First of the month. Time to review progress last month and set some goals for August. That means return to my environmental series will be delayed one more post.
First, the goals I set at the beginning of the month. They were not ambitious goals.
Get back on the two Bible studies I’ve set aside to complete other things. I’d love to set a goal of finishing them by the end of the month, but I think that’s too ambitious. Let me instead say to work on them in at least 10 writing sessions. I believe I worked on the Bible studies only one day. Life circumstances and changed writing interests resulted in my not being able to focus on this.
Attend three writers meetings, all in-person. Did this. They were three good meetings.
Blog twice a week on Monday and Friday. Might be a challenge with the grandkids here. Did this. Maybe a couple of posts weren’t the best.
Work on the programming of the next Bible study. I’ll post about it at some point. I did manage to have a couple of good sessions on this. I’m not as far along as I wanted to be, but at least I made progress.
Not originally a goal, but something I worked on was the next book in The Forest Throne series, tentatively titled The Key To Time Travel. I did this because the grandkids were here, and they were interested in getting started on it.
What about this month? I’m still dealing with some health issue for me and my wife. We were going to take a long road trip this month, but that’s up in the air right now due to health. I will decide on that sometime this week. I’m going to establish goals as if we won’t be making the trip.
Attend three writing group meetings in person. This includes making the presentation at one on Aug 9.
Blog twice a week, Monday and Friday.
Write at least two more chapters in The Key To Time Travel. I hope to work on that some today.
Write at least two more episodes of Tales Of A Vagabond. I still don’t know what I will do with this. I need to get a little more into it before I can assess if this is a viable item for Kindle Vella.
Continue to program the next Bible study. The tentative title is Death Kindly Stopped For Me.
Do some marketing of There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel. Also need to close a couple of sales of this.
I’ll leave it at that. This is really a tough month to plan anything, given uncertain health issues.
A century of life-giving community completed, ready and looking ahead to the next.
Last weekend, over a year and a half of work came to fruition as our church celebrated its Centennial. Actually, it was our 101st anniversary on July 8. We delayed the celebration a year due to a combination of the pandemic and adjacent construction.
We didn’t sell out of the book, but we sold a lot.
I joined the centennial committee in November 2020 at the request of our pastor, mainly to write the church history. But I got involved in other activities. Brainstorming. Planning. Seeking people whose ancestors had roots in the church. The history was written, printed, and issued for sale on May 22nd.
We did the setup for the Sunday banquet on Thursday. I found out then that the special choir for the Sunday service had some people drop out, and the director asked if I had choir experience. I decided I had just enough experience to help them out. One more thing added.
It’s always good to catch your daughter in a candid shot.
The activities started midday Friday with a ribbon cutting ceremony for our re-established food insecurity ministry, reopened in recently constructed quarters and now called the Community Table. The Chamber of Commerce ran this event. I enjoyed finally seeing the building and how the ministry is stocked and managed.
Friday afternoon our daughter, son-in-law, and four grandkids came for the weekend. By that time I was more or less exhausted, so we had a nice meal out for supper. Meetings and events remained.
Good worship with music mostly unfamiliar to me. Lots of energy.
Saturday morning was choir rehearsal. It was kind of nice to sing after a 25-year hiatus from choir. Saturday afternoon was a concert by Remedy, a band from Southern Nazarene University that included two college students from our congregation. It wasn’t my type of music, but the Holy Spirit was present, and worship happened. This took place in our newly constructed space for youth and Hispanic ministries.
David and Pranathi, among the many who helped out.
Sunday was the big day. Choir rehearsal at 9 a.m. To help with transportation (transporting 8 people in two vehicles, our daughter volunteered to sing with the choir and came with me. We were done by 9:45. That gave me time to greet visitors, signed books and helped direct people, especially to Centennial Hall.
Many visited the diorama in “Centennial Hall”.
