Let the church say Amen!! We got our 1st DSRadio show behind us and boy it was a challenge. We are so grateful to God for providing for us DSRadio Network to continue our show the way it should be done! Click the link below and hear the archive of DSRadio today!.
09/04/2010 - DSRadio - Anger
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This book was provided to me for free from LitFuse Group for the purpose of reading/reviewing.
Suzanne Woods Fisher has written several Amish novels; her love for them and knowledge of them is evident in her books. Amish Proverbs is a collection of proverbs that the Plain People or Amish use.
This collection of Amish Proverbs holds more than 200 sage sayings.
Amish Proverbs is a small hardback book the size is 6 inches by 6 inches. I have found that small books like small packages can contain a precious jewel.
This book should not be placed on a coffee table to look pretty; but it should be read, savored, enjoyed.
Often while reading this book I laughed out loud. I noticed while reading it that I felt my body relaxing, it is a book of gentleness and peace.
There are many photographs throughout the book, usually one every other page. Some examples of the photo's are of nature, Amish life, quilts, and hands. Have you noticed that hands speak honestly about a person's life?
Intermixed through the book are stories in addition to the proverbs. These stories are of people that have learned through an experience about what matters most in life.
Suzanne Woods Fisher has written such a wonderful book! This book would make a great gift.
My favorite proverb from the book:
"Choose your love, and love your choice."
Blissful Reading!
Annette
Annette Tx, United States Christian, avid reader,blogger,writer. I am a full-time caregiver of my elderly father. I am a wife/mother/Nana.
Last Updated (Friday, 27 August 2010 12:03)
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Wednesday, August 18, 2010
A uniquely gifted "spy."
Dom Cobb is an unusual corporate spy: he steals secrets from others while they are in a dream state, not consciously able to hide anything. He does so with the help of a drug and a technology that permit "dream sharing." Okay, it's just a premise, not meant to be "realistic." A hypothesis, like "What if?" and "if so, what could we do?" So we play along with the fiction, no matter how absurd (as long as it's entertaining). Cobb assembles a "dream team" to help him make one last score, one that will finally take him home to his children. This time, he does not steal an idea, but rather, he plans an "inception" or "implantation" of a virus/idea that will cause a decision in an "heir" to disolve his deceased father's financial empire and shift the world balance of electrical power in favor of Cobb's employer. The members of the team are all amazingly skilled, and each one makes a unique contribution, like a "Mission Impossible" team selected by Mr. Phelps. "Your mission, Jim, should you decide to accept it: Create a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream." Sounds simple enough. An impossible almost absurd to imagine feat. It's full of holes, but we go with it. 5 dream levels all packed with suspense, action, and mystery. A strange sort of cliff-hanger, unpredictable because of the fluidity of "dream reality," where there are no "rules" or "laws."
The dream state, ultimate vulnerability.
But as expected from a good suspense movie our team faces unexpected dangers: We learn that formidable images or dream projections can be aroused by the subconscious to protect the dreamer, including armed men and trains. I understand that dreams are our mental defense mechanisms; they help us cope with our problems. The idea is that they can generate counter-images like anti-bodies to attack invaders. But there are greater complications as we discover that a dream is only as pure as its dreamer: enter the emotions of guilt, greed, and other matters of a fallen soul. The subconsious mind, after all, is only a machine at the service of the soul; it expresses the soul's torment in moving pictures, in color, with sound. In order to change the will of the "heir," they must search the deepest, most protected recesss of his heart. In essence, they access and aggravate a protected wound and use it to their advantage. The "heir" had lived under his father's shadow and in the shame of his father's severe disappointment with him.
The Matrix, re-loaded.
In this multi-leveled scam with smoke and mirrors, it's hard to tell what is real and what is a dream or rather, whose dream is whose. But if we speak purely on the level of good entertainment level, there are satisfying (if confusing) auto-chase scenes and gunfire, on a lower level weightless sleepers in a hotel, martial arts in weightlessness (as in "The Matrix"), on an even lower level, an assault of a snow covered fortress in the mountains, and in "limbo," searching on a beach trying to rescue a team member who was trapped there and had grown old in its near timeless environment. According to my son, Jeff, there is a message here for this generation: consider the dangers of fleeing reality via drugs and ever more powerful technology. The '60s and '70s message of LSD et al has moved to a higher level. What was "Tune in, turn on, and trip out," has become an ever more dangerous game to play: Now we have computer avatars, CGIs, 3-D (Note the same concerns expressed in my review of Avatar). We are always in danger of losing touch with reality. And available on the near horizon, interface of neurons and artificial intelligence. We are already in over our heads. We must proceed with caution.
Cobb's dead wife, alive in his mind.
