2017 is just around the corner... A lot of people agree that 2016 wasn't a super great year... David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Harper Lee, Ronnie Corbett, Prince, Muhammad Ali, Anton Yelchin, Kenny Baker [R2D2], Gene Wilder, Arnold Palmer, Leonard Cohen, Robert Vaughn, Andrew Sachs [Manuel from Fawlty Towers], John Glenn, Zsa Zsa Gabor, George Michael. Those are just some of the names of famous people we know who died this year and maybe this felt [...]
Time flies: You can't, they move too fast. [Think about it]. But yes, that would be an accurate description of my life, at least since we returned to South Africa in August of 2014. Non stop. i sit with things i want to do, things i need to do, a physical pile of books to be read [a whole lot that i have to provide reviews for on my blog], people i want to see, [...]
When tbV [the beautiful Val] and i were living in Oakland about a year ago, we came across a book titled ‘Free’ by a friend of ours we had met over here, Mark Scandrette. The tagline of the book is ‘Spending your Time and Money on What Matters Most’ and that really does sum up the book. We decided to gather some people together and work through the book over an eight week period. [...]
'test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil.' [1 Thessalonians 5.21-22] this is one of my favourite verses in the Bible - to be faithful to it, the verse is speaking specifically of prophecies, but i have found that it is a generally great life principle to extend to all things - hold on to the good, let go of the evil/hurtful/untrue. so when it comes to giving a [...]
the other day i was listening to one of my friends share some of their story with a group of people - four of our friends were speaking on the topic of serving God [and people] with our Time, our Talents [skills, giftings] and our Treasures [money, things] with each person dealing with a specific one of them. as i listened to Lara [who is, among other things, a mom, a wife, a daughter, a [...]
yesterday at the Simple Way we had our very first session of Conversations at the Simple Way which three of us had largely been working on pulling together for a while - 15 people signed up to hang out with us as we did a couple of different sessions including one on intentional community, a practical serving the community aspect, a story over lunch from someone in the neighborhood who is involved in doing some [...]
continuing with this series of new year’s evolutions – with the idea of moving beyond a dream list of ‘i wish this for next year’ to some specific steps and actions to put into place to help you transform yourself into a better person in 2012. and my next evolution suggestion is this: SPEND YOUR MONEY [AND TIME AND ENERGY] WELL: this one follows on from yesterday's live in the present (with the future in [...]
so i haven't been blogging here much lately - largely it's because tbV and i have been doing transcription work for the HSRC which takes up a lot of our time and involves a bigger lot of typing - listening to interviews on audio and typing them out and some of them are not very clear so it's a lot of focus and listening and scribing and so i guess i get a bit overtyped [...]
so i have been married for about 14 months yesterday and i still completely highly recommend it if it is to the right person - it is not always easy - it is sometimes really hard - but it is incredible and the pros definitely outbeat-up-and-leave-bleeding-behind-the-shed the cons... and i love the beautiful Val - really feel privileged and lucky and amazed that i have someone like her in my life... yay. the one thing [...]
