Friends......

Friends Sharing Special Moments at Home

Friendship:  The supportive relationship between people.  The term connotes a relationship which involves mutual knowledge, esteem, affection, and respect along with a degree of rendering service in times of need.

Why Do Some Friendships Not Stand the Test of Time?

A friend is:

---Someone who will support you unconditionally

---Someone you can trust, and who will not be judgemental

---Someone who will not deliberately hurt your feelings

---Someone whose company you enjoy

---Someone who stands by you in tough situations

---Someone  who accepts you for what you are

Some Friends Last a Lifetime

Questions:

---Why can it be so hard to get and maintain friendships?

---Do we even need friends in our lives?

---Are there different kinds of friends?

---Why do friends sometimes "come and go" in our lives?

Marriage.......

Today, class, we shall discuss the institution of marriage.  It really is a deep and fascinating subject.  No, this blog post will not attempt to go deeper than the surface, but that should be more than enough to get a response or three.  I mean, everyone has an opinion on the topic!

Cindy and Me at the Local Courthouse Eight Years Ago.  The Judge Just Married Us.  The Picture Quality is Poor, But We Didn't Care.

My experience with marriage has taught me this:  You had better really know what you want in a mate, and you had better REALLY KNOW HIM/HER before you get to the "I do" stage.

Ah---to quote Shakespeare---there's the rub.  What seems like a slam-dunk decision can be deceptive.  You meet someone and they are intelligent, handsome, fastidious, educated, funny, able to hold down a good job, can make decisions, and make your hormones flow.  On the surface, after a few dates, this individual appears to be a possible catch.

I have learned that decisions based on a high hormone level are not usually very good.  No, I have found that TIME is the most important ally in decision making. 

In the case of Cindy and me, we wanted at all costs to be able to say we really knew each other before we married.  Now, the only way we knew to really do that was to live together for a while and see first hand how we responded over time.

We decided to give it a year, and then make our decision.  This approach worked very well for us, although we knew it was not approved by our religion.

After about nine months of living together and seeing each other in all types of situations, we made commitments to each other.  It was the perfect way for us to know what we were getting into. 

The next decision, which we had, of course, been talking about, was WHERE and HOW to get hitched.  We discussed our church, of course---that was an obvious consideration; but there was a problem of who to invite and the distinct possibility that we would be pressured to do things and invite certain folks we did not want present.

So then, we discussed Las Vegas.  If we had our wedding there, we could be pretty much assured that we could control who attended and we could have a memorable time as well.  But, Vegas involved spending more time and money than we wanted to spend.

We discussed other possibilities, also.  In the end, however, we decided all that was important to either of us was being married to each other.

Cindy Today

On a memorable Friday afternoon in late June, Cindy donned a nice dress and I put on a suit, and we went to the county courthouse.  We were married by a judge in a private ceremony in one of the courtrooms.  It cost $25.  We were elated.

Me Today

On the way home, we made phone calls to our mothers and other relatives announcing the joyous news.  Our ceremonial meal was a stop at a Mexican restaurant where we made goo-goo eyes at each other over chile rellenos and tacos.  Now, that's a marriage worth having!

Biblical Proportions....

Never in my life have I seen such enormous force and depth of nature's power as in the horrible videos coming out of Japan. 

As I rested in bed last night before sleep, I thought about the tens of thousands of broken lives in Japan.  And the only thing I could compare it to are the biblical stories of devastation.  They exist with us today.

I know we are all praying for these poor people who have suffered such tragedy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-zfCBCq-8I&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3AdFjklR50&feature=related

The Sudden, Tragic Death of Fritz Von Nosille

He was larger than life to me---a joy to be around.  And, although I was only 7 years old, I had come to know him as a joyful and loyal companion.  When one is as young as I was back then, one tends to take things for granted.  Looking back, I see that, as life extends toward old age, we learn not to take things for granted because they just might not be there for us tomorrow.  But I didn't really know that back then.

My dad named him "Fritz".  We got him when he was just a puppy.  You could say that I was just a puppy, too.  We grew together in the two years of his life.  Dad finally added a middle and last name to his first name, so that he was formally known as "Fritz Von Nosille".  I thought this was exceedingly clever, as "Nosille" is actually our family name spelled backward.

One day I was playing with my friends in the front of our Houston, Texas house.  I don't know exactly how it happened, but Fritz escaped from his back yard home, which was fenced.  He ran down the street, with me and the other neighborhood kids in pursuit.

I can see it today as clearly as the day it happened so long ago.  My precious dog, that I took for granted, didn't know any better as he ran onto the busy Southwest Freeway.  We all watched as he was crushed by speeding traffic.

I went into shock.  Somehow, my mom got the dog to the vet.  There was nothing that could be done.  It happened right before Christmas, 1952.  And it lives with me still.

You Hypocrite!