The service was magnificent. It included special music from the Mitchell family, the choir number with two soloists and great live backing music. We *nailed* the choir special. I was thankful for the strong tenor from the Mitchell family being next to me. There was a time for introducing some out-of-town visitors who attended because of their family connection to the church. And we had a wonderful, apt message from Dr. Jesse Middendorf, former General Superintendent of the denomination.
Dr. Mark Lindstrom, our former pastor/now district superintendent, brings greetings.
Immediately after the service, we had a congregational photo taken in our new sanctuary. Then it was to the gymnasium for a BBQ lunch, with the Mitchell family. We had nearly 300 people for that.
Dr. Middendorf brought the Centennial message.
The final event of the weekend was the dedication of the youth/Hispanic worship space. It turned out to be a 45 minute service, with music in Spanish, responsive readings, scripture readings, the actual dedication, and brief messages from our pastor, district superintendent, and Dr. Middendorf.
They opened the Community Table for anyone who wanted to go through it, and our daughter and granddaughter did (the rest of the family having gone home). We got away at 2:45 pm, a full day.
The final congregational song.
All in all it was a great weekend. Bentonville Community Church of the Nazarene is 101 years old. We actually spent more time looking forward rather than backwards. That was an emphasis I tried to put in the history book as well, making it a Centennial book rather than a strictly history book.
Some of the family had gone home before we thought of the photo booth. And don’t give me grief about not smiling—that IS me smiling.
It’s now time to unwind a little. This week I don’t have to attend any special events. No weekly history post to write. No committee meeting to attend. Instead, we have the three youngest grandchildren with us this week and the oldest grandkid and his friend next week. Time to get back to writing. Ezra and I began work on The Key To Time Travel today.
If you don’t know much about C.S. Lewis but would like to, this book is a good place to start.
When we traveled to Meade Kansas for an event at my wife’s home church, we discovered the library there had a sidewalk sale of surplus books going on. Naturally we had to go to it and look for bargains. I bought two books. One of them was C.S. Lewis: His Life & Thought by Terry Glaspey. I read this in about eight sittings in June.
It’s hard to get a bad book by or about C.S. Lewis. The eminent scholar and Christian apologist has had a major influence in the world and in my life. I try to always be reading a book of his or about him. This is the third or fourth I’ve read this year, and I’m reading in the second volume of his collected letters currently.
This book is in two sections. The first is a summary of his life, in short chapters covering brief periods or episodes. This is less than a biography, more of a series of vignettes.
The second half covers Lewis’s beliefs, again in short chapters, about various Christian doctrines and practices. These include quotes from Lewis’s writings as well as commentary by Glaspey. This section is well done, well worth reading.
The book includes a third section: C.S. Lewis: His Legacy. This is only ten pages long. Like the first two sections, it is also well done.
The entire book reads as a summary of Lewis’s life and beliefs, and a good part of his works. If you are looking for an introduction to C.S. Lewis, this would be a good book to start with.
A few posts ago, I wrote about science and faith, and how they are not incompatible. I stand by that statement. Yesterday, a writer friend I know only through on-line contacts posted this meme, which came from The Other 98%.
Why would anyone think that science doesn’t belong in religion?
Let’s set aside for the moment the wall of separation between church and state. Let’s also set aside the implication that those of the church should have no part in things of the state. Those are subjects for different posts.
The part of this picture that I don’t agree with is “Science belongs here” with the arrow pointing at “State”. This implies that science doesn’t belong in religion. Or, perhaps, that science is incompatible with religion because religion relies on faith, not scientific evidence and method.
To which I respond with a big, fat, “So?”
As stated in my last post, faith is belief in something for which there is no evidence. I can’t prove there is a God, who created the universe, of which mankind is a small part. But neither can the atheist prove there is not a God. Both rely on faith concerning God’s existence or non-existence.
But why would anyone say science doesn’t belong in the church, in religion? Do such people really think that Christians (or, as some people say in a non-sectarian way, religionists) should not study science, should not believe in science, should not rely on science. Or are they saying that if you are in the church (since the meme frames the argument in a church context, though it does in fact show a synagogue and a mosque though only mentioning “church”), you cannot possibly believe in science? What dreck. What utter garbage.
