Christmas and Christ

How can I make Christmas focus more on Christ?

Every year it seems the same: I have good intentions of this year being the one that I will focus on Christ in Christmas. And every year it's the same: the mad rush at the end of the month for shopping, the stress of bills after the holiday, the acceleration and speeding by of work - and the suddenly it's here.

Lord, how do I make this last week at least focus on You and the birth of Your son?

1) Put off TV - This is an easy one. I've no need for TV, even to fill the time as background noise (this holds throughout the year as well).

2) Music - Music affects me, so I need to fill my ears with music of the season - as much as possible.

3) The Christmas Story - Read it to the girls every night. Read it to myself every night.

4) Focus on Christ - Do I focus on what the arrival of Christ means? Do I truly consider "God Made Flesh", "Emmanuel - God with us", and and I overwhelmed at the Hope of the Ages?

Happy 5th Anniversary

A special Happy Fifth Anniversary today to Faith Community Church. It's a day to celebrate five years of coming together with a body of like minded believers to worship God under biblical committed teaching.

It has been said by individuals far smarter than I that the church represents heaven in and of the fact that it is a collection of individuals of different backgrounds, ages, races, interests, and types, all saved by the grace of God. An interesting thought in the abstract - the fact that it is true is all the more amazing. As I reflect on the individuals I've known and formed relationships with at Faith, I am forced to admit that it is a collage of folks I would not have otherwise ever met.

Also, as I think about it, it is the longest period of time that I as an adult have attended a church. I certainly went as a child (St. Luke's Episcopal Church and then Bethlehem Lutheran Church), and recommitted after I married (again, Bethlehem Lutheran Church), but only really made my own independent decision after we moved to Campbell. I have been blessed in my pastoral leaderships - in the first case, a gentle man committed to truth, and the second, another gentle man who is committed to truth (he's been my pastor for seven years now). God has guided me, as in both cases they were the first church we attended out of the blue when we relocated.

It has been an adventure, being involved in a church from the ground up - in many ways like starting a business: making sure you stay committed to your mission statement; working through building ministries (departments in business); developing leadership; making missteps in personnel, programs and facilities; watching people come and go as they move on to other challenges. But added is the aspect of God: watching the church grow in commitment and faith; seeing the teaching grow in depth and understanding; and even watching yourself grow and change as you seek to become more Christlike.

So Happy Fifth Anniversary, Faith Community Church! May you continue practice here what all the redeemed will practice in eternity: a commitment to truth, a commitment to worship, a commitment to glorifying God!

Old Friends

I had a phone conversation with Uisdean Ruadh tonight. Conversations with old friends are the best - partially because they are seemingly so rare in our daily range of personnel interactions. They are the sort where you can just launch into a subject, and seemingly there has been no time between the last time you talked about the item in question, you just pick up where you left off.

We talked about things of concern to both of us: the job situation in both of our industries, the precipitous drop in housing, news of this and that in his life. 45 minutes runs by as if no time at all had gone.

I am blessed that I have a number of these I have semi-regular conversations with - Bogha Frois, Uisdean Ruadh, Cleasiche Fionnadh, Otis , and of course, the Ravishing Mrs. TB. Like a fine wine or good cheese, they only get better with age.

Or to say it another way, friends over time have their tannins mellow and their flavours sharpen...

Carrying Notes

The Ravishing Mrs. TB and myself watched Invincible last night, the Disney movie based on Vince Papali, the 30 year old who in 1977, with no real experience, tried out for and played for the Philadelphia Eagles. Actually a fairly enjoyable movie - little foul language, no nudity, and the soundtrack alone (mid 70's) is worth listening to.

In part of the movie, Papali (played by Mark Wahlberg) looks at a note that his ex-wife left him when she left the marriage (shown in the beginning of the movie). It says something to the effect of "You're a loser, you'll never make any money, you'll never amount to anything". It is implied that he looks at this list frequently, perhaps every day. It is only after he destroys list after a humiliating loss to the Dallas Cowboys, just before he goes into the next game with the New York Giatns, that he meets with his success.

