Yesterday was the final article in the Christmas Week marathon. Today, I'm moving from Lost Opportunities to Found Opportunities. A better description would use the word active, but title continuity refuted this idea.
Lost opportunities are passive. These are invitations presenting themselves as available for participation. Being 'mindful' will help us notice these invitations. If we neglect to act, we have lost the opportunity.
This past Monday, I received the following email reminder.
PEACE ON EARTH
I searched online and then took a sight-seeing drive. People decorating houses for the holidays can be quite creative. Traditional displays sit next to the unusual and spectacular. I was looking for something that used to be common.
Already, even before we begin, you're thinking, "This guy is either on another planet or off one of his weird adventures. Christmas Eve and he wants to talk about construction."
Bear with me. I'll make the connection and I'll make it short. Well, maybe.
In case you're interested, the Do-It-Yourself concept is alive and well. People are doing everything imaginable without the aid of professionals.
Some people love to sing and some love listening to people who love to sing.
We are fast-approaching Christmas Day and of course, holiday music is in evidence everywhere. I suspect that some of you are a bit over it but even so, the next couple of days could see a renewed interest in the songs of the season.
I've got something for you. Actually, it's a re-gift from a dear friend, who also happens to be one of the performers.
Yesterday's post was rather frivolous, maybe even ridiculous, but hopefully made you think a little about your next complaint. Although today's article is making much the same point, you'll be happy to see it is also significantly more direct.
A recent podcast featured a quote from Gerald Sittser.
"The quickest way for anyone to reach the sun and the light of day is not to run west, chasing after the setting sun, but to head east, plunging into the darkness until one comes to the sunrise."
Like most of you, I take a shower every morning. (I hear the applause! Thank you. Thank you.)
But here's the thing. It seems like every morning, I am faced with the task of cleaning the drain cover. Maybe it's me, but it seems like I'm losing more hair every day. I apologize if this is a bit gross for your taste, but I'm making a good point if you can handle it.
This is the beginning of Christmas Week. As a gift (or maybe a punishment), I have scheduled articles each day for the next 8 days.
Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister
Many years ago, in a faraway land (well, Cincinnati feels like a long way from my Minnesota roots), there was an Aunt who loved to read to children. Rainbow Fish was one of her favorite books.
Cozied up together, Aunt and grand-niece cuddled on the couch. An extremely young little girl, this newcomer-to-all- things, sat silently, listening intently all the while enraptured by the story being expressively read to her.
A fleeting shadow.
My head immediately snapped up from monitor-focused typing. What I saw as the dawn silently filtered through a blinds-closed window-frame forced legs to action while hands grabbed a cell-phone-camera. I was desperate to capture this image.
An eternity (nearly 5 minutes) in wait produced no repeat performance. This window of opportunity is lost to the shadows, to write full of pun.
I made an attempt at manipulative invitation thinking that if I placed a few bread crumbs on the outside windowsill, I could duplicate the image. Offering the enticement of food is effective in a lot of our interactions, right?
This short video is the only reproduction relevant to the imagery that held me captive a few moments earlier. It's clearly not the share I'd like to promote.
Just yesterday, I was thinking about the reasons that I write while lamenting a bit about the situation we find ourselves in this year. It was much easier to discover 'stories' that created God-awareness when I was actually moving around in the world.
But today, the world came to me in the form of an opaque bird. I have no idea what kind of bird nor do I know if it likes bread crumbs but at least it returned to explore. A 'fleeting' image is all you'll see but my disruption this morning was due to a full wing-span produced shadow that took my breath away.
When we breathe, molecules of the last gasp of Julius Caesar enter our bloodstreams.
When I read that statement (paraphrased above), I decided to spend time in research rather than taking some truth-of-word into my brain along with my next breath. Of course, I was not successful in preventing my next breath as my body pretty much takes care of my breathing apparatus, but I continued to explore anyway.
Apparently, there were experiments done to determine if this hypothesis was verifiable, at least per the generally accepted conditions placed on us by mathematics.
” The story goes that in 44 BC in Rome, Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of his own senators, crumpling to the floor with a final gasp. This last breath contained around 25 sextillions (that’s 25 followed by 21 zeroes) air molecules, which would have spread around the globe within a couple of years. A breath seems like such a small thing compared to the Earth’s atmosphere, but remarkably, if you do the math, you’ll find that roughly one molecule of Caesar’s air will appear in your next breath.
And it doesn’t stop there. In the same way, you might currently be inhaling Cleopatra’s perfume, German mustard gas and even particles exhaled by dinosaurs.”
The above quote was taken from Science Focus.
