searching the sunsets

What Does the BBC Know?

According to my friend Jerry, the BBC believes that most people will have only read 6 of these books. Well, I've read 58 of them. Ha!

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE. (Not doing that. Instead I'll just insert commentary.)
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen    (I just watched the movie and may read this on my spring break)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee             X
6 The Bible (New Testament) X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte         X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens                 X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy          X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller    X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare X
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald          X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens         X
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy           X
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky X
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck    X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy X
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens    X
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden   X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne -    X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell      X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown       X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery      X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy    
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood        X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding    X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel   X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert  X
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen 
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Set
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History -
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo X
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac    X
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie       X
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville X
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens    X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett    X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson   X
75 Ulysses - James Joyce   X
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath  X
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens   X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker  X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro   X
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert  X
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White    X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albon   X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle  X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas X
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - X

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo- X

The Truth Is I Get 5 More Minutes...

Just Five More Minutes
Author Unknown
While at the park one day,
a woman sat down next to a man
on a bench near a playground.
“That’s my son over there,” she said,
pointing to a little boy in a red sweater
who was gliding down the slide.
“He’s a fine looking boy” the man said.
“That’s my daughter on the bike in the white dress.”
Then, looking at his watch, he called to his daughter.
“What do you say we go, Melissa?”
Melissa pleaded, “Just five more minutes, Dad.
Please? Just five more minutes.”
The man nodded and Melissa continued to ride her bike
to her heart’s content.
Minutes passed and the father stood
and called again to his daughter.
“Time to go now?”
Again Melissa pleaded,
“Five more minutes, Dad. Just five more minutes.”
The man smiled and said, “OK.”
“My, you certainly are a patient father,” the woman responded.
The man smiled and then said,
“Her older brother Tommy was killed
by a drunk driver last year
while he was riding his bike near here.
I never spent much time with Tommy
and now I’d give anything
for just five more minutes with him.
I’ve vowed not to make the same mistake with Melissa.
She thinks she has five more minutes to ride her bike.
The truth is, I get Five more minutes to watch her play.”

HT: Becky

A Real Conversation with K2 (My middle daughter)

Me: What are you guys doing?
K2: K3 (the youngest) is going to jump off the steps!!!
Me: Really? Do you think that's safe?
K2: Don't worry, I'm going to catch her!

Well, that just made me feel all safe inside. Thankfully, she was sliding down not jumping down.

Happy birthday doodle

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Happy 4th birthday!!!

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Conversation On Our Way to Church

We were talking on our way to church this morning about next year. At this point in our journey we're very cognizant of "the end" that is so near and close. Here's a conversation we had today

Me: Well, next year when I'm done I'll have to take a few months off of studying but then I'll need to gear it back up to take my LPC exam.

Erica: What is the plan for next year after you graduate?

Me: I don't know, that's a good question that we'll need to talk over in the next few..

Kendra: (From the backseat piping in loud and clear) Spend more time with us.

Too true kid, too true.

Great Quote #88

"Those who scream or preach the loudest, usually do the least."
~My Friend Mildred.

Living in The Tension: Control vs. Responsibility/Risk

This is a continuation of a series called living in the tension. For the rest of the series click here.

From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.  "You do not want to leave too, do you?" Jesus asked the Twelve
~The Gospel of John

Control is an illusion. Life is like a horse; anytime she wants to remind you that she’s actually the one in charge she can do it in a heartbeat. Intellectually, everyone knows that, but it is so rare to see someone who can actually live that way. Almost everything we do is to exert control over our universe. If you don’t believe me watch parents with their kids, God is in control until it comes to my kids.  I mean seriously, normal grace filled people become real jerks when it comes to their kids.  It doesn’t matter what they do or who they offend, they are out to control the environment.  LORD knows I’ve been there. Maybe because kids are the greatest risk we take. It’s the one endeavor we pursue that has the greatest chance of ripping our hearts out. 

I don’t really have anything profound to say on this, it’s just something I’ve been thinking about lately, driven home by a movie my wife and I watched tonight. There is so much in our life that we can’t control but man do we try. Being a parent is both the greatest and scariest thing I’ve ever done.

