Forgiveness is not a passive act. The first step of forgiveness is actually recognizing and declaring that something is evil. After all, if an act isn’t wrong there isn’t really anything to forgive. It might be a cultural faux pas or a stupid action, but those things don’t need forgiveness because blunders in etiquette, clumsiness, and ignorance don’t purposefully hurt someone. Forgiveness on the other hand deals with actions that result in harm. This harm might be societal, relational, physical, or any number of other ways but it is still harm.
As a follower of Jesus I am called to forgive because and as I have been forgiven by God. “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3:13). I believe the reason for this is not just for the restoration of relationship but also for the destruction of evil. Forgiveness defeats evil by not allowing evil to have the last word. Forgiveness starts with either the victim, the perpetrator, or both recognizing that real harm was done by the perpetrator. Evil was done and that needs to be acknowledged.
Unfortunately I know of which I speak in regards to being hooked.
This is why forgiveness isn’t just “letting someone off the hook” as we so often use the phrase. Actually I think often what people want in forgiveness is to forget that the “hook” is there at all and pretend like everything is ok. Unfortunately i have experienced a few hooks in my hand. Taking care of the issue is a very painful event. Forgetting the hook is there doesn’t solve the problem. Since there is a barb in the hook you have to push the hook forward through the skin. You can’t pull it back out because the barb will continue to catch your flesh as you pull it backward. So you push the point all the way through the skin and then cut the barb off so you can remove the hook. Removing the hook hurts like “a big dog”, but it is the only way that you’ll ever be free. That’s what true forgiveness does, it frees both the victim and the perpetrator from the evil that has been done and that only happens when the evil is “pushed” into the light. And boy does that hurt.
I think this is where we, as those needing forgiveness, often struggle. We fail to realize or don’t want to realize that an initial part of receiving forgiveness involves acknowledging the harm and evil of what we have done. We don’t want to actually confront what we have done as evil. We just want to be able to ignore it and have it forgotten. That’s not forgiveness though.
Forgiveness is removing the power of sin and part of that is done by acknowledging the action for what it was … evil. For the perpetrator this might sound like , “when I broke our family apart that was evil.” “When I hurt you that was evil.” For the victim it might sound like “what you did to our family is evil.” Those are powerful confessions that actually begin the process of freeing both the victim and the perpetrator from the evil that was done. That’s not a passive. That’s not being a doormat.
Yesterday we were given a good example of this during the sentencing hearing of Larry Nassar. Rachael Denhollander’s statement during the sentencing hearing part of Larry Nassar’s trial is a powerful example of calling evil what it is as a part of forgiveness. Her statement can be found here. I want to quote part of it:
Rachael Denhollander reading her statement. She is one brave person.
In our early hearings. you brought your Bible into the courtroom and you have spoken of praying for forgiveness. And so it is on that basis that I appeal to you. If you have read the Bible you carry, you know the definition of sacrificial love portrayed is of God himself loving so sacrificially that he gave up everything to pay a penalty for the sin he did not commit. By his grace, I, too, choose to love this way.
You spoke of praying for forgiveness. But Larry, if you have read the Bible you carry, you know forgiveness does not come from doing good things, as if good deeds can erase what you have done. It comes from repentance which requires facing and acknowledging the truth about what you have done in all of its utter depravity and horror without mitigation, without excuse, without acting as if good deeds can erase what you have seen this courtroom today.
If the Bible you carry says it is better for a stone to be thrown around your neck and you throw into a lake than for you to make even one child stumble. And you have damaged hundreds.
The Bible you speak carries a final judgment where all of God’s wrath and eternal terror is poured out on men like you. Should you ever reach the point of truly facing what you have done, the guilt will be crushing. And that is what makes the gospel of Christ so sweet. Because it extends grace and hope and mercy where none should be found. And it will be there for you.
I pray you experience the soul crushing weight of guilt so you may someday experience true repentance and true forgiveness from God, which you need far more than forgiveness from me — though I extend that to you as well.
