bsmiles and sunny days

Things have been so crazy in the world that I haven’t taken much time to think about what it will mean to leave this building.  We’ve come and gone and come back a few times since moving to Platte City, and we’ve always been welcomed with open arms. We’ve carried new babies into church for the first time in this building. We’ve seen dark times and elation as we passed through the doors. We’ve been perfectly content and wildly frustrated, but that’s how it is when you are doing real life in community.  I was overcome with emotion as Rusty prayed a blessing over us this morning. Sometimes people in a moment of crisis will say, “my life flashed before my eyes.” I felt a little like that in the closing moments of the service. Flashes of memories flew through my mind one after the next.  We always think life is going to be what it always was. Then it changes. When the dust settles you see the value in things and people you took for granted all that tim...

“We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.” ~ C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory I've been on a quest to fill a small segment of my day with silence for several months in a row. Years ago I read a quote by someone far brighter than me that said something along the lines of, "As long as there is constant noise in the world, there will be an extinction of great thinkers in the world." I've hunted for the author, quite certain that I've butchered the quote. The idea remains and looms in my mind, always there waiting for a response. If my life, full of noise and busyness, discards opportunities for meditation and true friendship, maybe that would explain some of the anxiety I've been crippled by in the last decade. Maybe it would help me to get my head around some troubling conflicts that I have yet to untangle. Last year Dale and I moved from the basement with a huge TV, s...

When I was a kid, there was a line in a movie or on a show where someone said in a robot voice, "That is not logical." My brother said it all the time. Regarding the overwhelming influx of information, those words are like a perpetual ticker scrolling through my mind. Instead of shutting it off, I'm feverishly searching for more. Like I can't get enough information. I've gone months and months without needing more than a casual scroll through the headlines every week or so. Why, all the sudden, does it feel so vital to know the minute by minute update of what is going on in the world? Especially when I know that I'm going to read conflicting information at every turn. There's such absurd bias in the narrative, it leaves me feeling helpless and physically ill. It forces me into a corner demanding that I choose a side. C.S. Lewis, genius that he was, wrote a book nearly eight decades ago chronicling the training in deception of a young demon in the form...