Tams' Tranquil Tales

Which theologian are you? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Karl Barth The daddy of 20th Century theology. You perceive liberal theology to be a disaster and so you insist that the revelation of Christ, not human experience, should be the starting point for all theology. Karl Barth 87% Anselm 87% John Calvin 73% Charles Finney 73% Martin Luther 67% Augustine 67% Jonathan Edwards 60% Friedrich Schleiermacher 53% Jürgen Moltmann 47% Paul Tillich 13%

Junk! Blog Challenge #10

This week Suzanne's blog challenge is junk: "Fun junk! Open a junk drawer...it's probably in your kitchen, your garage or your desk. Post a photo of one item that's been there for a long time and explain why you haven't thrown the item away yet OR post a photo of the whole drawer and talk about how it came to be a junk drawer and what kinds of stuff go in there."

So here's mine!

Originally *I* wasn't going to have a junk drawer. I've cleaned it out at least a dozen times, especially when I've been on-board with The Flylady. But there are always those things that just don't have another "home" right now. They end up here.

Our junk drawer is the smallest drawer in the kitchen, at the end of the row.

Yes, those are paint brushes. I see liquid nails, what used to be sterile tape for bandaging wounds, anti-bacterial hand cleaner, batteries (AAs -- we never have enough of these), Marks-a-lot markers in 4 cheery colors (red, green, blue and black), a wheel off one of my plastic drawer storage containers (the only remaining one, I'm willing to bet), a spool of thread, post-it notes, an emergency candle and a flashlight, a scissor sharpener, the box (just the box) from a pocketknife, crayons, a spool of ribbon, postage stamps from not-one-but-two price increases ago, a couple screw drivers, a pair of vise grips, and a balloon.

I get teased about having OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) tendencies. I'm not, but it's people's way of letting me know I'm stressing over "the small stuff," in their opinion. I've relaxed A LOT since having children. Children teach you to smell the roses, not arrange them; to play with the toys, not collect them. But, "reveals" like these always remind me of Monica from the television show Friends. Remember her?? She was completely obsessive about cleaning and organization. So much so that on one show, when her brother, Ross, stops dating a young woman because of the state of her apartment, Monica asks if she can clean it! Just the mental image of the other woman's clutter was keeping Monica from sleeping. But in another show, we discover that Monica has a secret -- a locked closet full of disorganized JUNK. I'm just reminded that no matter how "together" someone appears, there's probably some area of their life that's disorganized, or about which they are insecure, lack confidence, or experience emotional vertigo.

In fact, I'm convinced that being too organized, too rigid, too uptight is unhealthy. We need to have some chaos in our lives. We need some area where we can let our hair down. We don't always have to be in control, right, and systematized; sometimes we can just BE.

Ya! That's it! My clutter is healthy!!

Goodbye to a Friend

Today our family said 'goodbye' to a friend . . . Homer, our bearded dragon.

Here's a layout from our family scrapbook.
The three pictures on the left are of Homer. In the top one, I was preparing her a salad and she leapt into the bowl. So much for ME eating anymore of it. She middle pic shows her lounging by the pool, and swimming in my tub in the bottom one. On the right are some of her babies.

Andrew was the official owner and caretaker of Homer. He earned the money to adopt her, when she was only a few weeks old, and about 4 inches long.

Her strange, masculine name has an interesting story. Andrew topped off his earnings with money promised by Granddaddy if he could hit a home run in baseball . . . Get it? Homer ---- Home Run. Since determining whether dragons are boys or girls is very difficult, almost impossible when they are young, Homer it was. And Homer she remained, even after we realized she was a she.

We watched her grow to adulthood, about 20 inches in length. Beardies come in a variety of colors, some bred especially for their vibrancy. But Homer was like our family -- just your average dragon. We learned to keep life insects and how to make good salads for her to eat. She enjoyed sitting on our shoulder and hanging out by the pool in the sunshine.

We survived the first winter that she brumated. Brumation is similar to hibernation. Beardies sleep much longer during the cold days of winter. They eat very little, and if you aren't prepared for it, you can think they are dying.

She almost did die last winter when she prolapsed. We rushed her to Birmingham where a great veterinary clinic for exotic animals was able to help her. We hand fed her for weeks, nursing her back to health.

