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Quote of the Day

"Be not he slave of your own past- plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience, that shall explain and overlook the old." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

FINISHED!!

I have done it! I have accomplished something of monumental proportions this weekend. What may you ask? drumroll please.... I finished reading the autobiography of Madame Guyon. It has taken me years. Agonizing long years to get through this book. I pick it up and read a couple chapters in between other books when I can make myself do so but it hasn't been pretty. A book shouldn't be so hard to read. I blame it on the fact it was written in the late 16oo's-early 1700's in French. The true meaning and eloquence with which it must have first been written has to have lost something in the past four hundred years and the (poor) translation into English for it to be such a drudgery to read. I stuck with it. I finished it. I may have even learned from it - you never know! I would recommend reading about her, she had an amazing life and spiritual perspective - just not this autobiography, unless you are a glutton for punishment and trying to anesthetize yourself.

Good Quote of the day

"we don't have to fit into prefabricated moral or mental or religious boxes before we are admitted into the company of God - we are taken seriously just as we are and given a place in his story, for it is, after all, his story; none of us is the leading character in the story of our life."
~Eugene H. Peterson, Introduction to 1-2 Samuel in the Message

Bizarre & Strange

I've been reading through the old testament using the Message for a change of pace. It has been good. The OT has been more understandable in the Message but with more comprehension comes a realization of just how bizarre and strange the commands of God are to the Israelites. What really throws me for a loop is the rituals surrounding the sacrifices and in particular that the blood is supposed to be splashed on the alter and with the thumb smeared on the horns of the alter. Why? That would make the alter a stained, sticky, smelly mess! Strange! Then during the ordination of the priests Moses is directed to smudge the blood from the sacrifice on the right ear lobe, right thumb, and right big toe of Aaron and his sons. Bizarre! I really just don't get it. In comparison to all the wacky-doodle stuff the surrounding nations would do I guess the blood isn't that strange but to us - wacko!