Tag: Good
Introducing Funny Fridays!
My humor posts tend to rank among the highest on the blog, but I’ve been lax about including humor regularly.
No more.
In the next few months I’ll add a bit of humor to your Fridays!
If you have the time, drop by and see what’s going on, or add a link with something that amused you recently.
Today’s feature wasn’t originally meant to be funny at all.
BACKGROUND:
This video is part of an extended series of educational videos from Mississippi State University in the early 1950s. Parts of them of still useful today, but only if you can get over the heavy-hand teaching method and the very antiquated feel. I can, but only barely.
Upside:
The goals should still be taught today: good manners, consideration of others, and socially pleasant behavior. It’s crazy though because it’s so far removed from our own time and ways of interacting that it seems like satire, (that’s why it’s a Funny Friday feature.)
• But seriously, it made me stop to consider how I might be more polite. (Gosh, Beaver, maybe good manners are important!)
• Most of these actors would have turned into anti-establishment, long-haired, sexually uninhibited hippies about a decade later. (So much for a cutting edge education delivery method with expected outcomes. HA!)
Downside:
• The angle seems poorly positioned at the beginning as “a way to get what you what” instead of how to be mature or enjoyable to be around.
• It has nothing about texting etiquette. Major oversight! ;)
• Is it about practicing pretenses and inauthenticity? A bit. BLECKkk!
VIEWING TIP:
Try to not be cynical when you watch this. It’s easy sometimes to disparage things from other eras. We live in a cynical time! if you can manage it, try to appreciate this as a “time-capsule” of another time and a culture removed from ours today (for better and for worse).
The next post will go live on Sunday. It starts a series I’m really interested in and, golly, I hope to see you soon! That would be swell!
Hey! One more thing! Try the new subscription app to get an update when posts go live.
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Protected: A 7 Step Discernment Process
An Inmate’s Mission (dispatches from Prison Ministry)
As some of you know, I’m ministering at the Federal Prison: FCI Schuylkill.
1,330 male inmates. Our class has 31.
I gain so many insights from my brothers there. So, it seems a terrible waste not to share some of them here.
We just finished up on lesson on Finding Your Mission.
We talked about what Jesus’ mission was. We talked about our own missions.
Some of them hadn’t thought of the concept and surely didn’t like it apply to them behind bars.
… if you are in prison, it’s really high time you find your mission…
But, that’s true for all of us.
I’m learning right along with them. The pressure is higher to learn lessons to help and heal you when you live behind bars, but the lessons themselves tend to be quite the same.
So far, the ground is fertile and the spiritual thirst is fervent!
The hearts of the those who choose to come on Monday’s is “the good soil”!
(If it was half of this at church the world WOULD be on fire with it!)
MISSION for inmates?
In reading the verse that is essentially Jesus’ mission statement (and also a prophecy from Isaiah) I realized that I have the same mission. It came into sharp focus.
“I’m setting literal captives free with the Good News.”
Jesus came, taught, brought and lived the Good News, died, rose, and then…left.
He didn’t stay where everyone would surely try to force him to be king (or pope, or whatever). Everyone still wanted to be free of the Romans. Except for a few of his students and friends and a few family members, everyone would be missing the point.
The Jews were captives of the Romans. That didn’t change when Jesus was here or after he left.
The Kingdom of God doesn’t free you in that way.
The invitation was (and is) to be free from the captivity of sin and death and the mindsets that keep us imprisoned (or in the case of my brothers…it puts you in an actual prison).
The Good News was and is the hope, the reality, the plan fulfilled: that God came to reconcile us to him, forgive us, and make things right. Little by little we carry it out and remake the world.
Little by little we provide the impact of authentic justice in the world.
It starts, for me, in jail along side my brothers. As these men transform, so will their world and the world, at large.
What a joy it was to tell my brothers that they are truly missionaries with a genuine mission behind the bars!
They are light in a dark place.
No time is wasted.
They are NOT just doing their time; The are making up for wasting it.
Their mission has begun, and no one can stop it. Once you’ve been set free, you are free indeed!