Throughout this process, I have clung to a quote by C.S. Lewis, where he says, my argument against God was that the universe seems so cruel and unjust. But how did I get this idea of just, unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he first has some idea of straight. What was I comparing the universe to when I called it unjust?
Larry, I can call what you did evil and wicked because it was. And I know it was evil and wicked because the straight line exists. The straight line is not measured based on your perception or anyone else’s perception, and this means I can speak the truth about my abuse without minimization or mitigation. And I can call it evil because I know what goodness is. And this is why I pity you. Because when a person loses the ability to define good and evil, when they cannot define evil, they can no longer define and enjoy what is truly good.
Every now and then as a pastor and chaplain I talk with people who think forgiveness means pretending that their evil act didn’t happen. “I just want things to go back to the way they were.” But they can’t because, to use the hook analogy again, pretending the hook is gone doesn’t actually remove the hook. Such pretending doesn’t defeat the evil. Forgiveness does defeat evil by acknowledging what our actions were, selfish, hurtful, evil. Still for both the victim and the perpetrator it hurts like a big dog.
Pretty frequently I am told of a “thread” being involved in some act of service that has nothing to do with Tapestry. A few times I have learned of a group of “threads” establishing a small group Bible study that I didn’t know anything about. Let me make this blatantly clear, I LOVE WHEN I HEAR ABOUT SERVICE AND STUDY INVOLVEMENT THAT I KNEW NOTHING ABOUT.
Seriously it is one of my favorite things because it means that the “threads” aren’t being dependent upon Tapestry as an organization setting up ministry opportunities. Instead they are being the church. Here are a few examples, but I could list others.
Elizabeth – She and others saw a need while they were on various international trips and they decided to do something about it. Together they started Disability Support International. As a group they “advocate, support, and empower to improve the lives of children with disabilities in developing countries so they can live life to the fullest.” She didn’t think to herself “Gee I wish the church would start something like this so I can be a part of it.” Nope she jumped to it and has since asked the church to be a part of it.
John – I go to the Place of Peace meal each week where I pray for the meal and just make myself available for anyone who wants someone to pray for them. Do you know who I see there every week? John. Pretty much every week he is there making himself available to do whatever is necessary and much more importantly eating a meal with and talking with anyone he believes could use some comradery for the evening, which I believe is the most important thing that happens at the PoP meals. I didn’t ask John to start doing this. I didn’t set it up for him. He just did it.
Conor – I don’t know what day of the week it is but Conor goes to the ECIWarming Center during the period of the evening that I am told from Tiffani is the most difficult for her to get someone. He is the worker that is there to make sure everyone’s needs are met and that it is a safe place for people to sleep off some of our very cold nights. He said something a while back about wanting to be of service to the homeless population in our area. I think I pointed him to ECI but I’m not sure I did. All I know is that Conor didn’t wait for Tapestry to start something with ECI that he could serve within. Nope he just jumped to it
Natalie & Eric – If you were at Tapestry’s Sunday morning worship gathering this past Sunday you may have noticed that Eric & Natalie weren’t there. This would have been obvious with Eric since instead of him leading us in singing Sarah & Fawnda were doing so (thanks for doing that ladies, you were wonderful). The Glaze family was gone because as a family they play roles in the wonderful Special Olympics of our area. They are following in a family tradition of saying a few Sundays a year “we are going to skip church to go and be the church with some wonderful individuals who ho can do some amazing things with a little help”, and since they are bringing their girls with them and getting them involved they are setting up a new generation to do this too.
These are only four recent stories. I could write about others in the church fostering kids, reaching out to “at risk” kids, helping people make it through things they couldn’t make it through on their own. The reason I bring these four stories up is because of a statement I once heard. The statement is “Churches end up doing what is praised from the pulpit.” Whether this is a good thing or not is another discussion but regardless I think there is a great deal of truth in the statement. I believe that churches that brag on people doing church activities tend to get more people to do church activities. I believe that churches that brag on people bringing guests to church typically get more guests to brought to church. Etc. Etc.
