Proverbs 18 vs 13 says, 'To answer before listening — that is folly and shame.' Whoops, my hand is up. Is anyone else's hand up? This is not a great start. One way in which you can definitively show Love to someone is by listening without interrupting them. And i do confess that i do this way too much. Well the opposite of this, the interrupting part. Maybe i get half points for listening AND [...]
yesterday tbV and i attended the wedding of some friends we have made in americaland, namely Kristin and the Beatles [as i call Matt, cos to me he looks like 2 or more of the Beatles rolled into one] and had a really fun time. the wedding was outside and the highlight of the event [apart from all of the wedding-related stuff of course] was this young flowergirl who completely messed up her job and [...]
this is one of my favourite photos of myself and it is titled "Hebiggermeless" based on the verse in John 3.30 where John the Baptist, talking about Jesus, says, "He must become greater; I must become less." it is the essence of Christianity and Jesus-following and problems always erupt when we forget that and this picture helps keep me grounded by reminding me how pathetically small i am compared to something relatively tiny that God [...]
i don't have an iPhone slash any phone right now and so don't have the ability to Instagram [which is something i'm not too sad about cos much like predictive text and apparently mac computers until you get them you think they are silly] but there were a couple of snapshots from the last day at CCDA conference that i would like to share, each of which could probably be worked into their own blog [...]
on the way to the CCDA conference in Minneapolis that a bunch of us from the Simple Way are currently attending, three of us stopped over at a Nurturing Communities event hosted by David Janzen who has just released a book on community and met up with a bunch of people from different intentional communities all over the country and spent a really great day connecting and dialoging and having an opportunity to connect with [...]
i don't know a crazy lot about politics, nor do i claim to. although i do try to keep on top of the daily/weekly goings on back home in South Africa as well as the major news events with daily visits to internet news sites like iafrica.com and bbc.com so that i have a general idea of what is going on in the world. so when the OCCUPY movement came along, i had some idea [...]
in morning prayer this week we read from Matthew 9.27-34 about how Jesus heals two blind men and frees another man from some demon. what was interesting about the translation we were reading from was that it said this: 'As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed Him, calling out, "Have mercy on us, Son of David!" When He had gone indoors, the blind men came to Him, and He asked them, "Do [...]
Ambition: the dark side, the light side Dalene Reyburn I suffer from various Double-Edged Personality-Strength disorders. If you’re human you probably do too. ‘Cause your greatest strength is always what most quickly becomes your greatest weakness. For now, I’ll just ‘fess up to one. I have Ambition, which has led to a secondary infection known as Competitiveness. There are a number of different strains of the Ambition Virus, so it’s important that I clarify. I’m [...]
these are a series of posts i am sharing that i have taken from a series called 'How to Love your Woman/Man better' from a while back and also a series titled 'One way to Love your spouse better' that i ran more recently [with the input of some friends] - there are many incredible gems here that can help you as you look to contribute to a healthy and thriving marriage and i hope [...]
a few years ago i visited new york with a good buddy of mine, justin paton, and one of the touristy things we came across was the Charging Bull, a 3,200-kg (7,100 lb) bronze sculpture by Arturo Di Modica that stands Wall Street in Manhattan. being a touristy symbol, we had to wait a fair amount of time to get a picture with it and so naturally when we did i had to be a [...]