The point that this spawned for me in the morning as I was driving to work is what lists do I carry around. Most of us, I propose, carry around within us lists that have been given to us by others telling us that we are failure, bad, can't do certain things, etc. These are lists that we willingly carry ourselves, sometimes years after the relationship has been terminated - perhaps the people involved are even dead.

The problem, it seems to me, is that unlike the movie, our lists are more often than not are not something we can hold in our hands - they are ingrained deep within us, perhaps buried beneath most of our daily conscious thought. It may be (in fact, for me it is) that the incident that caused the list, the person who gave it to us, is long forgotten.

But the list remains. And we hand carry them with us every.

The apostle Paul wrote in Romans 12:2 "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may proved what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." Part of that renewal is finding out and tearing up the lists.

Can every one do all things? No. Are some things that people say true? Yes. But we are capable of far more than we think, and people will use words as weapons and cloak them as "constructive criticism". It is our job to sort through these, pull out the truth and apply it where possible, and use our given abilities to glorify God to the best.

And that includes tearing up the list.

So go ahead. How long will you carry yours?

Crime and Punishment

I completed reading Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky last night. It is a book that I cannot recommend highly enough. The writing is excellent, the characters are well developed, the conflict the main character - Raskolnikov, although phrased in a way not immediately obvious, is one which the 20th Century and 21st Century had to grapple with, to the cost of more than 100 million dead.

What's the conflict? I won't tell - you've got to read.

I'll warn in advance, while the reading is quick, it is not necessarily easy. Something that always impresses me when I read classics is how much we have fallen in general by comparison. The man is a master with words, able to paint word pictures that vividly bring to life 19th Century St. Petersburg and the people that dwell within.

It is also a story of redemption - Christian redemption (mirroring that of Dostoevsky's life, which was itself remarkable). The redemption happens only when Rakolnikov is brought to the end of himself - just the way it works in real life.

I've been thinking of formalizing my reading list for next year. I think for classics, I'll finish Dostoevsky and then maybe move on to Tolstoy. Powerful writers

The Bees are Coming!

It's official - three 3 lb sets of bees with New World Carniolan's are set be picked up on 19 April 2007.

I'm excited. I really am. I'm ready to see if I can actually get the hives up and going. My goal (to the extent that I can control it is to end the season with four hives, the same that I start it out with.

Yay Bees!

For information on where I got the bees (and they really are swell people) go to the Olivarez Bees Website.

Here is the brief information on the Carniolan Honey bee (from Wikipedia):

Apis mellifera carnica, classified by Pollmann, 1879 - Carniola region of Slovenia, the southern part of the Austrian Alps, and northern Balkans - better known as the Carniolan honey bee - popular with beekeepers due to its extreme gentleness. The Carniolan tends to be quite dark in color, and the colonies are known to shrink to small populations over winter, and build very quickly in spring. It is a mountain bee in its native range, and is a good bee for colder climates.

For the full (and very fascinating) information packet on honeybees, go here.

Planning for the New Year

It's never too early to plan for the new year, to set the course of one's sails in advance of its arrival. As always, this has not been the year I intended it to be - but it has been a year of hopefully substantial changes, especially in the latter half.

Why? A few reasons, I think:

1) I think I have finally started to put the failure of The Firm behind me. The final financial damages have worked themselves out, and I am far enough removed from the personalities and the events to look at them.

2) A book - provided by Bogha Frois called Conative Connection: Acting on Instinct which has provoked my thinking. In short, the book looks at how you do things, and suggests finding those goals - or even parts of the job you are currently doing - that lead to your strengths. It has been one of those books that make you say "Okay, there is a way to harness what I do". (Full disclosure: While I liked many of the ideas of the book, the author heavily markets her profiling test, developed by her, and quotes a great deal from successes of nameless big clients. Also, more into self actualization than is probably prudent. Still, a helpful book to start thinking.)