I must confess that I didn't want a lizard . . . a reptile . . . in my house. Andrew really had to convince me, but I got very attached to her. She enjoyed being held, and wanted to be near "the action" in our house. She liked being stroked under her chin, had an affinity for watermelon, turnip greens, and the occasional wax worm. She loved taking a warm bath in my garden tub, and watching her swim was hilarious! I learned that an animal need neither have fur, nor wag or purr, to express their affection. Nor did she need either of those to gain mine.

Seven years ago this spring, this strange, unusual creature joined our family. Along the way, she joined also our hearts. Somewhere in the night, last evening, she left us, peacefully and of natural causes, we believe. Like so many of these precious pets that grace our lives, they teach us about love and loss.

The Power of Prayer

[March 2008 newsletter]

As we continue to talk about the spiritual disciplines, this month we are talking about prayer, with excerpts from Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth by Richard Foster.

"Of all the spiritual disciplines prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father. . . . To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives. The closer we come to the heartbeat of God the more we see our need and the more we desire to be conformed to Christ.”

A few years ago, I attended a seminar on prayer. One of the presenters made the following statement: “At the heart of an absence of Christian victory in living is an inactive or ineffective prayer life. At the heart of churches that don’t grow is the absence of a strong prayer ministry. At the heart of an individual Christian who feels distant or disconnected from God, who cannot see the hand of God moving in their lives and in the world, is the absence of effective prayer. At the same time, the opposite is true. A person who is living a victorious Christian life, even in the midst of trial, will be a person who prayer often. Churches that consistently grow, pray.”

Another church in our conference started a Sunday morning prayer walk many years ago. Each Sunday morning, before Sunday school, the pastor and any who wished to join him would pray in each room of the church. Over the piano, they would pray that the music would be filled with the glory of God, that the words would convey a message of faith, and that the music would usher them into a worshipful atmosphere. Over each pew, they would pray that those who sat there would have their ears open to the Word. In the children’s rooms, they would pray that God would surround those children with His love, and that the Holy Spirit would empower their parents to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. At the front door, they would pray that all who entered there would feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, and experience God’s amazing grace. The same year the prayer walk began, the church began to grow . . . and has continued to grow EVERY YEAR since then.

You’ve probably heard the little saying “a family that prays together, stays together.” The same is true for a church. A church that prays together, grows together. There are many types of prayer: discursive prayer, mental prayer, centering prayer. The prayer of quiet, the prayer of relinquishment, the prayer of faith, and the prayer of guidance. Though we can learn to pray more effectively, there is no RIGHT way to pray. There’s no magic formula that makes God do what we ask, nor must we get the words just right in order to pry God into action. Rather, we should seek to pour our hearts out to our Father, knowing that He cares for us, wants to hear from us, and longs to speak back to us about our concerns. He loved us before we even loved Him. He sought out relationship with us before we wanted one with Him. He will not refuse to listen to you because you “didn’t do it right.”

All the things that can be said about prayer could fill a library! I want to tell you about “Flash Prayers,” an idea developed by Frank Laubach. He sought to learn to live so that to see someone was to pray for them, to hear someone was to pray for them, to have anyone come to mind was to pray for them. As you pass someone on the street, quickly, silently pray for them. When you hear a child cry, pray for him and his parents. If you hear an ambulance, pray for the situation. Many times the person you pray for will never know and have no response, but every now and then, someone will suddenly turn to look at you, usually smiling, as though you’ve spoken out loud to them. Laubach says “We could change the whole atmosphere of a nation if thousands of us would constantly throw a cloak of prayer around everyone in our circle of nearness.”
“Units of prayer combined, like drops of water, make an ocean which defies resistance.” E.M. Bounds in Power through Prayer. We need an ocean of God’s love to sweep across our world, convicting, cleansing, forgiving, and drawing into holiness and righteousness. See how many drops in the ocean you can contribute!

May you pray without ceasing!

