Friday, May 30, 2014

REFLECTIONS ON AGING


Tomorrow is my birthday so this beautiful series of great photos is timely.

Photographer Tom Hussey created a series of pictures that will speak to you, no matter your age, race, beliefs or occupation. The Reflection photos illustrate just how much we change in our lives and how it seems to happen all at once, no matter how many years actually go by. These will grip your soul.

Reflection gives insight into the former lives of these senior citizens.  We look in the mirror and see our former selves.  Yet when we see old photos of ourselves, we realize how much we've actually changed.












Cherish every day.  Life is a vapor.




Friday, May 23, 2014

SUMMER BREAK. . .TEACHERS' VIEW

My sentiments EXACTLY, Thomas!

Doug and I finished up piano lessons this week.  This was his first year teaching in our studio so he was a bit surprised at the teacher's view of the end of the year.



Junah came in for his last lesson with his usual smile.  I greeted him, "Well, today's the last lesson.  Aren't you happy not to see me again after this?"  His smile broadened and he started to nod and say yes, then caught himself.  Big brown eyes looked at me, not wanting to hurt my feelings.  "It's OK, Honey, I'm glad not to see you again too. . .even though I love you.  Teachers love summer too!"  It was news to him as well.
Party prep






We end with a music party.  It includes my own version of some old games.  We play Pin-the-Flag-on-the-Eighth-Note and kids play the piano fast for musical chairs.  I promise the parents that I will spoil their kids' appetites for supper.  No apologies for sugar.
Once outside, I handed off my camera to an older student.  Here's what Jeremy captured.


Callie


Jack
















One distinct advantage to teaching piano is that we retain the same students, sometimes for years. Usually during high school we lose them to sports or college.  Seeing them begin at age 8 or 9, feet dangling above the floor beneath the piano bench, we introduce them to a new language. When they leave us, often they continue to grow musically.  Our hearts and lives are bonded for life.


I recently asked an intermediate student, "Do you remember your fist lesson, how strange those black dots on the staff looked?"  A knowing smile beamed across her face.



I love what I do, love the kids and the music.  We share a closeness because of the one-on-one weekly time.  We see them right after a full day at school, full of whatever the day held.  It's an honor to go beyond the role of teacher, sometimes co-parenting.  These are a sampling of what I hear from the piano bench:

"I'm sick and tired of the bullies calling me a nerd."

"I cheated on a Bible test today.  My mom just yelled at me in the car."

"My teacher's husband died yesterday."

So we keep tissues and a soft shoulder ready too.  If they stay through the years, we hear:

"The girls think I'm cool now when I play piano."

"My youth group wants me to play with the praise band.  Can you help me with these songs?"

This is Courtney with her little sister, Callie.  I taught big sis and now little.  Callie is not so little though. The lovely teen is the one who played  last week for her youth band and asked for my help with the lead sheets.  Blessed!

Parents probably feel this exhilaration both at the beginning and the end of summer.  This is a funny, but accurate, snapshot of how parents begin and end the school year.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikespohr/parents-at-the-beginning-of-the-school-year-vs-the-end

It's not that we don't love our kids, speaking for the parent and the teacher in me.  We're just all ready for a break.  By the end of summer parents are thrilled to send them back to us.  We're equally excited to see them.

Enjoy your summer off!  We will too.























Friday, May 16, 2014

10 MORE PARAPROSDOKIANS

For you wordsmiths who enjoy the playful twist at the end, here is a continuation of last week's blog.

1. "He taught me housekeeping.  When I divorce, I keep the house."  (Zsa Zsa Gabor)

2. A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove you don't need it.

3. "Some cause happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go." (Oscar Wilde)





4. Kittens play with yarn.  They bat it around.  What they're really doing is saying, "I can't knit!  Get this away from me!"


5. Why does someone believe when you say there are four billion stars, but have to check when you say the paint is wet?

6. Always borrow money from a pessimist.  He won't expect it back.

7. "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing--after they've tried everything else." (Winston Churchill)

8. "I belong to no organized party.  I'm a Democrat." (Will Rogers)

9. "The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits."  (Albert Einstein) 


10. Silence is golden.  Duct tape is silver.






Friday, May 9, 2014

10 PARAPROSDOKIANS

You seemed to enjoy these wordplays awhile back so today's blog along with next week's will be a few more.  The last sentence or phrase takes a surprising turn and makes you rethink the first.  I love O. Henry and paraprosdokians because of the twist at the end!

1. Behind every successful man is a woman.  Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman.

2. Money can't buy you happiness.  But it sure makes misery easier to live with.

3. There's a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can't get away.

4. Time flies like an arrow.  Fruit flies like a banana. (Groucho Marx)

5. Why do Americans choose from just two people for President and 50 for Miss America?

6. The voices in my head may not be real but they have some good ideas!

7. Hospitality:  making your guests feels at home even while you wish they were!

8. A bus is a vehicle that runs twice as fast when you're after it as when you're in it.

9. Some people hear voices.  Some see invisible people.  Others have no imagination at all.

10. I haven't slept for ten days because that would be too long. (Mitch Hedberg)


Friday, May 2, 2014

Y'ALL IS BIBLICAL, Y'ALL!

