Ahhh, fall is in the air! This is for sure my favorite time of year. The leaves haven't started changing yet, but I hope the trees will be pretty here.
News on the job front: I'm employed!! I was approved by the state licensing board to start practicing so I had my first client last week. Very exciting. Because my amount of hours there is not big right now and may be slow in building, I've been hunting for another part time job. God provides and I got a job at a preschool/daycare here. The interviews were interesting. The owner (did a second interview with her) has started orphanages all over the world using the Pikler approach. I hadn't heard of it before, but I'm interested to learn more about it. So the hours there will be good. I'll be there from 10-2, M-F. Then the rest of the afternoon and evenings I can be at the counseling center. I think I'll start there on Monday.
The other thing that is not officially in the works, is that I am hoping to teach a class to home school seniors about interpersonal relationships and communication a couple of times a week. This has been one of these things that I really believe God laid on me. Soooo, I'm praying about it and will have to wait and see if people sign up. I'm interesting in combining mission work and mft, and I think this class would be potential info that I could use in other countries.
So that's my life at the moment. In two weekends, it's fair time, and Tricia's birthday!!! She wants to do a 5k the morning of her b-day, so I've agreed to do that. As usual, I'm not in that good of shape, but it will be fun.
Happy Friday and Happy Weekend!!!
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Real Reality Really Realized
In this post "we" will refer to myself and a few others I've met throughout my life. "I" will refer to multiple parts/views/personalities/thoughts/feelings/actions/words (that are not claimed to be original) of myself.
Why is it that we don't like to verbalize reality? Of course some would say that it's not reality until you speak it, but I'm not going there, because I think that's only partially true. Plus, I'm the one creating reality on this blog, so I'm calling truth as I see it.
For whatever reason, situations, interactions, feelings, thoughts, actions, and so on take on new power when spoken. There are two, maybe three sides of this. I guess there could be even more sides of this. Speech can take us in a positive direction, a negative direction, or maybe in a rare case it might not change a thing (although I don't know if this third option is really possible). Something about speaking makes things more real. Really, you say, can reality become more real? I don't know, but I said it, so now it's real.
Often until something is spoken it's nebulous, floating, vague, maybe seemingly very real, but speaking it creates or morphs into it a new it.
Sometimes speaking reality makes us realize that the reality we're speaking is absurd and that we really don't know what we're talking about. This usually happens when we speak that reality in the presence of others who see reality differently or more broadly than we do.
Then there are times where we speak reality and we experience freedom. Whatever that thought or feeling or secret or interactional pattern was, has now been not only seen, but called what it is and the power of saying it makes the thought, feeling, secret, interactional pattern, etc., somehow less powerful.
Then there are times when we speak a feeling or thought or situation, etc. that morphs reality into something that feels almost overwhelming and permanent and shall I say, real? Suddenly we realize that by speaking reality, reality is changed and we can't continue on as we have been. And even though we don't necessarily like how things have been, the overwhelmingness of verbally recognizing reality is too much for ourselves or for others, so maybe we should have stayed quiet, and we should have quietly subdued or put to rest the thought, feeling, situation, etc. So I wonder, how's that been working for us? Well, at least the unspoken reality of what we dislike is familiar. Familiar reality is the more natural way than unknown reality. At least in familiar reality, we still have control, right?
Sometimes spoken reality is empowering. Sometimes we don't know who we are unless it is spoken by ourselves or by others to us about us. Certain parts of ourselves have been floating, hanging around, but not realized. Of course the opposite can be true, but I believe that's covered in the preceding paragraph.
Does reality really change when spoken? (Ahh, back to the third option. I love when I come full circle on accident.) It actually depends. If we're hearing, are we listening? And if we're listening are we acting?
Does it even matter if reality changes when it is spoken? It matters. Our choices of words matter.
Could I have written the previous sentence in place of all those other paragraphs? Probably. But just keepking it real - it was time to clear up the murkiness of understanding reality.
Why is it that we don't like to verbalize reality? Of course some would say that it's not reality until you speak it, but I'm not going there, because I think that's only partially true. Plus, I'm the one creating reality on this blog, so I'm calling truth as I see it.
For whatever reason, situations, interactions, feelings, thoughts, actions, and so on take on new power when spoken. There are two, maybe three sides of this. I guess there could be even more sides of this. Speech can take us in a positive direction, a negative direction, or maybe in a rare case it might not change a thing (although I don't know if this third option is really possible). Something about speaking makes things more real. Really, you say, can reality become more real? I don't know, but I said it, so now it's real.
Often until something is spoken it's nebulous, floating, vague, maybe seemingly very real, but speaking it creates or morphs into it a new it.
Sometimes speaking reality makes us realize that the reality we're speaking is absurd and that we really don't know what we're talking about. This usually happens when we speak that reality in the presence of others who see reality differently or more broadly than we do.
Then there are times where we speak reality and we experience freedom. Whatever that thought or feeling or secret or interactional pattern was, has now been not only seen, but called what it is and the power of saying it makes the thought, feeling, secret, interactional pattern, etc., somehow less powerful.
Then there are times when we speak a feeling or thought or situation, etc. that morphs reality into something that feels almost overwhelming and permanent and shall I say, real? Suddenly we realize that by speaking reality, reality is changed and we can't continue on as we have been. And even though we don't necessarily like how things have been, the overwhelmingness of verbally recognizing reality is too much for ourselves or for others, so maybe we should have stayed quiet, and we should have quietly subdued or put to rest the thought, feeling, situation, etc. So I wonder, how's that been working for us? Well, at least the unspoken reality of what we dislike is familiar. Familiar reality is the more natural way than unknown reality. At least in familiar reality, we still have control, right?