Of course, perhaps this meme is saying that the state is built upon science, or that science maintains the state. That also seems like a strange conclusion.
It’s true that at various times in the past the church (i.e. the Roman Catholic church, perhaps others) strongly resisted advances in science and misunderstood how science and faith interacted and could exist very well together. Nowadays, I don’t think that is still true in the main. Those mistakes have, for the most part, been eradicated from the church. At least, it has from the part of the Church Universal that I belong to. I don’t try to keep up with all the branches of the Church Universal.
To paraphrase what I said in that last post, science is experimenting, observing, concluding, and reporting, bit by bit, and so expanding man’s knowledge about the universe. It is involved in what you can prove. Okay, some things that science tells us are theories, based on reasonable assumptions but still lacking some final piece of proof.
Faith takes over for things that don’t need to be proved. What a truncated existence it is for those who have no faith in anything or claims to need evidence for anything and everything.
I hope all Christians study science and so show the foolishness of this meme. Much of my career as a civil engineer was based on science and mathematics. The Other 98% seem to be saying that I can’t be a Christian. Sorry, folks, you’re wrong.
I find my faith to be enhanced by science. My practice as a Christian is so much more meaningful to me because I believe in science.
The wedge between Christians and science is not being driven by Christians, but by memes like this.
Not the final cover, but some thoughts I had on a draft. The artist is working on it.
As I mentioned in my last post, several writing projects are at or near an end, and it’s time to start thinking about what’s next.
Last night and this morning, I believe I completed both the Amazon page description and the back cover copy for There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel. This is something I’m not particularly good at, these short descriptions aimed at “closing the sale” when someone is looking at my books. I like how it turned out in this case. I have high hopes for this book. Maybe these short descriptions will help.
As I said before, the church Centennial book is done, and print copies are in-hand. The church has been taking pre-orders, and this Sunday, distribution will start. I’ll be at the table where people will pick up pre-ordered copies or buy them that day. A presentation of the book will be made in the church service. I’ll get to man the table between first and second services.
Also as mentioned in the last post, I’m waiting on feedback on my completed Bible study before doing the last 25 percent of the second one. But next week, I think I will hop back on that project and start bringing it to completion, whether I get the feedback or not.
This week, I quickly wrote a couple of thousand words in a memoir-type piece that I’m contemplating writing. At present, it is titled Tales Of A Vagabond, but I’m not sure if that’s how it will end up. I’m not even sure it will be my next project. I wanted to have something for the Scribblers & Scribes writers’ group meeting last night, so I wrote that. It was well received, though of course I received valuable feedback should I want to continue with this. I guess I mentioned Tales Of A Vagabond in my last post as well.
So I’m not quite in between projects, but I continue to inch closer to that point. TNSTATT should be published within two weeks. The two Bible studies should be done in about a month. Centennial committee duties are almost over for me and will be over as of July 10. High school reunion is Aug 13. Somewhere, sometime soon, is my next writing project. Possibly I’ll take a week off.
The Centennial book is done. I have my copies in hand. Full distribution starts on Sunday May 22.
Ack! It’s almost 11 a.m. and I’m just now getting to writing my blog post for today. Something must be wrong with me.
Yes, something is wrong with me. I’ve been too busy. It began last Thursday, when a Zoom meeting about our upcoming church Centennial celebration was still going strong after 2 1/2 hours, and I hit a wall. I couldn’t go on. I abruptly ended the meeting, took a break, and a few hours later got back to the task we had been working on—now alone. Yes, I still work better alone than with someone else.
Not the final cover, but some thoughts I had on a draft. The artist is working on it.