My guest blogger today is the Southern Baptist Convention.  (They don't know.)

Why Jesus wants y’all to speak Southern

“Y’all” is one of the finest words in the English language.
It is an inclusive and precise term.Y’all is a second-person plural, meaning it is a plural version of “you.” So, for example, somebody would say: “You want to go to the game?” if referring to a single person, and “Y’all want to go to the game?” if referring to a group of people. The distinction seems to me as linguistically important as the distinction between “I” and “we” and between “he/she” and “they.”
At one time, English used “thou” as second-person singular and the word you as the plural form, but that usage faded in America about a century and a half after the Mayflower dropped anchor, leaving Americans with the imprecision of you performing double duty. Southerners came to the linguistic rescue of their fellow countrymen with the wonderful word “y’all.”
It is common for those outside the South to malign and misrepresent Southerners’ use of the word y'all. Famed Southern author Lewis Grizzard explained once,
The biggest mistake people from outside the South make in the y'all area is they don't think we say y'all at all. They think we say "you all." A Southerner visiting the North surely will be mocked the first time he or she opens his or her mouth and out comes a Southern accent. Northerners will giggle and ask, "So where are you all from?" I answer by saying, "I all is from Atlanta." …  Southerners rarely use "you all" in any situation but they never, never, ever, ever, use it when addressing just one person.
My primary interest in the word y'all is its theological importance. Here is our persistent problem: The Bible is most often written in the plural but most of us read it in the singular. We tend to come to Scripture for individualized answers to individualized questions. We read the Bible as if it is all about us as individuals. Thus, every time the Bible uses you we most often read it as a second-person singular when it is almost always a second-person plural -- y’all. Our captivity to individualized grammar makes the gracious gift of cruciform community largely unintelligible.
In The Unnecessary Pastor, author, educator and Northerner Marva Dawn perceptively explains “We all need to become Southerners to read the Bible correctly, because to inhabit its world is to speak about our lives as ‘y’all’ (plural), instead of ‘you’ (singular).” She further notes, “To distinguish between ‘you’ as an intimate acquaintance, ‘you’ as someone I do not address in intimate terms because of respect or a less-developed relationship, and ‘you’ as a larger group in which I am but a part helps me to have a more truthful sense of my place in the whole.” Dawn adds, “It takes a long process to change the Western individualized vocabulary that is ruining our church.
Inhabitants of Western culture tend to view the world with self at the center of everything, but there is no room for radical individualism in the church. Christianity provides an alternative concept of the individual, one that locates the individual’s identity and value in Christ, his Kingdom and his church. The three are inextricable. The New Testament goes so far as to say  Christ does not even reckon himself complete apart from the church. In Ephesians 1:23, Paul describes the church as “his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” John Calvin, in his commentary The Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians, explains the implications of the same Pauline verse:
This is the highest honor of the Church, that, until He is united to us, the Son of God reckons himself in some measure imperfect. What consolation is it for us to learn, that, not until we are along with him, does he possess all his parts, or wish to be regarded as complete! ).
If Christ does not even reckon himself complete apart from the church, how can the individual Christian do so? The individual believer is a citizen of “the Kingdom of his beloved Son” and is a part of a community of believers who are called to fight the spiritual battle together, not as isolated individuals (Col. 1:13, Eph. 6:10-18). The believer initially comes to Christ individually by faith, but no follower of Christ should envision living the Christian life outside of Christ or his Kingdom outpost -- the church. Even our thoughts about corporate church life tend to be too often individualized, as though the church exists as an instrument to fulfill our personal needs rather than as the body of Christ to transform the cosmos.
Our individualized thinking and imprecise grammar have served to eclipse the subversive nature of Christian community, faith and living. When someone conceives of Christianity in an isolated and individualized manner, the tendency is to focus on personal contentment and survival. When we disregard the fact that Christ purchased our unity with himself and with one another (Eph. 2:11-22), we lose a sense of the grand eschatological story of Christ that we have been swept into, and we often vainly attempt to co-opt Jesus for our own story. This is why we often think a sermon podcast is as good as being in the corporate worship service; after all, we still get the biblical information we personally need to live our best life now.
But what if we thought about our lives in the plural and acted on that plurality? What if we thought of preaching as a gathered flock communally hearing the voice of our Shepherd-King, who is forming us together as cruciform community by the authority and power of his word? What if we thought about the Great Commission in terms of cosmic warfare to which we have been summoned together as an army of good soldiers of King Jesus? What if we thought of sanctification itself as a community project, rather than an individual experience?
Consider how a more theologically precise gospel grammar rescues us from the hopelessness of thinking of ourselves as a church of one:
  • This mystery, which is Christ in y’all, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27).
  • Y’all count it all joy, my brothers, when y’all meet trials of various kinds (James 1:2).
  • Finally, y’all be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Y’all put on the whole armor of God, that y’all may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil (Eph 6:10-11).
The power of Christian community is profound. Together we hope, together we count it all joy, together we are strong in the Lord, and together we put on the armor of God. As individuals we will struggle, but our lives are woven into the fabric of the Gospel community. That is Good News so “Keep on rejoicing y’all” (Phil. 4:4).