Hypocrisy:  The state of pretending to have beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities or standards that one does not actually have.  Hypocrisy involves the deception of others, and thus is a kind of lie.

Is there anyone in the world who has not, at least at some point, been hypocritical? 

Politicians, of course, are the absolute worst.  They speak in doublespeak, seemingly promising all, while in reality they do that which best serves them.

Unfortunately, many members of the clergy are notorious for espousing God's Word on Sunday while indulging in sin on Monday through Saturday.

Police officers may be seen handing out traffic tickets for speeding while they themselves routinely exceed the speed limit with no penalty.

I have a friend who advised his 21 year old son that he could go after any kind of job he wanted, as long as it was something he would enjoy doing.  His son responded by saying he was thinking of enlisting in the army.  My friend then told his son he did not want him to be in the army.  "Well", the son replied, "What kind of job do you want me to have, then?"  "Oh", my friend replied to his son, "any job you want---any job at all."

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.  It is so much easier to talk the talk than walk the walk.  Can you think of people in your life who are routinely hypocritical?

Be Careful What You Wish For.....

Looking back on the places I've been and the things I've done, it's pretty easy to think of more than a few times I wished for something to happen for my benefit.  Then, when it DID happen, I was elated............Then, things did not turn out at all the way I thought they would; and the "good" thing that happened to me actually was a bad, or unpleasant, experience.

For example, when I was in college, I had to take a required course:  Religion 101A.  Actually, it was not a difficult course at all.  Just some reading and some memorizing.  My problem was that I was not at all interested in the subject matter and did not study very much.  I got a "D", which I deserved.

The college had a rule that if you made a "D" in a class, you were allowed to take it over and replace the "D" you originally made with your new grade.  I jumped at the chance---yes, I would ace the course this time and expunge the bad grade.  I took the course over. I made another "D".  Sigh.

Another time, the company I worked for was looking for a sales manager.  My ego needed stroking, so I mounted a fierce campaign to get the job.  I worked harder at getting that promotion than I ever did at actually doing my job.  Finally, I did get the job.  I was elated.  Yes, this was great!  I was sure I was gonna "wow" 'em.  I didn't.  My bosses didn't like my ideas, didn't care for my presentations, hated my plans, poo-pooed my accomplishments.  It was the unhappiest time I could imagine.  I couldn't do anything right, it seemed.  When the time came that I was let go, it was a relief.

Of course, things do work the other way, as well---you know, when something happens to us that we think at the time is bad, but actually turns out to be good with the passage of time.

A good example of that in my life was the time I lost a huge order I had worked on for a year.  My competitor was awarded the sale.  I was crushed.  One week later the account called me and told me that the competition could not fill the order to their satisfaction and they were awarding it to me.  Now, I became elated.  I went from the outhouse to the penthouse.  Life is like that, no?

What are some of your remembrances of getting what you wished for and then having a bad experience with it?....Or, of getting something you thought was bad that later turned out to be good?  Do you think there is more that just random coincidence involved?  Could He be calling all the shots?  If so,.........why?

Comments?

Speaking In Tongues....

All my life, I have been associated with the Methodist church.  Methodist churches are generally pretty tame places.  The people are friendly, but usually subdued.  The sermons are matter-of-fact, and usually subdued.  The music is generally mainstream hymns or well-established praise.  No surprises.

Well, the subject of speaking in tongues came up the other day with a group of friends.  I wondered aloud what would happen if someone began speaking in tongues in our church.  After all, it has never happened before.  Someone said that EMS would be called and that person would be whisked off to the closest emergency room for treatment of epilepsy.

Someone else opined that most of the congregation would also require treatment.  Probably so.

This topic also arose in a comment stream on another blog I follow---"LION'S SHARE MAJESTY".  It's an excellent blog that I encourage anyone of faith to explore. 

But---what would happen if our sedate Methodist church (we can also include most mainline Christian denominations here) experienced a worshipper's eruption in tongues?  I can tell you that it would shake our church to its core. 

The problem, of course, is this:  it is biblical.  It happened in scripture, and more than once.  It happened to the disciples (Acts 2), and everyone understood what was being said, even though various "languages" were being spoken.  And it happened to others later (1 Cor 14:2 and 1 Cor 14:13---18) when the words were not understood.

Speaking in tongues, also known as "glossolalia", is the vocalization of speech-like syllables in religious practice.  Some consider the utterances to be meaningless jibberish.  Others firmly assert the practice to be the use of the holy language of God.

It has been said that the practice is a sign of mental illness or hypnosis or a learned behavior.  Those who do not practice it are usually at a loss to explain it.  Those who do practice it are at a loss to explain why all Christians do not practice it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fkn1BilNhmc

But, just once, how I would love to see a few individuals in attendance at our church service who spontaneously erupt in a volcanic explosion of glossolalia.  How delicious would that be?