All these things are good things but I want to brag on people randomly seeing areas in which Jesus might want them to serve and jumping to it. I’m not worried about you serving in the church organization, I’m sure that’ll be covered. Actually I find that usually the people who are serving outside the church are also serving in the church. Of the 5 people I mentioned above almost all are already doing acts of service in the church from leading music, to operating our lyric slides, to taking care of the nursery. The church organization will be fine because people who serve Jesus outside the church walls typically also serve Jesus inside the church (or in our case gym) walls.
See a need, fill a need.
I remember watching the movie Robots with our boys. In that movie Bigweld, the inventor/idol of the lead character has a catch phrase. It is “See a need, fill a need.” I think that is a pretty good model for the church. What I hope you hear from our “pulpit” (in our case that equals a music stand and my stool with all the stickers on it) is basically “see a need, fill a need.” Now let’s go do that. I can’t wait to be surprised by what I hear.
This is the change to the parable of the Sheep and the Goats (found in Matthew 25:34-46) that has been running through my head as I read some of the comments on my friend’s Scott’s Facebook page as he posts about people destroying life giving water and food that has been put out for people trying to immigrate, albeit illegally, to the United States.
Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.”
They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
And the King will say to them “When you destroyed the water and food meant for the least of these as they traveled a dangerous journey, you destroyed water and food meant for Me. For whatever you did to the least of these you did to Me.”
They also will answer, ‘But Lord, You were an illegal immigrant. If you had entered the country the legal way we would have gladly helped.”
And the king will face palm before getting very angry.
I just saw this wonderful panorama on Reddit. It’s awesome. The Google Photos Assistant (Artificial Intelligence). The Google Photos Assistant will suggest things that it believes will help your photos. Sometimes this is adding filters to your photo, or forming a collage of certain photos, or creating an animation of photos that seem to go together, and some times it will create a panorama by putting a few photos that fit together to form a panorama. The photo above is a wonderful example of this feature. A glorious example.
Here are MalletsDarker‘s original photos that Google stitched together.
Sunday night I posted the first part of this lengthy post (The Radical Reformation & Authority – Part #1). In summary of that post, the Radical Reformation had a more expansive view of the priesthood of all believers that for some led to an extreme distrust of institutional authority and often led to the institutional authority distancing itself still further from the laity, which became a vicious cycle reinforcing itself. This may have taken place 500 years ago but its influence continues to shape us.
So let’s consider what I believe to be a modern example the distrust of institutional authority that has its roots located within the the Reformation. We have plenty of people who have randomly proclaimed themselves to be experts. Health “experts” whose only experience with health is that they were born with genetics that make them attractive to the majority of the population. Financial “experts” who have gone through several bankruptcies and proclaiming that they can teach us how to get rid of our debt and gain wealth, while failing to mention that the way they are removing their debt and building their wealth is by us buying their books and attending their lectures. Medical “experts” whose education has come from the University of Google which can be anything from great things like Google Scholar to stupid things like stupid.com. We have any number of other fields in which people proclaim themselves “experts” because they can since we don’t trust institutions.
So often the reaction we see from the institutional authorities to people turning to these self-proclaimed “experts” is a closing in of the authorities to further separate themselves from the laity in their field. Often instead of listen to the real fears and questions of the people they serve the institutional authorities turn a blind eye to those they are supposed to be serving and rely on positional authority to buttress their positions, rather than listening to their clients who are being woo’d by the self-proclaimed “experts” and eve worse sometimes outright charlatans.
In my opinion, a fair number of multi-level marketing companies (I’m not saying all MLMs) are entirely based off of these two phenomenons of the mistrust of institutional authority and the institutions responding by reinforcing their positional authority and credentials. I’ll use medical science as an example. First, convince your prospective client that they can’t trust what medical science is telling them because their physicians, hospitals, pharmacists, and others are only in it for the money. Second, convince your client that you are actually an expert and more scientific than their physicians, hospitals, pharmacists, and others because you took some weekend course, and yet somehow you aren’t actually just in it for the money. Finally, watch as your prospective clients bring this information to their physicians, hospitals, pharmacists, and others who respond by dismissing the client’s concerns and chasing the client back to you.
