How Not to Hurry

Maybe we’re going at the wrong speed. Maybe if we are constantly rushing, we will miss out on life itself. Let’s let go of the obsession with speed, and instead slow down, stop rushing, and enjoy life.

via How Not to Hurry.

This reminds me of a story I heard on All Things Considered last night. It examined the well-known but poorly-understood phenomenon of time seeming to pass more quickly as we age. One of the theories had to do with every experience feeling ‘new’ when we’re young, but just getting ‘classified’ when we’re old. So a new meal or a new movie just gets filed away.

Maybe, if we take the time to enjoy every experience, we’ll feel like we live longer.

What is needed for brewing? « beeringwithWd

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via What is needed for brewing? « beeringwithWd.

Mostly noting this for my own reference later.

Slipknot

Sometimes a moment, an emotion, and a song converge perfectly. I heard this yesterday, and that convergence happened.

“Snuff” – Slipknot

NPR Jihad

Look, when other Fox anchors tell you to get a thicker skin and you’re being unfair (to NPR), that should tell you something. Via Political Junkie, a NPR blog. FWIW, as a longtime member of my local public radio station, I’d rather they get no tax dollars and let us kick in the balance, primarily to remove politics from the equation. Or at least minimize it, anyway.

EDIT: Also, WP.com is being annoying and not letting me embed the code to the video. See it at the NPR link above.

Princesses and pilgrims

My six-year-old daughter complaining about her eight-year-old (female) cousin:

“I hate it when she comes over. She always wants to put princesses and fairies in my games! I want pilgrims and Indians!”

I love this little girl.

Struggles of faith

Faith and doubt have an inseparable bond: each one has meaning specifically related to the other. If faith is the “assured expectation of reality though not beheld,” then that means the person feeling that assurance must have overcome their doubts.

Doubt, like trust, though, doesn’t have to be all or nothing. I can doubt what you say and believe it at the same time. Maybe you’ve always proven yourself as a reliable observer, but your recent report seems, well, unbelievable. That’s not to say I think you’re a liar or just wrong, but it takes time for me to process and integrate that data with what I already know. My mental model might require substantial change.

So faith and doubt don’t mean opposites. They can just describe different phases or states in the same process.

Don’t let your doubts sweep you away. Stick with it, work through the doubt, and let that process deepen your faith in the end.

Nighttime sounds

As twilight yields to darkness and shadows extend to cover the land, this sound echoes through our home at night.

Perhaps an urban specter makes its presence known? Or an escaped reptile wanders through the alleyway, proclaiming its hunger? Has a tyrannosaurus rex risen from the depths of the nearby lake and will now wreak havoc upon an unsuspecting inner suburb?

No. My wife recorded my snoring.

Yeah, I had a sleep study a few years ago that said I don’t have sleep apnea, but I think I might need to see a doctor again.

Relief

I haven’t been to a Bible meeting in a few weeks until today. Largely, this stemmed from family obligations (pneumonia in the house, father-in-law’s heart attack) plus some problems at work. I felt bad about it, regardless, because I know I should be there and ‘not forsake the gathering of ourselves together’, as Hebrews 10 tells us.

Sometimes, when this happens, that guilt ferments naturally into anxiety. Today I felt shaky, and for a moment I didn’t want to go because I felt bad about not having gone. (Writing it out that way makes it sound even more irrational!)

I went, though, and I felt something odd. We’ve all had moments when we needed something physically. Maybe food, a trip to the bathroom, medication, or sleep. When we finally got it, we felt flooded with relief. That’s the only way to describe how I felt today. Once the opening prayer had finished and we got underway with a sermon on remaining spiritually awake, I felt that physical sensation of warmth and release, something far more than just emotional.

Maybe neurology has some explanation, and I can certainly find a number of theological ones as well (e.g. “the peace of God that excels all thought”). No matter what caused it, though, I really enjoyed the refreshment on all levels.

Next time I can remind myself of that and see what happens.

Novels versus short stories

In the preface to Burning Chrome, William Gibson writes that the relationship of short stories to science fiction is the same as that of the single to rock music: “the medium that defined the most perfect expressions” of a given art form.

Come to think of it, my favorite science fiction stories usually came in the form of short fiction, often no longer than a novella.

Does this mean that science fiction novels don’t really work? Or that they just aren’t worth the extra effort it takes to write them?

Meh. Overthinking this. Bring on November!

Prepping for Nanowrimo 2009

Definitely doing it this year. I’ve conned a few friends into participating as well so we can all support each other.

Last night, I listened to the final movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony on my way home from dinner, and everything started clicking. The concept, the characters, their motivations…

More to come here.