d4()D6oD30O–––D80

"I'm looking into buying a camera" seems like a promise I've had for a couple of years now, yet keep rationalizing that I don't really need one, and romanticizing that I'm being like the musician Sufjan Stevens. Who once said in an interview, as he talks about not owning any instruments: "I don't really record in a studio. I record where musicians and instruments are available, because I don't have a lot of my own. I don't even own a guitar or a banjo. I just take my portable recording device wherever instruments are, so I don't get stuck with a static tonality for every track I put down."
But, if I did purchase a camera (besides the disposable that's made it almost 2 years without being taken to the store and developed, at this point, it's pretty much ransom, like "ok, step away or I'll take your picture!), the one that I'd get is the Nikon, D80. So, I'm still thinking about it. Until then, I dug up these funny old photos:

on the boat with the fish eye lens

Sweet. Sweet. Sweet.

"Then I saw in my dream that the Interpreter took Christian by the hand, and led him into a place where was a fire burning against a wall, and one standing by it always casting much water upon it to quench it; yet did the fire burn higher and hotter."
Interpreter: "This fire is the work of grace that is wrought in the heart; he that casts water upon it to extinguish and put it out, is the devil: but in that thou seest the fire notwithstanding burn higher and hotter, thou shalt also see the reason of that. So he had him about to the backside of the wall, where he saw a man with a vessel of oil in his hand, of the which he did also continually cast, but secretly, into the fire." "This is Christ, who continually with the oil of His grace maintains the work already begun in the heart: by the means of which, notwithstanding what the devil can do, the souls of His people prove gracious still."
- John Bunyan, The Pilgram's Progress

Summer Re-Reads.

John Bunyan
The Pilgram's Progress. It had a huge impact on me when I first read it in 4th grade (condensed version). I can't wait to read it again-unabridged.

Tennessee Williams
I haven't decided, but I may read "Period of Adjustment", or "Orpheus Descending".

Pat Conroy
"My Losing Season" was great, and "Beach Music" is suppose to be even better.

Il pleut de petits chats noirs.

I'm teaching Buddy, French.
This is the first lesson. Yesterday morning she wanted to go out and play. It was 3 am, and raining so hard.

Next lesson:
Ne prenez pas les oiseaux dans la maison!

Painting Revisited

http://thehauptgallery.com/

To begin to see myself in these paintings, is THE beginning. And, a sincere reminder of our sin and the full freedom we'll have when pride slips away and we can stand really humbled before God. I don't think, in our current form, we can really know just how much sin has affected us, or just how much Jesus means to us. We can act in a way that is a version of humble, but until we are made pure, we have no idea what humble fully means.
R. C. Sproul writes:
When Luther was asked the question, "Do you love God?" he replied, "Love God? Sometimes I hate him!" Sproul goes on to say, "Had he [Luther] spoken the full truth, he would have said that he hated God all the time."
What truth. My sister told me a funny story yesterday from the weekend spent with her friend whos son had ignored his mother's request to come inside from playing, and put his clothes back on, (funny too, he was completely naked, and had shed his play clothes while running and playing outside-some things don't change even from the Garden!) He had decided to "hide" from her by putting his face down into the back of a toy dump truck. All the while, his mother, stood amused and trying not to laugh, that her son actually thought that just because he couldn't see mom, that she couldn't see him either. We hide our faces from our sin, even as God has written his truth on our very soul, but it is in our shame and in this response of covering our eyes, that we can contrast the depth and power of God's truth and love. I think Scott Peck said that evil is the soul hiding from itself. Why else would "we" have had to beat Christ if we didn't hate truth, and hate the truth about ourselves? Thinking we would try and kill Christ, we were really trying to kill the evil we saw in ourselves when in his holy presence. Other wise we could have just ignored him. But his love is greater. As humans, we come into this world with our hands almost glued in front of our eyes, covering our vision. And Christ uncovers it, and helps us loose the pride, and bring our hands down towards the earth. I felt a flinch when I first saw these paintings, a desire to close my eyes because what I saw was true, but then the huge relief from seeing the truth comes in our freedom in Christ, when we open our eyes and hearts to it!
"Lord I believe; Help my unbelief!"-Mark 9:24

I straight up caught him, the "potter", drinking out of...(gasp) STYROFOAM!

Augh!!!!!!!

Freedom to Restore

"There is a proverb, 'As you have made your bed, so you must lie on it,' which is a lie. If I have made my bed uncomfortable, please God I will make it again."
~G.K. Chesterton "What's Wrong with the World"


What an awesome quote. Posted on Andrea's blog at flourishingmother. By God's grace, we are able to repent and learn and try again, with His guidance and wisdom, and despite our own falling short.