You can probably think of a few examples that fit in here. I can think of some examples of people who I wouldn’t trust taking care of Pam’s cats (which wouldn’t take a lot of trust because their cats and therefore no great loss 😁) who have become “experts” and try to convince others turn to them for advice on very important matters. These very same “experts” often talk a good game on but don’t actually live out in their lives.
My saddest personal example comes for when I was working a side-job years ago at a store that Pam to refers to as a yuppy-hippy store. What Pam meant about this was that all the products the store sold where earthy and organic, while also being costly so they signaled that you were wealthy because you could afford them. I would fill in at this store a few hours every now and then. Mostly I read because the store was very rarely busy and didn’t have a lot of stocking or other work. Anyhow one day a lady who was obviously weak from ill health came into the store and straight forwardly said to me, “I need to know which essential oils cure cancer.” I was dumbstruck as she told me that she had reached a point where her physician had told her there weren’t many other options for treatment and didn’t respond to well to this poor lady when she started sharing alternatives with him that she had found on Google. She was so desperate she had entered a store she didn’t know and was willing to trust a clerk she had never met.
By the way, friends and acquaintances who sell essential oils (I don’t think there are many of y’all) I have nothing against y’all’s essential oils or you selling them. I think essential oils often smell great.
Some people intentionally and unintentionally take advantage of the type of desperation and mistrust that the woman in my story had. The old-fashion “snake oil salesmen” understood how to use our tendency in America not to trust institutional authority. Our modern versions understand this also. Usually it just cost us poor saps a little money and time. Sometimes it costs us much more.
Of course, questioning institutional authority can and very often is a VERY good thing. There is a great deal of institutional authority that needs to be questioned. The Reformation proved this. Today there are still tons of examples of credential authorities using institutional authority as a way to shut up or literally abuse the ones that they are supposed to be helping. Pam and I were talking tonight about some of the crimes that have been committed recently by people who had organizational power. Evil has been done by people being controlled by individuals using institutional authority as their cover. Larry Nassar and the abuse he inflicted on so many young ladies involved in USA Gymnastics is just the latest example of institutional authority being used as a means of evil. Questioning the positional authority of credentialed individuals in these institutions helps to keep us all honest and safe.
Another example that I want to consider comes about when those in authority react against “the laity” bringing in information to them. Using medical science again it is an important truth that a patient is the expert of his/her own body. Unfortunately some physicians (institutional experts) fear this. Patients may bring them information they found from good sources and bad sources. Often it doesn’t matter whether the sources are good or bad science. The very act of someone questioning their authority is beyond the pale, so they shut it down. Pam’s subglottic stenosis journey is an example of this (you can, and should, read about her journey here). “I’m the physician and I know best” is not a good answer when a patient is bring questions about their own treatment. When credentialed experts rely on positional authority rather than earned authority terrible things frequently happen. Ironically, shutting down the patient oft encourages the mistrust of the physician’s positional authority and encourages the patient to go to quacks who will actually listen to the patient. As I said this thing is often a self-reinforcing cycle.
There is so much about the Radical Reformation for which I am thankful. Especially their expansive view of the priesthood of all believers. I am very thankful for the questioning of institutions and the power they can claim in our society. We grew our fear of organizational power from the influence of the Radical Reformation’s extreme view of the priesthood of all believers. It may have started with the church but it has long since expanded into all the institutions in our lives. There is good to that but they is also danger. It creates a very fertile soil in which quacks and self-proclaimed experts grow. Sometimes this leads to serious harm. During the Radical Reformation it led to some of the best and worst of faith. My faith tradition wouldn’t exist without the Radical Reformation. There was also some very seriously messed up faith practices that came out of the Radical Reformation. The best and the worst often have the same source. The same is true today. We may be five centuries and an continent away from them but they still influence us.