Jesus is our model and so is his mission.
Are you doing time too? Or are you on your mission?
Luke 4:14
Then Jesus returned to Galilee, filled with the Holy Spirit’s power. Reports about him spread quickly through the whole region.
15 He taught regularly in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
16 When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures.
17 The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where this was written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, 19 and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.[f]”
20 He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. All eyes in the synagogue looked at him intently.
21 Then he began to speak to them. “The Scripture you’ve just heard has been fulfilled this very day!”
If you can help us, we need it. Badly. Monday nights 6-8:30. Let me know!
Prayer of Communal Lament: For Franklin Regional HS
My small hometown–Murrysville, PA–is undergoing a time of shock and pain because of the Alex Hribal’s attack. Two steak knives and a blood bath. Many heroes were made, but the event was and is traumatic–rocking the community to its core.
My young niece (the daughter of my brother’s who is a Franklin Regional Alumnus from the 1990s) was not allowed to attend her classes at the elementary building at Franklin Regional and her street shut down as FBI, State Police, and legions of first responders, media, and others have swarmed the scene.
My family’s church, the church were I was married, mourns as an entire community and feels trauma and pain deeply because several from their youth group teen were wounded. Some of them have undergone surgery.
All are expected to survive. Praise be to God for that grace.
It would be easy to say this youth of 16 years old is a monster, but students attest that he was very nice. Answers for why it all happened are left unanswered at this time.
In these times, the community of faith raises its voice in communal lament. We are comforted by each other and by a good God who is with us in our pain.
Sadly, violence has become a normal occurrence in school settings… and it may be your hometown that suffers next. But, parish the thought!
If not that, than surely you and your community will encounter pain and loss.
For that, here are some thoughts on Communal Lament.
1. About 1/3 of the Psalms are songs of lament. They are meant to be sung as prayers. They can be read with that in mind.
2. God invites us to cry out in our pain, not to suppress it, or put on a “happy face”. That kind of honesty dignifies our feelings and helps us feel our emotions fully, so we can move toward healing.
3. Communal laments are always meant to be expressed in the context of ongoing faith and trust in God.
4. Our laments (communal and individual) are a normal response to the pain and loss of life and living; they help us experience greater bonds of community and healing from God.
5. Laments of the psalms are unvarnished. That is an important quality to understand. They depict the anguish, desperation, pain, and messy feelings that often smack of ill-intension toward enemies and abusers, in parts. They may seem to condone retaliatory violence. But, that’s not the end of the story (song)…
6. If the reader or hearer pays close attention, she or he will notice each song ends in hope and trust in the Lord. This is key to the communal lament. All is left in God’s hands.
(In this way, our burdens lift and our faith grows.)
7. Communal laments are a cry from a whole group for Justice (things to be put to rights) and this ultimately necessitates the elements of…
• Mercy
• Forgiveness
• Reconciliation
• Restoration
• Redemption
Here is a resource on the types and categories of Psalms. May they be of comfort to you.
Join with your community and raise your voices in lament when your hearts are heavy with sadness, pain, and grief.
For your reflection:
Psalm 63
A psalm of David, regarding a time when David was in the wilderness of Judah.
1 O God, you are my God;
I earnestly search for you.
My soul thirsts for you;
my whole body longs for you
in this parched and weary land
where there is no water.
2 I have seen you in your sanctuary
and gazed upon your power and glory.
3 Your unfailing love is better than life itself;
how I praise you!
4 I will praise you as long as I live,
lifting up my hands to you in prayer.
5 You satisfy me more than the richest feast.
I will praise you with songs of joy.
6 I lie awake thinking of you,
meditating on you through the night.
7 Because you are my helper,
I sing for joy in the shadow of your wings.
8 I cling to you;
your strong right hand holds me securely.
9 But those plotting to destroy me will come to ruin.
They will go down into the depths of the earth.
10 They will die by the sword
and become the food of jackals.
11 But the king will rejoice in God.
All who trust in him will praise him,
while liars will be silenced.