Trying Not To Be A Grinch

Okay, so I decided to write a Christmas blog. I wasn't going to because I didn't want to reveal the grinch side of me. Don't get me wrong I love Christmas. I love giving my kids and grandkids gifts and watching their eyes light up when they get something totally unexpected. Umm underwear is expected. What frustrates me is, that Christmas has to be centered around money. I realize that is when the retailers do the bulk of their business. I have the radio on all night long at work. Do you know how hard it is to find a radio station that doesn't play 24 hours of Christmas music starting the day after Thanksgiving? By the time Christmas rolls around I just want to break the silent night with the loudest scream I can muster. Fortunately I found an oldies station that didn't inflict that torture. On Christmas eve however I did get to hear "The 12 Days of Christmas" by the Muppets, and by the Mackenzie Brothers, so that was fun. Got me back in the mood a little bit. Then, today I read a post from a blog I follow,"A Personal Tao Musings." I've quoted him in the past. Once again he has given me inspiration. He has written how I feel without venting and revealing Mr. Grinch. He started out by saying what we all know but seldom do, that is, we need to live life fully everyday. The whole blog was good, but he had the greatest statement toward the end of the post. He said he loves it when people say "What Would Jesus Do? Well, What would Jesus do if He saw the way we celebrate His Holiday?" I guess that is how I feel. I'm also aware that some people don't make it a "Religious" holiday but, we can all slow down and reflect on the things that are truly meaningful to us. Thanks for letting me vent, Paul

Abbreviations Instead Of Conversations

Long before texting and Twitter the military found it was easier and faster to abbreviate to get a message out. All of a sudden the civilian caught on to this, we call bands by their initials even though they have names, we eat at BK, and I just can't bring myself to say KFC, to me it will always be Kentucky Fried Chicken. But in the last few months I've been told I need to become a part of the new millinium. Well, I have decided to. In a post back in October we talked about kindness. I'd like to expand on that. Although in that post, kindness was more of a balanced lifestyle, and being respectfull. Here, I'd like to remind everyone that there are acts of kindness. I haven't heard the term for some time but remember when the term "Random Acts Of Kindness" was floating around? I'd like to suggest we modernize these acts and simply call them RAK's. As a matter of fact this would be a good time of year to practice these RAK's. Helping people out to their car with their packages, even not being crabby in all the madness would be nice, but use your imagination. What would really be nice, if you see someone perfoming a RAK, let them know, lets encourage one another. Tell them "Hey, nice RAK." Be encouraging but cautious, using abbreviations could get you in trouble some day.

Thursdays Child Discovering The Tao

Since Thursdays Child is about growth, lets look at not only growing in our Christian development but also in our acceptance of other cultures . Growing up in the south in the 60's and 70's there were many opportunities to give in to peer pressure and become a part of the predjudice that was so rampant back then. Fortunately I was raised that people are people no matter what color, culture, or religion. That's why I don't understand why people dislike other people, or treat them wrong just because of the way they look. This really bugs me when people who are suppose to be Christians act this way. That's why I want to shed some light on at least a part of the chinese culture. One of their ancient text is the Tao Te Ching, Tao as we've said before means "Way" or "The Way," Te translates to Virtue or Character, and Ching means Canon or Great Book. So, put together Tao Te Ching translates to The Great Book of The Way Of Virtue. Alot of it reads like Proverbs in the Bible, or Zen teachings. But some of it like I mentioned before reads like you plug in the word God for the word Tao. Verse 4 is an example.
The version I'm quoting is a very modern day english version by Ron Hogan.

How much Tao is there, more than you'll ever need.
Use all you want, there is more where that came from.
You can't see Tao, but it's there.
I don't know where it came from, it has just always been around.

Isn't that the classic question? I don't know of any person who has been taught about God that hasn't asked:
"Where did God come from?"
And the standard answer, "He's just always been around."
Question: "If He created everything who created Him?"
Then, the answer that has always bugged me.
"We don't know, we just have to have faith that that is the way it has always been."
Sadly, I don't have a better answer. But, do we really need one? Why not have faith in a creator? We put our faith in humans and they let us down. Why not have faith in someone who won't.
Like I said at the beginning, this is a text where another culture gets their belief from, just like we get ours from the Bible. I hope this helps to understand their culture. We'll look at other verses later. Thanks for searching with me, Paul