Friday and Saturday are blurs to me now. I know some heavy yardwork and a daily walk were involved. I had a number of e-mails about the Centennial, also about There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel. Saturday evening was taken up with study to teach Life Group on Sunday morning. Sunday was the usual church, Life group, fast-food takeout. Then we went to the high school graduation reception for our neighbors’ daughter. Through a comedy of errors (which included my not understanding the invitation), that took us a while to even get there. Back home, tiredness set in and I didn’t get a lot done during the afternoon. In the evening I went back to the Centennial work I have been tasked with, and got a little more done. I also did some in-depth critiquing of a piece send by a member of our critique group. This morning, the first thing I did was finish that critique and e-mail it to her.
Back on TNSTATT, we must finalize the book cover, create the publication files (e-book and print book), decide whether it will be on Amazon only or go “wide” to other publishers. I think it was on Friday that I got most of the final formatting done. Today I re-read a couple of the later chapters and made a few edits. I declared it done around 8:15 a,m. and began the final formatting. This includes such things as adding in a listing of my other books which, for some reason, is never up-to-date. I spent time getting it up-to-date, and creating a system for keeping it up-to-date henceforth.
I have another hour and a half of work on the print book, then an hour or so on the e-book. Then I will be ready to work on something else. What will it be?
I ought to get back to the second of two Bible studies I was writing, as described in this post. I had pulled off the second while waiting on feedback on the first. But last night I learned that the man I sent it to for review never got the e-mail. I re-sent it last night, confirmed he got it, and so now I wait. I may get back to that. The Scribblers & Scribes meet this Thursday evening, and I’d like to have something to share. But what? I’m not sure they will want to review and critique pages of a Bible study.
Or, I may start on something completely new. I don’t want to go into too much detail. Tentatively titled Tales Of A Vagabond, it would be the start of an autobiography. I actually started it when I realized I needed to write my blog post.
Whatever I ultimately do with Tales Of A Vagabond, I know that finishing the two Bible studies will be my next main writing tasks. But after that, what? I’m kind of itching to do some work on a genealogy book about one of Lynda’s ancestors. My two partly-complete and temporarily-abandoned Thomas Carlyle books are starting to look attractive again. There’s always the next Documenting America book, for which I have completed the research. If TNSTATT takes off, I may hop right on Book 2 in that series. I just don’t know.
That’s not really the full list. I will be taking time soon to pray about this and see if I get some divine direction. The problem is, God has never given me such specific guidance. He usually leaves it up to me, and I have learned to pray that he would direct my footsteps as I make the best decisions I can. I suspect this will be one of those times.
Faith and science work together, to my mind it brings completion.
When we were recently in Lynda’s hometown, Meade Kansas, we went to a library surplus book sale. We don’t need another book in this house, but such a sale is an irresistible tractor beam, so we went. I picked up two used books for a quarter each. One was on the British romantic poets. The other was some correspondence of Bertrand Russell.
I knew nothing about Russell, other than the name and a vague idea he was an atheist, or an anti-Christian, but don’t know where I got that idea. I’ve read nothing he wrote, no biography of him, nothing. I suppose his name might have been in something I read, but if so, I don’t remember anything about him. But I knew he was an important man. I won’t go into a bio of “Lord” Russell in this post. Let’s just say I know more about him now than I did before, though not as much as I feel I ought to know. More research is needed. I’m only about 40 pages into the book.
In response to one letter to him dealing with his atheism, Russell replied (on 2 December 1964) with this statement.
I think that all religions consist at least in part of believing things for which there is no evidence and I think that in face of such beliefs loyalty to evidence should be substituted.
That got me thinking about religion and science. People are often categorized as being either of faith or of science. “He’s a man of faith,” is a statement frequently heard. Or, the converse, “He’s a man of science.” This latter statement is usually presented as science being exclusive of faith, while the former seems to be neutral on science, or so it seems to me. I guess my question is: Why can’t it be both?
Science is obvious, especially since the scientific method came into vogue. You observe, experiment, document, and conclude. The result is a snippet of information for which there is evidence. The moon is not made of green cheese. It’s made of rock. Barnacles don’t grow without parentage (i.e. via spontaneous generation) as once thought. They are spawned. Disease isn’t caused by evil spirits, but by germs.