3) Conversations - Long conversations with friends and loved ones, including The Ravishing Mrs. TB, Bogha Frois, Cleasiche fionnadh, Aosdean Ruadh, Otis (go Here for his blog) and others. Probably more conversations about life which did not revolving purely around The Firm than I have had in the last five years. Conversations with the time to reason through, the space to be silent, and the willingness (is it age? or wisdom) to be honest with others and ones'self.

4) God - This has been a harder one to pin down, more my failure than His. Part of this, I think, has been His stripping away of those things I valued to pare me down to the core of being willing to obey - and even then, I still struggle. Patience, and wisdom, for example. But He is gracious, even as I am obstinate.

5) Writing - Both this blog, journaling, and working through publishing my written work as a serial. Certainly I love writing. Writing stuff down for me has a power, even if I am not always conscious of it at the time. It structures my thoughts, it makes me think, and it helps me express that which I cannot always express in words.

So now, to plan ahead...

Action and reaction

Today, a total random incident which provoked a serious thought: In the course of my normal work environment interaction, I responded to a coworker with what is often my satirical dry wit at my place of employment. Her reaction was less enthusiastic. Then, later in the day, I reacted in a calm, pleasant, positive manner, and got a distinctly different reaction.

This led to another thought: how am I interacting with everyone around me? How am I interacting with the Ravishing Mrs. TB? Is it as an adult, or do I still act and react according to a behaviour or maturity level that used to work for me, and I still believe it does?

The question is not an idle one. If much of an individual's response to me is how I present myself to them, and I am presenting myself to them in a way that gets the responses that I have always gotten, and therefore associate with "Okay", is it real or am I just continuing to play music off an 8 Track in an MP3 world and thinking the sound quality is great?

In speaking with Bogha frois about this issue tonight, I hypothesized that it was a question of behaviour and maturity, that one could change one's maturity and have a modified for of behavior, or not change behaviour and maturity. Bogha frois disagreed, presenting a couple of example where if the maturity level did not change, the behavior did not change, but instead got transmuted into age appropriate situations - boys who love toy cars have real, large, expensive toy cars; girls who loved to gossip about others in their social circle of friends becoming women (homemakers or professionals) who loved to gossip about others.

I think the jury is still out for me on this, as I can see both sides: there are forms of behavior I have changed as my situation has changed and I have matured, but are still recognizable echoes of myself (but are they good), and there are behaviors that have stuck with me all these years, as they have transformed with my life and situations (oddly enough, mostly bad habits).

If I interact with the Ravishing Mrs. TB as I interacted with her as a girlfriend and newlywed, I am not likely to get the same response as if I examined my level of maturity and changed my behavior to act accordingly. One example is that while I think that the help that I give around the house is a demonstration of my love, or being "hopelessly romantic" in hopes of getting my way, a more practical method might be to do the things that it is evident need to be done, but that she has not been able to do - the things I selfishly don't like to do, like paint, or trim bushes, or put laundry away. This represents a maturity level - moving out of my self-centeredness - and resulting in a change in my behaviour.

I'll continue to think about it. Odd how a single incident can prompt such a string of thoughts.

Quiet Space

An evening where I felt quiet. Not for any reason that I can divine - often times these are brought on by depression or sadness, but neither of these things am I consciously aware of.

But you come home and you have quiet space - not feeling the need to communicate, not feeling the need to participate, just feeling the need to be solitary inside - "as an oyster", as Dickens said of Scrooge.

Perhaps it is an unconscious thing, a realization underneath that something has occurred which is great import, but is not recognized as such by your mind (if it happened today, I've no idea what it was). Oftentimes my own mind will run off on tangents, places I have no idea where it is going, because it sees a thought or connection it needs to complete to make sense.

I'm not sure - all I know is that tonight, there is quiet space within me, that vaguely ominous feeling that something occurred and I missed it.