For more information on prayer, I recommend the following books:
Power through Prayer, E.M. Bounds
Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, Richard Foster
Clinging: The Experience of Prayer, Emilie Griffin
Earth & Altar: The Community of Prayer in a Self-Bound Society, Eugene Peterson
Contemplative Prayer, Thomas Merton
Prayer: The Mightiest Force in the World and Learning the Vocabulary of God, Frank Laubach
Intercessory Prayer (and anything else by), Dutch Sheets

The Golden Compass

I first heard about the movie The Golden Compass from a booklet sent to me by The Catholic League. You can access it here. I'm not Catholic, and not sure how I got a space on their mailing list. My family wasn't familiar with the books, so the release of this movie would probably have gone unnoticed in our home.

As the release date approached, I've been bombarded with emails urging our family not to see the movie, and even to boycott theaters that show it. I've had it outlined in detail how a "good Christian" family will not view this movie. I prefer to be given information with which I will make my own decision, rather than being told what a "good Christian" will, or won't, do.

I've read the review at Plugged In Online. I consulted Snopes, and Christianity Today's movie reviews. Everyone has an opinion, it seems: MSNBC, CNN, and Albert Mohler.

Then today, I received a weekly email from our Bishop. You can access it here:
http://www.northalabamaumc.org/bishop_column_recent.asp and read it below. [The emphasis is mine.]

From Bishop William Willimon, North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church:

As part of our Conference-wide celebration of United Methodist believing, I've asked some of our pastors to contribute their thoughts on the joy of the Wesleyan way of Christianity. Today Wade Griffith, Sr. Pastor at Trinity United Methodist Church in Tuscaloosa, evaluates the recent movie, The Golden Compass based on Phillip Pullman's book, as he reflects on the hallmarks of Methodism.

Hallmarks of Methodism

We are Free to Think and Engage the Culture as Ambassadors of
Christ

Two weeks ago I preached a sermon that focused on the response we as Methodist Christians should have to elements of popular culture that appear to be attacking our faith. Having recently gotten an email insisting that all faithful Christians must boycott a film entitled, The Golden Compass, I was led to reconsider my position on how we relate and respond to the culture at large. To be honest, the email I received only succeeded in raising my curiosity about the movie. Shortly after getting it, I went and purchased the books so that I could find out what all the fuss was about. Turns out, the movie, The Golden Compass (TGC), was based on a book by the same name & that book is part of a trilogy of books by Phillip Pullman. The trilogy is ominously titled, His Dark Materials.

Over the Christmas holidays, I read the trilogy and found it to
be an imaginative, page-turner of a tale, full of magic, adventure, love, loyalty, and of course, good versus evil. There are even talking animals in this story, which begins, oddly enough, with a girl in a wardrobe. Sound familiar? It is almost as if Pullman’s tale was designed to be a foil to Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. Like Lewis’ Chronicles, Pullman’s story is a fantasy tale about the struggle between good and evil. However, unlike Lewis’ work, in Pullman’s world the church is the villain. The church in HDM is a caricature of the medieval church. It is more political than spiritual, and in it, the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been replaced by the Machiavellian ethics of institutional survival & the accumulation of power. Finally, the church in the trilogy exists only to control the lives of all people.

After reading the books, I was eager to share my thoughts with
the congregation. In HDM, I saw what the church would be like without the Holy Spirit. I saw what the church would be like without Christ as its head, exemplar and Lord. I was also prodded by my reading to look at our church anew to see if we have strayed from the path of Christ. Where are we working to accumulate our own power and influence? Where have we forgotten to wash feet, to live as servants and to carry our own cross? Finally, I was given an insight into the head of a non-believer…not something we get very often! Be honest, how many conversations per year do you have with strident, well-educated and articulate atheists. Clearly, Christianity doesn’t always look from the outside like it does to us from the inside!

In the final analysis, the church I know is absent from the
book! There is nothing in the book about compassion or helping the poor. There is nothing about grace, forgiveness or reconciliation. There is nothing about protecting human dignity and freedom. There is nothing about a life-changing relationship with a Lord who gave His only Son for us. There is certainly nothing about treating all people as children of God! Rather, the church in the book is a reactionary and power-hungry institution that ruthlessly attacks anything that challenges its power and influence. Hmmm, and my response to this portrait of the church (and our faith) is that I should angrily boycott it? (I wonder…did Pullman or the movie studio send out that email.) Seems like it encourages the kind of response that would only confirm Pullman’s picture of the church.

