SHOKUNIN

All I want to do is create the best meal you will ever experience. It will help the world, and me, to be better. This obligation is both spiritual and material. The work is never done, nor the joy any greater than, at the end of the meal, hearing that Ah... Umami.

For my son, the chef.
For more details, watch Jiro Dreams of Sushi

GOODBYE

You know you're getting old when your friends start dying. A friend since the time I was in the 5th grade died of a heart attack in his sleep. He was 67. His wife, also a good friend, died just over a month later. She had multiple sclerosis for many years, which apparently had gotten worse. They lived in Arlington, Texas. We hadn't seen them for about ten years. I last talked to him about a year ago on the phone.
I don't know what I feel worse about: Their deaths, or our not being able to keep up with them over the years.
Anyway, I feel bad. I wish things had been different, but that's not how it went. Distance creates excuses. You have jobs, children, new friends. What once was, changes. When something like death happens, t all comes back to haunt you. It was so much fun. We were so close. How did we let it all get away?
Have a good journey, Rene and Dixie. Until then...

THE ALCHEMIST

The alchemist was seeking to turn base metals, usually lead, into gold. It ends up the process lead the alchemist to the possibility of seeking a better life. The lead may not have transformed into gold, but the alchemist transformed into a better person.
In a similar fashion, chaos theory, applied to social change, attempts to do the same thing the alchemist did, transforming not lead, but the status quo, into disharmony, or chaos. In doing so, he or she is hoping that the resulting balance that the community, society, comes back to will be better, more enlightened, than the previous state.
The alchemist must be prepared to be ridiculed and dismissed as a threat to the prevailing conventional wisdom and power structure. A provocation of the status quo will result in a strong unwillingness of the public to change. This is the alchemists work, to stir static, entrenched, retrogressive ideas into new, progressive, creative, and hopefully more enlightened solutions to life's many problems and issues.

BENEDICTION

As you leave this place
may the Living Lord go with you;
May he go behind you, to encourage you,
beside you, to befriend you,
above you, to watch over you,
beneath you, to lift you from your sorrows,
within you, to give you the gifts of faith, hope, and love,
and always before you, to show you the way.

SUNDAY MORNING HYMN: "Just Breathe" - Live At Austin City Limits - Pearl Jam

SUNDAY MORNING SERMON: SHOOT A TERRORIST FOR CHRIST

I'm surprised I haven't seen that message on some of our church bulletin boards. That's how bad it's getting. Having been in the ministry, I'm pretty much embarrassed by what I see being pawned off as Christianity nowadays. The Church has steadily grown irrelevant as our need for spirituality has become increasingly necessary. Just about every war currently going on has to do with religion, one thinking theirs is bigger and better than the others. I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if they just killed one another, but they got to drag the rest of us into it. Frankly, I think we are all sons and daughters of God, and as such, have no business killing one another. When we do, we are destroying the divine. And I got a notion that's not good.

SUNDAY MORNING HYMN: Eddie Vedder ~ Hard Sun (LYRICS)

SUNDAY MORNING PRAYER-OLD STORIES BECOME NEW SONGS

We love to tell the old, old story.
We love to sing the old, old song
    of your saving deeds of mercy and
                                            freedom and
                                             healing and
                                               newness.

We know about Exodus freedom
   and dancing tambourines.

We know about land and huge clusters of grapes.

We know about rivers of water and
              rivers of oil.

We know about the strangeness that
       the blind see,
       the lame walk,
       the lepers are cleansed,
       the dead are raised,
       the poor rejoice.

We know. Give us courage to
             trust what we know and to
             obey what we hope.

We know that the old, old story---in our telling---becomes
      a new, dangerous, transforming song. And so we sing!

Prayers for a Privileged People,  Walter Brueggeman