indeterminate mind

Let us all be like Scrooge!   I’m not kidding.   I am calling on the world to be scrooges.   I think this whole season needs modern day scrooges.   But wait, I know what you are thinking, no not the “Bah Humbug” Scrooge.   I want to be like the Scrooge at the end of the famous tale: “He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world…” His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him…” “ and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.”   (Dickens, “A Christmas Carol, Stave 5) We all know the story how this grumpy cranky hateful miser was taken from sinner to saint in the course of one evening.   Yet when we speak of Scrooge we usually mean someone who is not “in the Christmas spirit”, or who embodies Ebenezer’s favorite line “Bah, Humbug”.   In a world filled wit

         “The Atonement is not only about repentance!”  These words still ring through my ears, since I first heard them twenty years ago this Christmas.  You see I was 10,000 miles away from home in Australia.  And I didn't like it.  Not Australia, but I hadn't seen Australia yet.  I hadn't given myself the chance to even look.  My mind was home.  My heart was Home.  And my spirit was trapped in this body that wasn't.  It was only a few days to Christmas, and I hadn't received one word from home.  Not a Christmas card, not a postcard, nothing.  I had given up.  I was having my first experience with a lifetime full of separation anxiety  and I was a long way from home. In fact since I knew I would be calling home I had made up my mind I was leaving.  I started seeing my friends drive by me, or walk by me.  At least people who for a moment looked exactly like them.  Kyle was the high school kid in the main home of the family that we stayed in the Flat out back. 

I’m sitting in the extreme middle.  That’s at least how I like to describe myself, but all it really means is that I do not completely hold to one side of the political spectrum or the other.  I don’t like to describe myself as an independent, but I like the thought of being and independent when it comes to thinking.   The reason I use the term “extreme” in my description of myself is that while an extreme right or extreme left thinking person would take a very hard stance and rigid response to their beliefs and reject anything that is not.  I am an extreme middle thinking person which means I reject any hard stance on nearly anything.  Any rigid and hard stance in my opinion means you have decided not to think anymore.  You are going to use that stance to make your decision for you.  What’s funny is that I know very few people who when push comes to shove would actually hold this hard rigid stance in real life.  Many people in my area when talking about immigration will vocally rej

Alleluia! This is one of those words that expresses so much more than a dictionary definition can cover. Whether people actually use this word or not I think the feeling invoked by this word surpasses joy or gratitude or excitement. Often in relationship to this word I think of the reported celebrations surrounding the end of world war 2, or what I imagine was the response of the Israelites after crossing the Red Sea. All my life I have been exposed to celebrations of one kind or other but most are probably not reflective of the term alleluia. In fact I would imagine so much of what is that word is actually not the outward expression but and inward feeling that explodes outward because it can no longer be contained. It is the explosion of the potential spiritual energy of a saved soul. That potential energy that is ignited by the atonement of Jesus Christ. When you realize that sorrow and damnation and eternal darkness has been broken down by the light of Christ. When