What’s a cultural tradition from another country that you wish existed in yours?
Tables seem to work against the nourishing effects one expects at dinner time. Even the Greek word for the posture at meal time is fascinating.
συνανάκειμαι – I recline, I sit with (to eat) contains two prepositions, sun and ana.
What are the biggest mistakes people make when visiting your country?
Here are two related mistakes. Immigration and mentally laziness. Immigration has certainly proved itself to be the catalyst of humanity’s most momentous ventures. The variations of humanity tell us that people have been on the move: visiting and exploring.
Turning off one’s brain is going to land a person in stagnation. That is a huge mistake, even though there is a sort of shut down at night when we sleep. Visiting a country and planning to stay without a proper invitation is a humongous error. These two mistakes seem to happen quite frequently.
What’s a song that always puts you in a good mood?
Robert Desta Marley
I’m a living man
I’ve got work to do
So if you’re not feeling happy
And you must be blue
What’s the best way to build self-confidence?
Have you noticed how many of the abysses of life in the 21st century are the result of attempts to cancel others and foster a,f return to the bad old days? I have built up self-confidence by practicing reliance on trusted contributors to life. I mean living, not cycles of birth and death. Doubtless you have enjoyed heat and light from the sun, and refreshing and lubrication from water, and both of these are known to end life with regularity.
There are many, and they are convincing. I eagerly confide in and care about my interaction with earth, water and the sun, even though I know that they contribute to sorrow, tears and death. They are more reliable than the political, traditional and religious luminaries. Emphasizing the old, the bygones, people think they have the best of everything. In fact yesterday is gone and not returning. Not even Eden or any of the ancient civilizations can water this confidence seedling. No mom or dad, uncle or best friend suffices. They are all too fleeting. Genuine and effective self-confidence is truly rare and extremely precious. The checkout clerk of my confidence building has been the ancient that matures.
Canada shall flex her muscle! Who then will stand on guard for the unique beauty and strength of the unrecognized giant among the nations? I have a reasonably well-founded idea that hawks and doves will move resolutely towards collective approaches to ensure that
We shall all see what Commander-in-chief looks like, in sharp contrast to the militaristic aura of despots and dictators who also bear the title. Above the 49th parallel a watershed moment has arrived and I suspect that there are more females and young people who know the sound of justice and humanitarian commonwealth than there are old males who want to look back at colonialism and slave economies with a smile.
I most certainly hope this vice-regal reign marks the point of a concerted goodbye to yesterday’s horrors.
How do you build loyal subscribers?
If I were building loyalty I reckon I would have to say what people want to hear and that would make me popular and with little integrity. Subscriber loyalty ought to be subscriber-driven
Share a proverb you think is completely wrong and make your case.
At first glance the proverb looks like a powerful truth. A closer look at how it functions reveals some disturbing realities.
Popular self-love functions is a fragile, unredemptive idol built on superficial ego-pampering, transaction, and isolating individualism, ultimately replacing the spiritual necessity of repentance (change and growth) with commercialized self-acceptance.
Self-love creates a transactional ethic that undermines sacrificial agape (unconditional) love and misinterprets isolation as healing, contradicting the theological requirement for self-transcendence and finding life through losing it. Love that truly wows observers is not grounded in self-centered interest.
Thursday May 28 VOICE OF GOD
God made sure his revelation could be associated with fire, and admittedly all light comes from fire, and in nature light comes from the stars and more particularly from the sun in our galaxy. Fire and words go naturally together. Jeremiah (20:9) and every believer know it.
“Then the Lord spoke to you from the midst of the fire; you heard the sound of words, but you saw no form–there was only a voice. (Deuteronomy 4:12)
When the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him with thunder. (Exodus 19:19)
There was no hope (tiqvah) in the Pentateuch: it is only in the case of Rahab of Jericho that we see hope for the hopeless rising
He who is the outshining of God (Hebrews 1::3) is sure to generate a great deal of heat as he brings light into our darkness. Consequently we find ourselves shrinking away from the consuming fire of God even as he hangs on the cross, determined to love his creation. That’s a lot of heat echoing from creation itself, reverberating through all the millennia down to the first century in Palestine.
It has been a curiosity that seeing God was thought to lead to death, but it was also deadly to hear God’s voice.
He further said, “You cannot see My face, for mankind shall not see Me and live!” (Exodus 33:20)
‘Now then, why should we die? For this great fire will consume us; if we hear the voice of the Lord our God any longer, then we will die! (Deuteronomy 5:25)
Surely we can see that death and violence spread and magnified in influence to the extent that God sent a flood to make an end and a fresh start. The flood was not the final judgment.
“You said, ‘Behold, the Lord our God has shown us His glory and His greatness, and we have heard His voice from the midst of the fire; we have seen today that God speaks with mankind, yet he lives. (Deuteronomy 5:24)
There are things from the voice of god, from the eternal funder, that need not be written, they are left to be discovered by each individual (Revelation 10:4)
Life is Fun, But Not a Joke 