SIDE NOTE – I am generally not a fan of long blog posts. I think part of this is because I have more difficult proofing them (already one of my weaknesses) in the longer format. I apologize for how long these two posts have been and, therefore, how many grammatical mistakes I am sure are found within the posts. Of course, this is just a hobby for me so you should stop complaining about my grammar. 🙂
Right now I am watching the Vikings/Eagles NFC Championship game fearing that I will have no team to pull for in the Super Bowl (How can I pull for the Vikings or the Patriots). Therefore, to keep my mind off of the possibility of having lots of people over to our home to watch a game of two teams that I really don’t like I thought I would post about an area of influence from the Radical Reformation that I see all around us.
Before I begin I will paraphrase and mashup Amos 7:14 and Dan Carlin and say that I am neither a historian, nor the son of a historian, but I am a fan of history. In other words, I am speaking very much as a lay person here. I will leave it up to Rob Harper to correct my errors in discussing the influence of elements of history and Kirby Goidel in my brief “rabbit chasing” into political theory. So I will begin.
When we talk about “The Reformation” we are actually talking about three interlocked reformations that began in the 16th century. The three different reformations are:
The Magisterial Reformation – made of of Lutheran and Reformed thought and supported by the princes in their areas. The Magisterial Reformation consisted of thinkers who said to themselves “The Roman Catholic Church is beyond reform and therefore we will separate replacing the Roman Catholic elites with our elites”.
The Catholic Counter Reformation – obviously made up of Roman Catholics. The Catholic Counter Reformation may have saved the Roman Catholic Church. A lot of people in power agreed with the arguments of the Magisterial Reformation and the Roman Catholic Church began to loose a large number of people. So RC thinkers took this opportunity and reformed the practices and various theology that supported those corrupt practices. The reforms led to a Catholic resurgence from a pending collapse and the RCC kept its elites in power in many places and maintained support form many monarchs and members of the second estate.
The Radical Reformation – made up .primarily of thinkers who thought that the Magisterial Reformation didn’t go far enough in following what was written in the Bible. So the RR went further … often much further. This is why we have the saying “The Catholics hated the Protestants, the Protestants hated the Catholics, and EVERYBODY hated the Radicals.”
Of the three reformation movements the Radical Reformers held the most extreme view of the Priesthood of All Believers and this led to them often rejecting almost all institutional religious authority. In my opinion, the best parts and the worst parts of the Reformation come out of the Radical Reformation. I am a big fan of the RR even though things like Münster rebellion came through it. The best and worst often come through the same thought.
The Radical Reformation’s rejection of institutional, especially religious institutional, authority was a threat to the stability of all the city states and kingdoms in Europe. If you could say that anyone, regardless of pedigree, could interpret scripture and it might be as good, or even better, than the interpretation of your priest, bishop, or pope it wouldn’t be a much bigger step to start thinking that anyone could make political decisions as good as your sheriff, mayor, prince, or king. Ultimately this step was taken and democratic republicans run by ordinary people replaced the “divine right to rule” of monarchies. Thank you Radical Reformation.
Like I wrote earlier, I believe the best and worst often come through the same thoughts. One of the great things that came out of the RR was the questioning of authority. So much of the institutional authority, both sacred and secular, at the time was corrupt and desperately needed to be questioned. The authorities served themselves and not the people. The “priesthood of all believers”, as understood by the radicals, led to ordinary people realizing they could think and act and this led to the correction of many of the abuses. Of course, it also led to a couple of not so good results also. In my opinion two examples of the bad result were:
The institutional authority that didn’t reform on its own had a tendency to dig in and really force institutional authority until it was itself forced to reform.
Any “Joe Blow” who could string a couple of sentences together could suddenly reject the institutional authority and proclaim him/herself an expert and authority for other people to follow.