And, unfortunately, the silence doesn't speak of its own accord....

Da Derga

I was going to write about something today, but now I'll write about something else.

It will surprise those who know me over the last 5-10 years that prior to then, I had a very different life. Some of it you know, in part: college professor, teacher, retail worker extraodinaire, water and coffee exporter, dreamer. The part you probably don't know is that at one time, I had a musical career.

Da Derga, the fabulous harp/vocal/bodhran group of Toirdhealbheach Beucail and Cleasiche fionnadh, which existed form 1994 -1995. We did music from all six of the Celtic Countries (Yes, as a side note, I play the harp - but not as well as I used to, probably part of the problem). We did shows, we sang in both English and in Celtic tongues (Toirdhealbheach Beucail is actually Old Gaelic for "Booming, Thundering, Roaring X" [X, of course, being my real name], in the sense of a roaring or booming cannon, which if you know me, know this is true: I'm loud!). I played the harp, and Cleasiche fionnadh sang and played the bodhran.

Why do I puzzle this now? Because it was something I loved to do. I practiced every day, I walked around muttering obscure languages, I actually got paid for playing!

Why do I write this? Because we made a decision at some point: tour or stop. Essentially, I entered the work force, moved to the South Bay, and got "A real job". Do I regret this? No, in many ways - that job, and the jobs that have resulted from it, have enabled me to travel, to support myself and my family, and given me greater income opportunities that I would have otherwise believed.

But still there is a part of me, the lyrical, musical, fantasy part, that was turned away that day - and is powerful. How do I connect that part with the reality of today?

Why didn't the chicken cross the road?

The Ravishing Mrs. TB and myself went away for the weekend to the South Bay - just us, no kids. It was remarkable - we talked about our lives, and where we wanted to go; we ate meals and didn't fight over eating or sharing crayons - in one event, we just appetizers and dessert for dinner, and lingered over our meal for two hours!; we shopped without chasing kids under the clothing racks.

We even lingered in bookstores.

At which, for the first time in almost a year, I purchased a book from a bookstore- and a book just based on my review of it in the store: The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching! by Jeffrey Gitomer.

But all vacations must end. I felt myself tensing up as we got closer to home, and Mrs. TB was doing the same. For myself, it was the dread of work coming towards me.

In reading my new book, one of the author's points is that you have to believe in yourself and your product to sell it. If I am my product, do I believe in myself? Do I present that way?

This prompted me to review my CV, and having seen a lot of CVs lately, I can tell you that mine looked like everyone else's: each job, dates, name of company, followed by the summary description of what I did (which looked like the previous one) in order to build a "history" of experience.

Blah. The darn thing looks blah. I wouldn't hire me - and I'm stuck with me.

Jobs? Not a problem, no matter my own perception and excuses. On a job website for my industry, 8 pages of jobs under a version of what I currently do.

(Start Aside)

On a side note (and worthy of discussion at a later time) is that pessimists tend to be pessimistic (in other news, Sun rises in East. News at 11). People thrive physically, spiritually, and financially in all circumstances, including potentially bad economic ones. Instead of looking at the headlight of the oncoming train and thinking "Hmmm, that looks weird", shouldn't you at least get off the track?

(End Aside)

I have set my sights too low, settled for what I could get without struggle rather than tried to see how far I can reach. There is a brave new world in my industry, and I'm stuck in the 1980's - because I choose to remain there.

Why didn't the chicken cross the road?

Because who knows what's on the other side.

Talking to your wife

I realized the other day the my conversations with the Ravishing Mrs. TB are not near to the level of my interactions with other females I interact with, primarily through my job. Why is this, I wondered? It's not as if I have any more personal relationship that that with my wife, nor that one more enduring (think about it - how many coworkers do you work with in a lifetime?)

Is it the intellectual "content" of the conversations? Perhaps - but tell me how the discussion of matters that don't matter in five years is somehow "intellectual".

