I feel like I frequently quote Soren Kierkegaard concerning purity of heart, but looking back through my blog posts I don’t seem to write about it as much as I think I quote it during my real life. Kierkegaard’s famous statement/work concerning purity of heart is:
Purity of heart is to will one thing
The opposite of this is what scripture refers to as being “double-minded”. James 4:8 records:
Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
“Double-mindedness” pulls us in opposite and many directions. Willing one thing pulls us in the direction of the one thing. It directs everything else.
One of the summaries of Kierkegaard’s work that I really like is actually found in the movie “City Slickers“.
When you will one thing it is actually your “bae” (before all else). People may often say that something is their one thing but our choices may not always reflect this. If some thing actually is your “one thing” then every choice, every action, every movement has to directed by that one thing. Everything falls in line underneath your one thing. I believe life works best when we know our one thing and I believe we were created for Jesus to be that one thing for our lives with every thing else falls in line under being His disciple.
So today Pamela was quoted in a Wall Street Journal article in regard to the current spelling change of the word Whoa to Woah. In the article Pam comments:
“I am a fan of changes in language, but this doesn’t make sense with any patterns in English that I can think of,” says Pamela Terrell, who teaches speech-language pathology and researches language impairments in children at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. “I would have no way to explain that to someone.”
You can read the article HERE. Just another reminder that Pamela is dang impressive and I married above my pay grade.
Here’s her tweet that is referenced in the article:
I am a descriptivist more than a prescriptivist when it comes to language and a firm believer in the ever-evolving nature of language. However, I am deeply triggered by the changing spelling from “whoa” to “woah.” 😬
On one of the many podcasts I listen to I heard a couple talking about how they handled their different approaches to money and I liked what they did. You see money has different emotional meanings to different people. For one person $1,000 in a savings account for emergencies seems like an impossible dream and for another person $10,000 in a savings account feels like tittering on the edge of destruction. Some are spenders, some are savers, and for some it depends upon the item for which they are saving and spending. So this couple decided to use their monetary tendencies to their advantage.
One person in this couple tends be a spender and the other tends to be a saver. So on projects this couple agrees to a budget that they won’t go above and then the spender gets to shop to find all that he or she can find for the project within that budget. Taking it further the saver gets to establish savings techniques to meet the project budget. I really like this. It works for both people.
Pam and I have kind of done this for years. She loves to plan vacations and I appreciate that she has an amazing ability to do great vacations for less money that we had planned. Seriously she is incredible. The trip we took to France in 2018 was much less than I thought she could have done it for. Pam has a gift.
This year we are using this approach for a semi-regular college friends trip. Pam and some friends form college have talked about going to Alaska, where one of our friends lives. We talked about a budget and then I got excited because I have wanted to try out one of the high yield online savings accounts that have been popping up and this offered an opportunity to do so. Pam loves to discover deals on traveling and I love to learn more personal finance stuff. I went with Viobank at 2.52% APY. I’m really like it thus far and I added an incentive for bringing my lunch to work. When I bring my lunch I get to add $2 to the high yield savings account in addition to the planned contributions we’ve discussed. It incentivises me to eat healthier and cheaper.
So that was a long way of getting to what I really wanted to write about. I was recently talking with a friend who is exploring using a high yield savings account and asked if I would recommend the bank I am using. I would. However, I also decided to search Magnify Money for their present list of recommended high yield savings account. It is here (September 2019). That’s when I discovered Fitness Bank on the list.
I so wish I had heard of Fitness Bank when I was considered this best rates for a high yield savings account. Their gimmick is awesome. The more steps you take the higher your interest rate. How cool is that?!?!?!
Our restoration company has begun to work on the garage from the damage that occurred due to the storm six weeks ago. There was so much damage around here that they have been incredibly busy. I know of circumstances where people’s homes will not be ready for Winter, which is a big deal up here in Wisconsin. Our contractor had a person call them last week just to start the initial estimate for their work. They will be in for a big surprise with how long this is going to take.
Our tree debris was finally removed yesterday. As I talked with the guy doing the removal he talked about how the wood market has collapsed as a result of all the wood on the market. Why would someone buy some wood from you when they can get it for free from someone who had a tree collapse in their yard.
We are still at least a month a way from roofed garage but it is at least cleaner now, looks a little more respectable, and isn’t as big of a hazard to be around anymore. I am so ready for this to be over or at least fixed to the point that I can park our vehicles in a roofed garage.
I have a break and thought I would brag on Pam for a second. Over the past few weeks I have been I’m preparing a seminar with her and it has been an amazing reminder of how awesome the woman I am married to is. Pam is really cool.