Both of these things can be very destructive and often feed upon one another. Any “Joe Blow” being able to proclaim him/herself an authority often leads to the mistaken belief that just because everyone has an equal right to interpret scripture and make choices based on those interpretations that therefore everyone’s interpretation and acts based on those interpretation are equally good. This can and has led to some seriously out there interpretations and actions. The institutional authority often reacts to these “Joe Blows” by pulling inward on itself and excluding anyone who doesn’t fit their criteria or have the correct credentials. This led to and still does lead to the authority separating still further from the non-experts. A the time the clergy separated further from the laity, making the divisions even greater than they already were. Which then fed into people being even more open to the self-proclaim “Joe Blow” experts who were not separating themselves from the ordinary people. People don’t usually follow wackos when tthey feel like they are actually being engaged by the institutions of which they have long been a part. And the cycle fed on itself and still does.
I will separate this post here because I don’t like writing very long posts and this is now one such post. Tomorrow I will write about the subject that this historical discussion is meant to point toward. For you see, I believe that so much of the danger of the separation of medical science and alternative medicine has its roots in the inherent distrust of institutional authority that can be traced back to understandings of the great doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. The experts don’t listen to the laity because of fear and anger at the “Joe Blows” and this leads to more people listening to the random self-proclaim “Joe Blow” experts.
SIDE NOTE – The Eagles won! This means that I now have someone to cheer for in the Super Bowl. Yeah!
I don’t feel like blogging about anything serious at the moment even though there are tons of things going on in the U.S. and the world. At the moment I don’t know what to say on the current events that I feel passionate about. Therefore, I decided I would briefly write about running in Wisconsin in the Winter. If you don’t run when it is cold or snowy then you typically aren’t going to be able to run in Wisconsin December through mid-March. According to Ranulph Fiennes “there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.” So here is how I run in the Winter.
Layers. It really isn’t very difficult to stay warm when run in the Winter. Once you get started your body is going to produce a lot of heat. When in doubt I like the Runners World What To Wear Guide for a general guideline of what to wear, Usually if it is above 10° I wear two technical shirts and a windbreaker. If it is colder than that I reduce a technical shirt and pull a lite fleece under the windbreaker. If it is in the negatives I add more technical shirts nd a thicker fleece. This has worked all the way down to -20° with a windchill down to -40°.
Socks. Buy some good Merino wool socks and sock liners. I like Darn Tough Vermont socks. The ski socks are particularly nice for Winter running and they have a lifetime warranty.
Pam thought I should include a non-reflective photo of my jacket to show the difference.
Visibility. Since it gets dark pretty early around here it is difficult to run on a work day when there is full daylight. In addition to the lack of daylight the roads get more narrow throughout the Winter because of the snow berms that develop on each side of the road from the snow plows. I have been almost hit by cars a couple of times because of not being visible in these conditions. So I decided to correct that situation with some high visibility products. My RoadID bracelet offers a small amount of reflectivity but serves as my in case of emergency identification. My main reflective sources are reflective wrist and anklebands, a running strobe or two, and/or my ASICS Storm Shelter Jacket (I’m wearing it in the picture with this post). The ASICS Jacket has 3m reflective material woven throughout it and is those VERY bright.
My Yaktrax keep my life insurance policy from paying out.
Traction. I am a klutz so maybe it is just me but Winter can get a little slippery. Naw, this video proves it isn’t just me. Things get even worse when Spring starts to come around with its thaw during the day and refreeze at night routine. So I wear a pair of Yaktrax. They usually last a few seasons and you can find them on sale for a better buy.
I’m not able to maintain the same mileage in the Winter that I do during the rest of the year, but I able to run enough miles to maintain my base level of running fitness. Also it feels pretty hardcore to run when it is snowing heavily.
Today I spoke at an all-staff meeting for one of the companies for which I chaplain. I was asked to speak on one of their core values (they would call it a family value), “open and honest communication”. So I presented on effectively communicating using Aristotle’s model of communication. I personally tend to think that people generally better remember and implement presentations that have humor in them so I wrote out my presentation in a manner that would try to get people laughing as we talked together about effective and unprofitable communication. Thus I used big printed heads of Aristotle and Justin Bieber to walk through the model (Sender, Medium, Receiver).
