Sargassum

 Sargassum is that brown seaweed that you see often on the Gulf Coast in summer and fall. It is brown, thick and never is/was attached to the ocean floor. Off the east Coast of the USA is a "sea" surrounded by four major ocean currents. It is often calm and full of sargassum.

Sargassum is a great habitat for small fish and other ocean creatures because the thick mats give good cover. There is one small fish whose coloration and fins are such to make it blend in beautifully with the thick sargassum-google it.

I understand that it is being used as a fertilizer some places. That would be neat, for there is certainly plenty of it.

This wasn't the worst of it. I don't like to take my phone to the sandy/salty beach, but I did make an exception for this.

G^d's wonderful world--including seaweed.

Another Wood Story

 It is 13 June, and the hottest day of the year so far. So you can guess what I am doing, right? Yes, I am running a wood splitter. I would have gotten this done a month or more back, but a friend had the splitter tied up and I have just gotten access.

As you might imagine, I am sweating big time. I spent about 45 min earlier setting everything up, and now about an hour splitting all the close logs and stacking the split ones to get them out of the way. This wood is making me warm...and it will again when I burn it. I expect heavy cramping tonight right after I fall asleep--so I will try to take preventive measures.

It is rewarding work. You can SEE the progress you are making. You are accomplishing something. Much of my life has spent doing things that you cannot see so well. I taught, and though my students seemed to learn, there really wasn't much to see. Same with ministry and even raising our family.

Yes, there is some reward in seeing something done. I will take on faith, that there is something being done in those areas I cannot see.

How about you? Visible or invisible accomplishments?

A Great Helpmeet for 50 years

 On Monday, 19 June, if I don't die from working in this heat before then, we will celebrate 50 years of wedded bliss. Well, if we are talking about bliss, then only 46 years of bliss for me, and only about 40 for Brenda.  I am kidding. G^d blessed me with a great wife, mother, helpmeet, and friend. She is all of those.

She has helped me in raising 5 kids--or maybe I helped her would be a lot more accurate. She has helped me of late with Wordle puzzles, and just yesterday she ran the wood-splitter with me. We have painted together and put up--dare I say it--wallpaper together.

G^d has blessed us with many trips together--at home and abroad. These experiences have been gifts from G^d. Most of you are familiar with the woman of Prov. 31. This is my Brendie. She is a sweetie and excels in her roles, as varied as they are.

I thank G^d for our 50 years together. It has been a bit tough at times, but our life experience tells us a lot of our friends have had it much rougher.

Most marriages these days don't last 50 years. We recognize that this is a special milestone--and not our accomplishment but G^ds.

Thanks be to G^d for a wonderful helpmeet these 50 years.  Amen!

Books Read Recently

Summer and hunting season are my two times per year to read. I just finished two books this past week. First I read an old, old book, from about 1920 on Jesus the Master Teacher. It was a bit hard to follow in a few places, but a worthwhile read. My personal goal is to become more like Jesus, so I want to read as much as I can about Him. The second book I HIGHLY recommend. It is Prof George Yancey’s book, , Beyond Racial Division. Dr. Yancey shows the flaws in current approaches and suggests a new, logical means for building harmony. The book is clearly written and worth your time.

I read Brian Gadawa’s Hollywood Worldviews a couple of weeks back. I enjoyed the book and was surprised to see some few movies I have seen described in ways I had not appreciated. His analysis seems very good and is a worthwhile read especially for movie lovers.

Fruit of the Spirit

 When were at the beach two weeks back, we did a devotional every morning. One of the ladies, Melissa, gave a devo on the Fruit of the Spirit from Gal 5:22-23. For some reason I have struggled with memorizing these, but she shared a simple thing that made it easy.

The first three fruit are ONE syllable: Love, Joy, Peace.

The next three fruit are TWO syllables: Patience, Kindness, Goodness.

The last three fruit are THREE syllables: Gentleness, Faithfulness, and Self-control.

I am not sure why this simple association makes it easy to recall all 9, but it does for me. I shall start looking for more tactics to improve my Scripture memory. Heretofore, the only time I seem to be able to memorize Scriptures is when I am teaching them. Or occasionally when they strike me, like Matt 5:10-12.

I may get around to doing a teaching on the Fruit. Starting with the first three--the simplest, yet perhaps the building blocks for the next 3. These first 6 may enable us to practice what follows--Gentleness, Faithfulness, and Self-control.

We shall see.

Food

At the beach we ate out more, by far, than we ever do at home. Also we often ate supper with 12-20 of our beach friends. We went to some pretty nice restaurants and Don paid for several of our meals. It was interesting to be in these circumstances and able to observe closely others’ restaurant customs.

We, and this is no surprise, eat remarkably cheaply. We were impressed at how much a seafood platter costs. I was also impressed with how much food we consume. We southerners can put away some chow!

Brenda and I split fish tacos on a couple of occasions, and had fish fingers once. I never even knew they had fingers. We never got too exotic and all was Kosher.

We loved being with those folks and breaking bread together. I must say that I do like eating at home even more than eating out.

May Days

Our Faculty Commons ministry, for the last two COVID years has held “Ministry Days” in May, whilst we were at the beach. I tried to tune in to a class on Lincoln on Leadership, after reading the book. I enjoyed the book, but our wifi was too bad to get much out of the class. I also did the class on the boo Deeper, which went much better on wifi. I also did the first two classes of Design Thinking with Shawn Cramer. I really like this class on group problem-solving. It reminds me of how we did science as a team. I fear, with some basis, that it will never be really adapted fully.

I enjoy these classes and hope they are improving my approach. I am not a fan of zoom learning, but we don’t have other options. I do think that our approaches on zoom are better than at first.

The main think I recall from last year’s classes is that the rules of grammar no longer apply. Also, that punctuation can be effectively used to control the flow and speed of writing. Beyond that, I don’t recall, but at my age that is to be expected.