A two part problem, perhaps, one caused both by the habit of not talking to each other due to schedules to the point you feel you have nothing to speak about once the basics of communication are complete.

The other is a direct failure on my own part: how much do I seek to truly cultivate the art of conversation with my wife? How much do I seek to discuss with her matters of import to me, or matters of interest to her? How much do I eek to engage directly in the issues of the date and the future? How much do I share about myself?

How come this list seems to focus on my own shortcomings?

Probably because they are so manifest...

God getting your attention

God got my attention yesterday:

1) I got an e-mail from at work indicating that I was the holdup on a major project at work. Senior management was carbon copied on the e-mail.

I felt like being two steps away from screaming "I quit". I know why it was done - someone needed the item taken care off, and chose to go this route to get it done.

I was angry because already that day I had been doing things to support clients - getting documentation into order to support projects, catching up on old projects, etc. My reward: You're the roadblock.

I came home and spent an hour at night ensuring that everything was in order, dreading the thought as I did it "You missed X" - but it could not afford not to be done.

I get angry just writing about it.

But did it serve me well? What did I desire, what was I denied?

Respect. Acknowledgement - indeed, worship. validation. To be seen as respected - not treated as recalcitrant.

I struggled today with going in, being Christlike, not showing anger, meeting everyones' requests humbly, not asking for recognition.

I hate it. I want to be respected and desired so badly, I could cry

Finding a Life

Coming to work this morning, I could just sense myself coming down. I need to find a new career field.

I asked both the Ravishing Mrs. TB as well as Bogha frois what they could picture me doing. The Ravishing Mrs. TB said she could picture me doing a lot of things - farming, writing - but they wouldn't make a living. Bogha frois asked me a couple of thought questions - Make an impact on a few vs. making impact on many; would what I'm doing matter if it was making a major contribution in the industry I'm in versus what I doing in the industry now (not making a major contribution) - and said she'd get back to me.

I hunger for something that has impact and effect, something I can look back on and feel I made impact for good - not just a job, but a calling

Depression

Another one of those days - the kind where you sort of collapse at the end of the day, worn out, not seeing anything but more of the same tomorrow.

I don't know what causes it - is it the onset of fall, is it the ordinariness of one's life, is it the feeling of no control over one's circumstanced? I cannot fully answer, perhaps all. All I know is that dark curtain called depression has returned.

And no, for those of you wondering, merely "changing your thoughts" is not enough...

They are different than they used to be - not nearly as black, not nearly as depressing. More of a general malaise, a feeling of futility, that nothing will change and nothing will improve and good heavens, here's the five bad things that will happen tomorrow and now let's extrapolate about how those five bad things will spin into five worse things and scar you for life....

And so it goes...depression as a James Joyce novel...

It will pass - they always do, and the singular light of God's presence will return. I suppose one could make the argument that the darkness makes the stars brighter - although, I would hasten to add that this is generally said by people in their nice warm lighted houses looking out the window....

....not by those in the howling darkness.

Making Decisions

I had a consulting appointment for a personal coach which turned out not as all like I had planned.

I had my phone conference with a project manager, after my initial screening. It went as I had expected: challenging, focus, look to the future. We then got down to brass tacks: the promises to me, expectations of me, and, of course, the finances - about $3300 for a 5 month session. We then got to closing the deal: the credit card number ("We recommend people use a line of credit so they can pay it off a little at a time"). I was honest with the project manager - I wanted to ask my parents for the money as a loan. We agreed to talk on Monday.

I was unsettled when I left for work. I called Bogha frois to talk about it. Her thought was that price someone else, see what the reates were - in essence, do more research.

It hit me during the day that I had been heavily sold that morning. Looking back, I could track it: what were my wants, look to the future (to what could be done), the challenge, the buy-in from me, the extension of the offer (like getting into an exclusive clb), the promises to me, the commitment ("What would it take to move you from a 7 to a 10 of commitment?"), and then the request for the sale. Only by the grace of God did I not go further, just because it cost a little too much to finance.

