Refractions and Reflections

[ source ] I am a Once Upon a Time fan - it is one of the handful of television shows I keep up with on Hulu. It often makes me think theologically. In the most recent episode [season 4, episode 9], for instance, Ingrid casts the spell of shattered sight on Anna; the purpose of the spell has always been to distort people's perceptions of what they see. Theologically, it makes me second-guess myself. The literal rendering of the Bible passages that speak of God allowing people to "believe a lie and be damned" or "turning them over to a reprobate mind" has always caused me fear - would God actually allow me to be deceived because I dared think outside the box of legalistic religion? I don't think so. But I still have a few remnants of that insecurity. And then on the road searching for Emma, Mary Margaret and Regina have a conversation about whoever wrote the book in which their lives have been chronicled. Regina is convinced that the author decided ...

A few years ago I left a bookstore with Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City . An entrancing read, it made me want to read more of his works, and I soon ordered Thunderstruck on paperbackswap.com . I never got around to reading it, though, and so I finally started it yesterday. It segues nicely into the next story post I wanted to write - more from my friend Millie - about work ethic and innovation in entrepreneurship. Larson's habit is to weave two dissimilar lives together in a sort of double biography that no one would ever think to thrust together. For example, in Devil in the White City he tells the story of Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the phenomenal structures of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, as intertwined with the tale of another inhabitant of Chicago at the same time, serial killer H. H. Holmes. Thunderstruck mingles the paths of Guglielmo Marconi, discoverer of wireless telegraphy (the precursor to radio and telephone technology)...

---1--- On selling my body.... As I've mentioned before, I'm looking for a second job since school is out. Until I find one, I decided maybe I would try donating plasma...and I did in fact try, last Friday. My brother was horrified. "You've sunken to selling your body?!" he exclaimed. "Well, yes...I guess you could look at it that way," I replied humorously. I was surprised that it did not hurt. The needle going in the arm was just a slight stick, and then it was relatively painless. However, I failed to hydrate as well as I should have, and since I work third shift and went to the place not long after I woke up Friday around noon, all I ate beforehand was a granola bar, and that only because the instructions say to eat well before you donate. Well, I learned they tell you that for a reason. I passed out after they had only drawn what looked to me like maybe 6 or 7 ounces of plasma. I still got the full payment, which I thought was generous, and the...

My life hasn't been interesting enough this last week to do a Quick Takes post, so I thought I would go ahead and begin my story posts instead. Since returning from vacation I have spent the majority of my time holed up in my apartment avoiding the outside world. I've done a lot more reading than I have in a long time! First, I read The Pianist by Wladislaw Szpilman , and the other day I started Bess W. Truman by Margaret Truman (I am about a third of the way into it). The first was (as most of you know) a memoir about a Polish Jew's survival in Warsaw during WWII. The second covered a little about WWI, especially as it affected Kansas City, Missouri, and now I am into the portion on the Great Depression. All of these subjects remind me of my friend Millie , another great storyteller in my life whom I forgot to mention in my post on storytelling . I met Millie several years ago in Joplin...I believe she was 93 at the time. She passed away in April 2011 at the age of ...

Last week I watched the movie Big Fish  for the first time. It reminded me how much I LOVE meeting someone with the ability to tell a great story. I don't have it! I can write a decent story...or I can tell one if I know it really  well or have practiced it a whole lot ahead of time. But to just speak with creativity and hold others spellbound as a natural talent? Nope. The person who comes to mind as the best storyteller I ever knew was one of my high school science teachers, my very favorite teacher of my pre-college education days, named Mr. (Phil) Nave. First, he was a phenomenal teacher - he made science interesting. He even took my Anatomy & Physiology class on a trip to a nearby university's cadaver lab. Second, he studied philosophy in school and was a person in search of truth, much as I consider myself to be; and when I was in high school I used to carry my Bible through school with me every day, and so Mr. Nave and I used to have a lot of philosophical discuss...

 "Don't judge a person until you've walked a mile in their shoes." "If the shoe fits, wear it." ...Or how about this brief scene from Forrest Gump: These were the "shoes" he was talking about: "Mama said they'd take me anywhere!" I've been really into shoes lately. I'm blaming it on the fact that it is summer, and I don't have many pairs of summer shoes, so I "need" the three pairs I ordered online this week. And you have to have different kinds of shoes for different events, right? Like...running shoes...work boots...sandals...pumps. They all serve varying purposes. I would say pumps are probably the least efficient of the shoes in that list, but I have known more than one lady who wore heels for everything . (I am not one of them. But maybe there will come a day when some young blogger will say, "I once knew a lady who never wore heels for anything ." When that day comes, you'll kno...

Most of us have seen many variations of this picture through the years (me included)...but this year, this one caught my attention. I guess it's because you can see the individual lash marks on His body. You can see where the bruising would be if He had afterwards lived long enough for it to occur. Isaiah said, "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; THE CHASTISEMENT FOR OUR PEACE was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed" (53:5, NKJV). Self-harm has become an epidemic in our culture - people inflicting pain and wounds upon themselves in order to "feel" or in order to punish themselves for perceived "wrongness". People feel they deserve to be chastised. Masochists seek someone who will "love" them enough to beat the unworthiness out of them and bring them a reward of pleasure. When damaged people pour out their own insecurities on us, we believe the lie that this is what we somehow deserve....

A good epic fantasy (like Lord of the Rings, for example) involves a character(s) making his/her way through a very trying journey, to accomplish the impossible and arrive at a distant desirable location, usually being home. Motel 6 paints an accurate picture with their slogan, "We'll leave the light on." People on a long, difficult, tiring journey long for the eventual end of the road; for their arrival to be anticipated, welcomed, enjoyed. They want to get to the place where they belong. Thus goes life. For the nonbeliever, the grave eventually becomes an emblem of peace (hence the epitaph, RIP...not to mention the location of most cemeteries on a shady, picturesque hillside, fenced off from the hustle and bustle of everyday life). For the believer, heaven is our hope. As the apostle Paul put it, "If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men" (1 Corinthians 15:19, NIV). Jesus said, "Don't let this throw you. ...