We can’t see these germs with the naked eye, of course. It takes a microscope. I remember the fun in university science lab, where we looked at a wastewater sample under the microscope and a rotifer propelled itself across the part of the sample in view. Now that was exciting! While we haven’t seen the germs, we read that others have seen them, observed them, documented what they do, and conclude that germs are real. Faith isn’t required to believe in germs. Nor in atoms, nor the parts of the atom. Well, maybe a little faith that those who have done the experimentation/observation have accurately concluded and reported. But what with peer reviews, etc., not much faith.
Going out the other way, we now have powerful telescopes. They give us evidence of what stars are, how far away they are, the different types of stars, and a whole lot about them. They give us evidence of galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and the incredible distance from ours to others. Faith is not involved.
But where did it all come from? The most powerful space-based telescopes, seeing light from a long time ago, are starting to give us hints of the universe’s forming. But it really doesn’t tell us the why.
Science is constantly changing. I remember a college chemistry professor telling us what a professor of his had told him 25 years earlier. That prof had said, “Forty percent of what I teach you will eventually be proven untrue.” I think that prof was correct. As science advances, as more experiments are conducted and observations expanded, our knowledge changes. That’s not a negative. That’s a good thing.
But it does remind us that science, in general, is a moving target, constantly changing as knowledge increases.
On the other hand, there is faith, which for this post I’ll define as belief in something for which you don’t have evidence. Belief in God, in His sovereignty. That God created all that we can see and experience. How wonderful is faith! How wonderful it makes the world. How it expands on the enjoyment of all that is around us.
I suppose I get a bit irked when I see things such as “Evidences for God”. I don’t read them any more. I remember reading on-line the transcript of a debate between an atheist and a Christian. Both gave long opening arguments. Then they got into their main, prepared arguments. The Christian debater went to great lengths to prove mathematically that God existed. What? Who needs evidence? Who needs proof? I quit reading after a couple of paragraphs.
I prefer to believe in God by faith. I need no evidence other than that described by the apostle Paul in Romans 1.
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
But that’s still a matter of faith, not of science. I’m sticking to faith, which enhances science. Does science confirm faith? Doesn’t matter. Faith needs no confirmation.
I’m going on in this life by faith. Come along with me.
A series of 31 short, inspiring stories. Well worth the read.
In our evening reading time, my wife and I recently read aloud A Gift of Miracles: Magical Stories to Touch Your Family’s Heart. This is a group of stories about events in peoples’ lives where something unexpected and, shall I say, miraculous happened.
Submitted by those whose stories they are, the book is by Jamie C. Miller, Laura Lewis, and Jennifer Basye Sander. I assume they are editors of this, though they may have served as co-writers with some who submitted their stories.
The book contains 31 inspiring stories, typically three to five pages. These are very much like the stories you find in Guideposts magazine, though this is not a Guideposts book. While this is a faith-based book, all the stories are not outwardly spiritual. No matter. It’s a good book.
If you find this book, it’s well worth a read. Read one story a day for a month. Or two if you have the time. Or read it straight through. You will be inspired.
While I liked the book and give it 5-stars, it is not a keeper, as I don’t see myself ever reading it again. If this is in a series, or we find another like it, we will probably pick it up and read it.
This is my first Bible study. It’s done fairly well but is by no means cracking a bestseller list.
In my progress and goals posts, I have mentioned that I was working on writing two Bible studies. They are actually part of a longer study having six parts. Let me explain.
Some years ago, when my co-teacher and I were discussing the curriculum for our Life Group, he said it would be nice to go through the events of Holy Week as a study, ending up on Easter Sunday. I took a look at it, and discovered there were almost 70 separate events during Holy Week. It would take us over a year to go through it all without combining some of the smaller events. Actually, more like two years when you consider the occasional Sunday when we don’t have Life Groups and the interruptions for all-church studies.
