Happy Birthday Bowden!

Happy Belated Birthday Jack!

Vermont Proverbs and a Challenge

The following are some proverbs collected from around the state by a professor at UVM and made into a book published in 1986. The title is, "Talk Less and Say More: Vermont Proverbs" and the author/compiler is Wolfgang Mieder.

A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself.

Deeds are fruits, words are but leaves.

He who thinks by the inch and talks by the yard gets moved by the foot.

It's nice to sit and think, but sometimes it's nicer just to sit.

It makes a difference whose cow is in the well.

Now that you've got a taste for it, here's the challenge: in a later post I will be sharing a proverb from this book having to do with personal disputes. I'm going to challenge you to try and come up with a plausible sounding proverb on that topic and e-mail it to me at tatefamilyvt@comcast.net. I'll include all the faux proverbs along with the original one and people can guess which one they think is the true one. So it's kind of like the game "dictionary" but with proverbs and played on a blog.

hope to hear from you

Bandana Dreams - vocational crisis

This is the song I would use during the part of Bandana Dreams: The Job Tate Story that chronicles our hero's agonizing post-college decisions about vocation.
Think about direction, Job. Wonder why you have it.

Manse Maladies

Christine is ill with strep and the rest of us feel like we're on a raft in the middle of the river, stuck in the current, approaching a waterfall of inevitable illness. I have decided to dive off the raft and swim for the shore. I can ill afford to get ill at the moment.

But please pray for Christine. The poor girl is wiped out! She's been to the pharmacy and is medicated and I hope that helps but when I asked her to confess the secret sin in her life which we know must be the real cause of her illness she refused, which is, itself, evidence of her deep and secret sin.

Now, while I'm not serious about that, there is a connection between the sin in our lives and our physical health, biblically speaking. It is both a direct and indirect connection. The sin of gluttony leads to obesity and all of the conditions that spring from it (illness is the only thing that springs from obesity). That's a direct connection. But general sin, and sins of the heart and disposition, can result in poor health even when there is no connection, medically speaking.

And at the same time there are righteous saints who are horribly afflicted, and moral scoundrels who are "fat and sleek."

So when I get sick I think it's important to take my moral temperature first, but it is not wise to assume or insist upon either a spiritual diagnosis or a spiritual remedy for what might be a purely physical problem.

What do you think?

Things Not To Say Around Me

"At the end of the day . . ."
"efforting"
"I'm only human"

Counseling with Dr. Archibald

. . . because I'm running out of things to post and my kids loved this!