It’s not just parenting though. It’s that way with friends too isn’t it? I mean, how many people are inside your walls? Not many get inside mine. My wife commented to me the other day how her and I have very different standards for what we consider friends.  Now, I’d like to tell you that my wife is wrong, but the truth is that she isn’t.
I feel as though I am a person that knows a lot of people and a lot of people know me, but very few people know me.  I have one, maybe two people that I would be comfortable spilling my guts to in the middle of the night.  Being selective about our “vomit” friends is smart. It makes sense. In this stage of my life, I have very limited resources. That includes how I deal with people.  I’m always running on the edge of ragged. The stress of being a student, and a full time worker and a parent and husband coupled with the stress of no money always has me right on the edge of wiped out.  So I have to be smart in how I use both my physical resources and maybe even more importantly how I use my emotional resources.

For as much as I enjoy being in a group of people, I also enjoy a quiet evening at home with just the family. If I have something I need to work out, I’d rather just share it with my wife.  Maybe it’s because I believe that no matter what happens my wife will stay with me and I’ve been let down too many times by friends. But then I wonder how many friends did Jesus have? I mean he had the 12 right? Out of the 12 he chose three that he was especially close to.  Still, Jesus asked them if they were planning on deserting him.  Think about that. "Are you planning on leaving too?" What an emotional question. What kind of emotional toll did his friendship with the disciples cause Jesus?

I think it’s here that I have to live in the tension between trusting God and just being smart in how I invest my emotions. I have to live in the tension of not being in control and yet being responsible with the risks that I am supposed to take.

Most People Are...

I was scanning a blog that I frequent. There was nothing really all that profound about the post. The blog is more or less a stream of consciousness blog. It's good reading and it makes you laugh and think.I rarely leave my RSS feed for the blog because that's not it's intent or purpose. It's just a fun blog that lets the writer connect with people about life. Now, hold that thought. My wife and I were talking on and off for weeks now about people and self confidence. My wife and I were talking about how there are some people that when you meet them they are obviously in need of some self confidence. They simply don't have any an it's obvious. But then there are other people that you meet and they don't seem to have a care in the world. They seem so confident. Then you get to know them and they're just as insecure as the next guy.
Back to the blog. As I said, I hardly ever leave the safe confines of my RSS feed to go to this blog but today I wanted to see the reactions so I did. When I clicked over I found something else rather interesting. There was this throw away sentence that had nothing to do with the post but went strait to the issue of self confidence/ insecurity. It was like it was screaming at me. There was this one little sentence that could have only been put in there to draw attention to a characteristic that this author is obviously very very proud of accomplishing. No, I won't link because I don't have permission to be throwing this out there and the author might not like it or even agree with me.

Now, this brings me to my title. An old friend of mine often says, "Everyone is desparately insecure and in need of affirmation."

Do you agree or disagree? I tend to agree. I offer my blog experience today as exhibit #1.

Sins that Disqualify

We are currently in the middle of a discussion about sin in class. Are there sins that would preclude someone from going to Seminary and entering into the ministry.  In other words are there sins that someone could commit at 13 that would/should prohibit them from going into ministry.
How do you love the murderer? How do you love the sex offender? How do you love the guy that committed vehicular homicide? In March of 2006 I posted an article about loving a sex offender. I'm going to repost it below as a way to get your thought processes going. What do you think? Should Seminaries do background checks? Should they then make admission choices based on that.

Loving A Sex Offender
Last night I was watching T.V and playing around on the computer. (working on my Christian School post and a couple of online callaborations that I have going) when the T.V caused me stop and think. The realization that I hadn't checked the Ohio Sex Offenders registry yet. So I do, and I come across the fact that there is a registered sex offender living just down the street from us.
My first reaction was absolute sickness in my stomach. Then some anger that I didn't check this before I moved into this house then anger that he's allowed out. Than more sickness. If you're a parent and you've ever experienced this, you know the wide range of feelings that comes with it. I wanted to go out at 10:00 last night and drive in front of his house and see what it looked like. I wanted to post a sign that said, "Registered Sex Offender Lives Here".
Then I had one of the most horrible thoughts I've ever had, "what would Jesus do with this joker?" I hated that thought. The largest part of me doesn't want to treat this fellow like Jesus would.
Here's the immediate thoughts that came to mind.
•Love your neighbor as yourself
•pray for those who despitefully use you
•Blessed are the peacemakers
•God is not willing that any should perish
That last one was the hardest for me. I want this guy to die. To be honest I want Sexual Crimes (especially against kids) to be a capitol crime and I'm not even pro-death penalty but for these fellows I'd make an exception.
I want to be smart and protect my family, and yet I wonder how God views these people. My theology doesn’t make room for me to love these guys. I don’t know what to do with that. I wish I did, but I don’t. What are your thoughts. I’d be interested in hearing them.