Sometimes spoken reality is empowering. Sometimes we don't know who we are unless it is spoken by ourselves or by others to us about us. Certain parts of ourselves have been floating, hanging around, but not realized. Of course the opposite can be true, but I believe that's covered in the preceding paragraph.
Does reality really change when spoken? (Ahh, back to the third option. I love when I come full circle on accident.) It actually depends. If we're hearing, are we listening? And if we're listening are we acting?
Does it even matter if reality changes when it is spoken? It matters. Our choices of words matter.
Could I have written the previous sentence in place of all those other paragraphs? Probably. But just keepking it real - it was time to clear up the murkiness of understanding reality.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
The Screwtape Letters
I started The Screwtape Letters awhile back and have picked it up again. If you've never read it, it's a series of letters from a demon uncle, "Screwtape", to his demon nephew, "Wormwood", about how to best tempt their patients, specifically Wormwood's "patients", who are Christians. "The Enemy" refers to God. And "Our Father" refers to Satan.
Here is Chapter 8. It's kind of long, but obviously I think it's good, or I wouldn't have copied it here. It's taken from Lewis, C.S. (1942). The Screwtape letters. C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd.
"My Dear Wormwood,
So you 'have great hopes that the patient's religious phase is dying away', have you? I alwyas though the Training College had gone to pieces since they put old Slubgob at the head of it, and now I am sure. Has no one ever told you about the law of Undulation?
Humans are amphibians -- half spirit and half animal. The Enemy's determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him.) As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual chage, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation -- the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every departmnent of his life -- his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and boldily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty. The dryness and dullness through which your patient is now going are not, as you fondly suppose, your workmanship; they are merely a natural phenomenon which will do us no good unless you make a good use of it.
To decide what the best use of it is, you must ask what use the Enemy wants to make of it, and then do the opposite. Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of seflhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an apalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself -- creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself; the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.
And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is preparped to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy concquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs -- to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by conintual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot 'tempt' to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
But of course the troughs afford opportunities to our side also. Next week I will give you some hints on how to exploit them, Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape."
Here is Chapter 8. It's kind of long, but obviously I think it's good, or I wouldn't have copied it here. It's taken from Lewis, C.S. (1942). The Screwtape letters. C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd.
"My Dear Wormwood,
So you 'have great hopes that the patient's religious phase is dying away', have you? I alwyas though the Training College had gone to pieces since they put old Slubgob at the head of it, and now I am sure. Has no one ever told you about the law of Undulation?
Humans are amphibians -- half spirit and half animal. The Enemy's determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him.) As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual chage, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation -- the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every departmnent of his life -- his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and boldily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty. The dryness and dullness through which your patient is now going are not, as you fondly suppose, your workmanship; they are merely a natural phenomenon which will do us no good unless you make a good use of it.
To decide what the best use of it is, you must ask what use the Enemy wants to make of it, and then do the opposite. Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of seflhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an apalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself -- creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself; the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.
And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is preparped to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy concquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs -- to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by conintual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot 'tempt' to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
But of course the troughs afford opportunities to our side also. Next week I will give you some hints on how to exploit them, Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape."
Friday, September 3, 2010
The Townhouse
Somehow I deleted my post when I posted these pictures, and I'm too lazy to retype. Anyway, I took these with my friend Tennille's camera when she was here last week. Her sister Lisa and Lisa's baby were over and the baby was sleeping, so that's why some of the ones in the previous post are dark. Here are a few more pictures. And I didn't get any pictures of upstairs, so this is only the lower half. My favorite part of this place is the back patio.
My back yard. This picture doesn't show how large the patio is. The two sides are walled/partitioned, so there's privacy from the neighbors and their little dogs.
Lisa and baby Teia. There's a mirror over the fireplace which gives this part of the living room a more spacious, and I think, kind of strange look.
Tennille and I with Dr. Peppers from Quick Trip. Quick Trip is a midwest tradition I introduced her to. And she loved it.
The long stairway. There is a closet at the top and my room is immediately to the right of that.
From the entrance. The half-bath is to the left and the kitchen, which you can't see is immediately to the right.
The couch I got from Lisa and Ted, with Tennille sitting on it.
My back yard. This picture doesn't show how large the patio is. The two sides are walled/partitioned, so there's privacy from the neighbors and their little dogs.
Lisa and baby Teia. There's a mirror over the fireplace which gives this part of the living room a more spacious, and I think, kind of strange look.
Tennille and I with Dr. Peppers from Quick Trip. Quick Trip is a midwest tradition I introduced her to. And she loved it.
The long stairway. There is a closet at the top and my room is immediately to the right of that.
From the entrance. The half-bath is to the left and the kitchen, which you can't see is immediately to the right.
View from the dining room of the front door. Not sure why I took this.
We don't have a din. rm table yet, but these are the barstools that were given to me. :D I love them.
View into the kitchen. The window is between the washer and dryer. I wish there were some doors that we could close when washing and drying because it's pretty loud. But I am SOOO thankful to have a washer and dryer - also from Lisa and Ted.
View from the kitchen into the dining room and over into the living room.
La cocina. After the patio, it's my second favorite "room" in the house.
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