I believe the presentation went well for two reasons. First, because I communicated in the manner I had hoped to communicate all the points I was hoping to address. Second, because a large number of the team members told me how much they enjoyed my lecture. I am thankful for the second reason but I was also surprised by how I was caught off guard by being told how much someone enjoyed the presentation.
I am used to preaching most weeks but people respond to a sermon different than to other presentations. I don’t usually have someone tell me that they “enjoyed” a sermon. They might say how grateful they were for a message, or how it specifically related to their life, or they might add a point to the message that relates in another manner. If you are at a traditional church it wouldn’t be surprising to have a lot of people tell you that it “was a good sermon pastor” but they aren’t going to say they enjoyed it. That’s just not what you usually say about a message. So it threw me off.
I believe I generally preach in a manner that is at least not completely snooze worthy for most of the people listening. Still, when I preach people usually express whether or not the message was meaningful for them not just that they enjoyed the message. Meaning, not enjoyment, is what I am used to hearing about.
Which is why hearing people say that “enjoyed” the presentation threw me off at first. I was grateful that they enjoyed the message, after all who wants to be told “I really didn’t enjoy your presentation.” Still I had a small knew jerk reaction every time they said the phrase to me. Seriously, I wanted to correct them and say “no what matters was this meaningful for your life.” That was my own insecurities and thankfully my mom raised me to be polite. So I simply said “Thank you, I appreciate that you enjoyed it.”
SIDE NOTE – If you are wondering what’s up with the lady’s face on the left of the photo I blurred it to protect the innocent.
One of Pam’s former students brought these Swiss bratzeli cookies by for her.
The student told her that when her great, great, grandfather immigrated to the United States he was only allowed to bring a few things with him. One of the possessions that he was able to bring with him to the States was a bratzeli iron. This iron is used for making the cookie and gives the cookie it distinctive design. He brought it to the US so that his family could continue to make bratzeli cookies together.
The student’s family’s tradition has been to gather together before Christmas and bake bratzeli cookies together. Originally they did this on the great, great grandfather’s iron. Eventually they special ordered a new iron (I assume to keep the great, great grandfather’s iron in shape) but they kept the tradition going. Such a wonderful tradition.
Serves as a reminder for me that so many of the traditions and norms that we think of as “American” were started by bringing them over from an “old country”. We were and still are a country of immigrants and wonderful new traditions like Pam’s student’s family’s tradition (my that is a lot of possessives in a row) are being developed all around us.
If I were to do something else for a living I think I would enjoy doing something related to personal finance. Not only do I like studying personal finance for my own good but I deal with personal financial issues a great deal as a pastor and a chaplain. So I listen to quite a few podcasts on personal (and broader) financial issues, as well we reading as much as I can on the subject. Here are the personal finance podcasts that I am listening to right now (I listen to every episode of the ones in bold) :
Anyhow, I recently heard a podcast that took a famous line from Vice President Dick Cheney and reshaped it for good personal financial advice for the new year. The quote is “deficits don’t matter”. The paraphrase, which I believe was from “Stacking Benjamins” (but I’m not sure), is “‘budgets’ don’t matter” with “people do what they have to do” added to it. The point was that if you are trying to increase saving/retirement don’t start by combing through your budget (if you have one) trying to find spare dollars. Instead setup an additional automatic deduction for a small amount to go to your saving/retirement forcing yourself to adjust to it.
The mindset is that if you have to find the spare money you never will, but you will adjust to money that is “missing” because it was automatically removed from your funds. If you do this each year your savings will slowly but surely go up significantly. If you aren’t saving at all this will get you started at a pace at which you can and will adjust. If you aren’t saving enough for retirement (the amount depends upon the age you started saving and how much you have already saved) this will help get you a little closer each year.
Get a raise? Adjust your saving/retirement. Smartly decided to search your current expenses and found something you no longer needed (finally stopped your Columbia House Music Club subscription) take the money you just found at adjust your saving/retirement. Each little bit adds up till you are at an amount that reaches your goals.
Every little bit makes a difference in taking control of your finances. If you don’t control your finances they will control you. At any rate, I obviously bumped our retirement contribution up a little bit. 🙂