And then, I felt used. Icky, I described it. Like an incident long ago, where I was used by someone else. I felt dirty and unclean.

Why? Because I fell for it. I can see it now, but I still allowed myself to be sold.

Which lead into an interesting discussion with Bogha frois about decisions, good and bad. There are decisions I have made that were bad, but I clung to them - rode them down the rails to their bitter end - and usually regretted them. Theere other ones which did not have the same sense of "DECISION", that were not that difficult, that turned out fine.

What was the difference? I'm not sure - Bogha frois thought it was pride, that one worked one's self up to a diecision where one usually would not, and once one was decided, one was damn well going to follow through, because decisions were difficult, and one shouldn't listen to one's fears - even when they lead one nowhere. To turn aside, to adimit one wasn't ready, to go back requires humility.

I wrote in my journal that I need to ponder this more. How is the process of making decisions different between the two senses that I described? How can I engage in more of the decisions made not from pride, but from humility?

The Inner Critic

I was speaking today with Bogha Frois on the way home today. She said she had intended to comment on the blog, but she wrote and unwrote a comment four times, finally not commenting at all. I asked her why, she said didn't think she put the words together right. I gently nudged her about the inner critic, and why did she let it get in the way.

From here we had a fruitful discussion about the inner critic. The thing that came out of our discussion was that the inner critic can become real not only from those who we have long associations with (often family) as we come to accept the folibles and lackings of those we honor and love, but (I think) more often from our friends and acquaintances, those whom we engage with as equals, whom we develop relationships with and give advice to and take advice from. What happens when those whose opinions we value react badly to heartfelt dreams or advice which we give with the best intentions.

I say this struggling with it myself - even in writing, I so fail to write at all - or speak at all - because I don't think things are good enough or make enough sense. But what am I critical of?

And is it I, or the voices of others long gone, whose only power only now lies in their ability to self-censor myself

Sin

How do I continue to cling to sin in my life?

Sometines I feel that I am in a state of stasis: not shedding my sin, but maybe not collecting "new ones" either. Some just seem to bubble to the surface, like anger or language. Some are always there, like sloth or lust. Some (by the grace of God) I seem to get a handle on, like covetousness or greed.

How is this? How is it determined?

Is it something that I do? Could I forsake more of my sin if I walked closer to God, confessed my sin, and tried harder?

Is it something that God is doing, working through them in a pattern random to me but sensible to Him?

Am I what is holding back becoming more like the Lord Jesus through my lack of dedication and sinfulness? If so, how can I more completely deal with my sin?

Winterizing the Bees

The Bees - the one colony that survived the summer - is now set (as far as I can make them) for the winter. This was not a stellar year - of the three colonies (one overwintered, two purchased, plus a new queen) only one survived - either Minnesota Hygenic or Carniolan, I'm not sure.

This year we did everything we knew to do: serviced for varroa mites, prepared winter syrup, placed a pollen patty in for extra nutrition, treated for foulbrood, and (of course) buttoned up the entrance to the smallest hole. I know not what else to do.

Next year I'm planning to order another three hives - if the overwinter one survives, so much the better, we just have to get another hive. That's okay. This is a hobby which, by failing, I seem to be getting sucked into more.

I love beekeeping!

The Future

Nighean gheal and I had a brief interesting dicussion on the future. It began when nighean bhan asked what a fortune teller was. I told her it was someone who purported to tell the future, and that we, as Christians and followers of Jesus, were not to engage in such practices (Deuteronomy 18: 9-14, Isaiah 8: 18-19). Only God knows the future, I told her.

Then nighean gheal said "Sometimes I think that the future won't be good." I responded "Yes, but we know God is there through it. He says He will always be with us." "I'll try and remember that" she said, and then we had moved on.

Good enough, and I hope she does - but do I?

I get terribly upset and concerned about things over which I have no control. I worry about the future world of my children. But do I account for God in the future? Do I try and remember that?