The film raises age-old questions, but suggests new options. Good dreams, evil dreams: Media, technology, and chemicals might make both possible. Can we really explain the "ID [the deepest reaches of the subconscious mind]" chemically? Did it occur by chance, by natural selection? I would suggest that the complexity of our brains and nervous systems are only the tip of the iceberg. We are at the controls of our minds and bodies, machines so sophisticated that we can scarely understand them. As with the splitting of the atom, we were smart enough to do it, but did we really understand the nightmare that would follow? Are we not like toddlers treating high-powered guns as toys? In my review of Pan's Labyrinth, I observed that a skeptic would see only the tragic death of a young girl, but a dreamer would want to believe that she had passed into immortality as a princess. "Inception" closes with the image of a top spinning. It was Cobb's link to reality. In real life, the top would spin a while, slow, and fall, rolling into ever weaker circles. But he knew that if he was in a dream, the top would never stop. Sort of like time in a place where everything is possible. Maybe like heaven? Of course, I believe that this life is the bad dream, and heaven is reality. Cobb's guilt, redemption and thirst for immortality--not a Christian movie, but re-telling the Christian message, the greatest story ever told, the only story worth telling. A Canadian friend, Kim Doucette, suggested a stronger allegory of the sin nature and the fall, a lie deeply implanted in our souls that causes us to think a certain way, the wrong way.
Does the top stop...or not?
In the last few seconds of the movie, Cobb returns to his children. He spins the top. It begins shaking, but has he really returned home? The screen goes black. What do you think? What you believe is powerful. RATED "M" FOR "MIND-BOGGLING"
Posted by Mike Thomas at 3:50 PM
Last Updated (Thursday, 19 August 2010 20:09)
My View of the "Immigration Problem" (Which is bound to irritate almost everyone.)
At 13 years old, I fell in love with Spanish and Spanish-speaking people. But in SW Missouri back then, there were no none to my knowledge. I was dying to meet someone from Mexico, but I didn't until I got to college. Now, when I go back to Joplin, Missouri, there are Spanish-speakers everywhere. I love it!
My unpopular view is that all gringos, especially Christians, should learn to speak Spanish and reach out to them. Maybe, in the past, we wouldn't go share the gospel with them, so God has sent them to us? That's how I see it. I am prejudiced, but in the way of the Kingdom of God. They should just learn English? Of course, English is so easy, and there are so many trying to help them learn. And so many gringos learning Spanish because it is so easy!
I heard a Mexican pastor speak once about his having been a poor little Mexican kid in awe of the Americans who visited his country. These particular gringos were Christian missionaries. Because of their help and influence, he eventually received an education, including a Ph.D. He said, "I am not impressed by a high IQ, but I am impressed by kindness. An IQ can only go so high and you probably can't increase it. But there is no limit to the kindness you can show other human beings."
While a short-term missionary in Mexico, I was able to listen to some guys who have crossed the border to work in Dallas. Where they live, there are two options for employment: (1) a mine where there are no safety standards, one which collapses and kills workers on a regular basis; (2) a candelia, a furnace where they make wax; remember, it's already 100 degrees in the shade. Now does everyone want to apply for those jobs? A lot of them get drunk and stay drunk. Do you wonder why?
They come to the U.S. They leave their families behind. They don't want to. They come and work hard at jobs I wouldn't do. They told me about being afraid, living on the run, being exploited, being betrayed. I wish I could share their stories word-for-word.
I also ran into an Army patrol squad, a major, a corporal, and 12 privates, the latter all young kids doing their military service. They were armed to the teeth because drug lords regularly ambush them and kill them. They were searching for illegal drugs and arms shipments. Just for a moment, they rested in the shade while one lookout kept his gun up, finger on the trigger.
They asked me what my group and I were doing there. I said that we were building a home for the government school teacher. That we had built a church and houses, drilled a well, so that locals could have a better life.
They all nodded in a sort of approving way. Then one asked, "What message are you preaching?"
I thought, "Thank you, Lord!" Talk about an invitation! I preached the gospel to them, unhindered, and in Spanish, their heart language. They all listened carefully, while staring at the dirt next to their feet. When I finished, they again nodded their heads, looking at me respectfully. One repeated in Spanish, "That's good, that's good."
I later preached to children, whose faces are full of hope, but what hope do they have without Jesus? And how shall they hear unless some goes to tell them? Or unless our eyes are opened to the harvest that God has planted at our back door? God's word says, "Welcome the stranger" and "We have entertained angels unaware."
I'm not even going to address the politics of the situation, which may irritate some readers.
On several occasions in Mexico, I have preached the story of the Samaritan woman, a worthless outcast even among her own people. Those Mexican women in the congregation knew about drawing water from a well. They listened with stoic understanding. Jesus treated the Samaritan woman like buried treasure and revealed to her God's plan for world-wide worship. She got saved, and He allowed her to bring her whole village to Him. She was worth far more to God than to any man she had ever known.
Sound like a solution to the "problem?"
OK, I'm not the "answer man." Jesus is.
Last Updated (Tuesday, 17 August 2010 02:29)
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