbie Knieval (sp?) jump over the Las Vegas Mirage's volcano on a motorcycle. He made it.

Go To Bed!

I remember saying to God late one evening and during a particularly long season of indecision, "Please! What are You saying? I need to hear from You." I slid down the wall I was leaning against to a sitting position on the floor, knees to chest; more from relief that the day was ending, than from lack of strength. "Go to bed," I heard resounding in my heart, not in my ears; the location where my "knower", as Dave Bishop used to call it, resides; from whence I say I know that God is speaking to me. I laughed out loud, then gathered myself up and did just that. "The Almighty will be up all night, anyway," someone has already said. "May as well let Him worry about it." Tonight, I know that I should do the same. I'm not staying up because I have things to do. Rather, I'm refusing to go to bed, under some sort of delusion that if I refuse to end this day, perhaps tomorrow won't come.