One of the companies that I chaplain for does random seminars for life. They have a core value of “Learn & Grow” and last year they purposely expanded the idea of “Learn & Grow” to areas of “soft skills” and other areas of life outside of work. So they asked me if I could do a course on relationships. After 4 weeks of discussing how to have healthier relationships a few people asked for a parenting seminar. I mentioned Pam’s credentials and expertise from her field to the company and they thought it was a great idea. So yesterday Pam and I led a seminar at this company on the subject of Parenting.
She has a wealth of experience, both personal and professional, as well as a good grasp of research on the subject. We have both thought about what we would lead during the seminar and really started finalizing everything this past weekend. Yesterday we led the seminar for the company and it was really cool watching her lead a group of people that she had never met before and them discovering what an amazing person she is. She knows her stuff and it showed yesterday.
On another note
One of the things leading this seminar reminded me of is the desperate fear that so many parents walk around with that they will somehow, unknowingly, screw up their kids. Often parents of all ages live without much deep interaction in the lives of other parents and thus can have no idea what is a normal struggle and what isn’t. What kids will grow out of and what is an actual danger sign. Because of the size of our families now we aren’t around significantly younger kids much anymore till we have our own kids. I, for one, didn’t spend much time at all around babies till I was the parent of one and thus I live with a constant fear that I was somehow going to “break” Adam for the first few months of his life.
Used to be you would have been involved in the “parenting” of much younger brothers or sisters if you were one of the older kids in the family, or if you were one of the younger kids you would have been involved in helping your older siblings with their first kids. We had lots of “practice” at parenting just through our daily lives. Most people don’t now. Thus parenting is often an initially foreign skill set for parents and to make matters worse many don’t have a broad social group around them to help them face these new challenges.
I’m not trying to romanticize the past. Various aspects of the past were better in some manners, and WAY worse in others. The same is true for parenting in the past. Some of it was better and some of it was worse.
I guess what I am saying is perhaps we older parents should invite younger couples with kids over for supper often, not lecture them about parenting but just to be with them, listening to them, and maybe help them bare the fear and worry of parenting, so they can better experience the joy and wonder that is also there.
Hey young parent. Let’s hop your kids up on sugar.
Or maybe cook s’mores with them. That would be real helpful. Let’s invite younger parents over and fill their young kids up with sugar. That should be helpful. 🙂
I know a surprising number of people who quote themselves. This isn’t really a large number of people (OK it is 3) because most people don’t quote themselves, but in my opinion it is still a surprisingly large number (do you know more than 3 people that do this?). Plenty of people say things like “well, you know I always say …” or “I like to call you this …”, but I am not talking about that kind of statement. Nope, these are normal people who full quote themselves as words of wisdom in posts they make on social media. Seriously creating those graphic images for quotes that they made themselves or lists their own words in sections of their favorite quotes (Facebook has this under the “Details” portion of your “About” section).
George Bernard Shaw used to do this. For example, he said:
“I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.”
But he was famous and you can get away with such stuff when you are famous. See it didn’t feel odd for me to quote George Bernard Shaw, but if I had quoted myself that probably would have felt different.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with quoting yourself. Just seems weird to me that all of the people I know who do this are ex-pastors. I’m not sure what this means, if anything. Probably nothing.
I mentioned this photo today during the message at Tapestry. It was an unplanned mentioned so I did not have the message PowerPoint setup to display the image. Therefore, I thought I would share it on my blog.
Here’s the BBC article discussing the photos, as well as the Mom (or Mum) and daughter’s interaction. I loved the daughter’s (Lucie) statement when asked what she had been involved in that brought at this look. Lucie’s answer was “nothing much.” That has to be one active elementary (or primary for them) student.
That second photo is proof either of the best or the worst first day of school.
I just walked into Ruby’s Coffee Roasters to finish up the sermon for tomorrow and I am at a standstill because I am desperately trying to figure out what the barista at the counter just said to his customer. To me it sounded like he said
“I’m taking a Nazi out for a smoke with my dad.”
I know he didn’t say that but I can’t figure out what he actually said.
Sunday during the message I will be using a clip from the movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. I load such files onto the church’s Dropbox folder and I have my Google Photos account setup to backup all photos and videos put into that folder. Every now and then I get an interesting creation from Google Photo’s Assistant from the files that are backed up to my account from the church’s Dropbox folder. The above GIF is one such creation. I have a hard looking away from it because it looks like Steve Martin and John Candy randomly decided to have a dance-off in the middle of the movie.
Anyhow it makes me laugh.
Conor H you would be thrilled because I am also using a video this Sunday from Rene August, who is a priest from your tribe.