Surprisingly, the books left me feeling thankful. I am thankful to serve in a church where I can read what I like and have the freedom to make up my own mind! I am thankful that I worship in a church where I can disagree with the pastor and not get kicked out of the church. I am thankful to be in a denomination whose founder valued learning, dialogue and critical engagement with the culture. Most of all, I am thankful to love, serve and follow the God who the multiverse. That being the case, why would some work of fiction or any work of fiction scare me or rattle my cage? Do we forget that we serve the CREATOR. Yahweh! The Lord of Lords! When we engage the culture from a posture of suspicion and hostility, the culture reads it as anxiety and fear. Maybe they are right. On some subconscious level, are we afraid that the right book, question, idea or discovery will pop the balloon that is God? If not, why are we so scared. Do we really think God needs our defense and protection?

Despite the atheistic views it subtly and not so subtly espouses, I am thankful for TGC. It has reminded me to be a spiritual leader, not a CEO. It has reminded me to appreciate my denomination and faith. It has reminded me to show the world what we as a church are really about. We are “about” sharing the love that God has so richly given us in Jesus Christ. We are about helping people meet God through a relationship with Christ. We are about working for a world that conforms to God’s loving will--a world where the last truly are first and where no one lives in despair. We are about responding with love to friend and foe alike. We are about loving care. We are about hope.

Thanks be to God not only for this faith, but for a faith tradition that allows me to, “reunite [ing] the two so long disjoined: knowledge and vital piety.” Thanks be to God for a founder who believed, “In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, charity.” As Methodists, we have the freedom to read what we will and to think as we will. Mr. Pullman, if you are listening, I guess the church isn’t all about control after all.

My family will still probably pass on this movie, but I found this viewpoint refreshing and encouraging. I hope you will read all the evidence and reviews, and decide for yourself, too.

What Store Are You? Blog Challenge #7

Suzanne's Blog challenge # 7 is "What store best represents what type of person you are right now? Are you a Macy's or Wal-Mart type of person? Do you wish you were a different store? Take any direction you'd like; either where you shop in real life or comparing your personality to a particular store. Have fun with it!"

Hmm . . . .

They say you are what you eat. So am I the store where I shop the most?? If so, then I'm Walmart. I like that I can get groceries or gardening items, hardware stuff for remodeling or a tape runner for scrapbooking, shoes and a flash drive all on the same stop. One stop shopping. Though I hate to admit it, the convenience is more important to me than their low prices.

I've been contemplating what this may say about my personality. Do I opt for convenience over quality? Do words like 'cheap' and 'superficial' characterize my life? Does this reveal an inner conceit -- I want EVERYTHING I want at my fingertips all the time? Am I lazy? I'm not sure I can answer these questions, but they're worth contemplating.

I wish I was Bed-Bath-and-Beyond. Classy. Sophisticated. Refined. But not High Maintenance/Expensive, per se. Oh, well, everyone has to aspire to something, I guess. If Suzanne were to repeat this challenge in 5 years, maybe I could say that.

Meanwhile, I'll continue my search for answers . . . as soon as I get back from Walmart. ;-)

Positive Customer Service Blog Challenge #5

Suzanne's Blog challenge # 5 is about positive customer service. "Post an entry about a positive customer service experience you've had. Who was it with? Did you praise them on the spot? Did you go home and write a letter to the company management?"

I'm not as good at giving companies feedback as I think I should be. I'm working on it.

While we were at the Biltmore Estate, we took a total of four tours. One of the tour guides did an EXCELLENT job. She not only knew the tour script, but was able to answer questions. She made us feel like we got more than our money's worth. In fact, she's the reason we purchased a couple other tours. We let her know how much we appreciated the job she did, particularly after a later less-pleasing experience. We made a point to tell her boss, and then followed up with a note after we got home.

On the same trip, we asked a clerk at the hotel for restaurant recommendations. She sent us to a little place in a strip mall shopping center, a place we would not have tried on our own. It was a GREAT choice! Little Venice was the best Italian food I've ever eaten. We were so impressed that we ate there two out of the three nights we were there. So we let the hotel know we appreciated knowledgeable staff, and let the owner of Little Venice know as well. He said she would be getting a gift certificate. Hope he kept his word.