I decided instead that we would break this up into six parts and do some every year leading up to Easter, and going beyond Easter when necessary. I planned it all out, and I guess it was in 2019 that we did Part 1, on the Triumphal Entry and the events over Sunday-Monday-Tuesday of Holy Week. That was a bit long; I should have broken it up into two parts. Then there was the Olivet Discourse during the pandemic interrupted 2020. Last year was the Last Supper, and this year is Gethsemane, Arrest, and Jewish Trial. Next year will be the Roman trial, execution and burial. And the year after next will be Easter Sunday.
All has gone well. We get through this seven to fifteen lessons per year. The class seems happy. The pace is good.
At some point between last year’s series and this year’s series, I decided that, if I were going to write and publish another Bible study, maybe this series was what I should write. In January, when I finished two other writing projects and decided I’d do a Bible study next, I went to work on the Last Supper study.
I immediately ran into a problem, however. I had my teaching notes from when I taught the classes, but they were months old. They were suitable for teaching when the material was fresh but not for writing when the material was stale. I found I had to re-study a lesson again in order to write a chapter in the book. As a result, I made very little progress in January and February.
The first Sunday in March, we began the new part of the study, Gethsemane, etc. The day after I taught the first lesson I set down to write it in book form. The chapter came out very easily. In three days I had it written. At that point I switched back to last year’s study, and struggled along.
The next week, I decided to make that the pattern. Here’s what I’m trying to do.
Study on Saturday for the current lesson.
Teach the lesson on Sunday; come home and begin to write the current lesson into a chapter.
Work on and complete the current lesson chapter Monday-Tuesday.
Work on last year’s study Wed-Thus-Fri, hoping to complete one full chapter, but being satisfied with whatever I can do.
Since I started that at week 2 in the current study, it has worked well. I have all chapters in the current study complete through Chapter 5 and am working on Chapter 6. On last year’s study, some weeks I’ve been able to do a full chapter; other weeks I’m a little short of a full chapter.
As of April 10, I have written approximately 31,000 words in last year’s study, and 29,000 words in this year’s study. That’s substantial progress.
Yesterday, I went to The Dungeon after church and began writing, and found myself completely out of gas. Problems sleeping Saturday night had left me tired. I wrote maybe 300 words on the current lesson, and decided to pack it in. I’m not sure how much I’ll get done today and tomorrow, due to the need to finish my income taxes. But there’s no law saying I can’t take the entire week to write that chapter, and save work on last year’s study till next week or the week after.
I’m enjoying this writing. I don’t know how this will proceed. I know I’ll finish these two, publish them, then see if I’ll write more of them over the next couple of years.
This little book is a good read about a good man who had a good ministry. Well worth reading.
One of the books we picked up used, somewhere along life’s way, is Luis Palau by Terry Whalin. It’s part of the Men of Faith series by Bethany House Publishers (since bought by others).
Palau was an Argentinian who grew up in difficult economic circumstances. He had limited schooling at an early age, though finally went to a European-run boarding school in Argentina. Slowly, God got ahold of his heart and he embraced Jesus as Lord.
He became interested in spreading God’s word and, in the 1940s, became aware of mass evangelism. This seemed a great idea to him. He found mentors and organizations to guide him, and his ministry took off. A few years later, he was holding crusades throughout Latin America. As bilingual, Spanish and English, he was soon called upon to hold crusades around the world. Along the way, he had emigrated to the USA, married in the States, and they had children.
The book was written while Pilau was alive and holding crusades. The author, Terry Whalin, is someone I’ve met at writing conferences. He has been active in all parts of the publishing industry: author, editor, agent, publisher. He also spent time with Wycliff Bible Translators. I’ve corresponded with Terry off and on over the years.
This is a good little book. If you get ahold of a copy, it’s well worth reading. Our book was a strange critter. We began reading it aloud. We got to page 32, and the next page was 65. At page 96, it went back to page 65. We saw, stamped on the bottom of the book, “Seconds”. We obviously bought a defective copy. Not to worry. It was probably a 50¢ purchase. But, we aren’t going to pass a defective copy on to someone else, and into recycling we will go. We were able to find a copy of the book to borrow at Internet Archives, so we were able to finish it.
