Showing posts with label sabbath. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sabbath. Show all posts

Thursday, April 6, 2017

Sometimes we need quiet time

From New York-

It is one thing to be at a family dinner table and everyone is excitedly talking at the same time, but it is altogether more annoying if it is a meeting and in every direction people are simultaneously exchanging thoughts and opinions. Isn’t that what we’ve come to in our culture?

We are entangled in an unending strand of multi-phonic, simultaneous communications shouting at us via text, cell phone, computer, twitter, snap chat, and even old-school television, radio and telephone. This becomes painfully clear when the person sending a text or email wonders what took us so long if we didn’t answer immediately. Worse yet is when we are the one who has become impatient for the same reason.


I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeonly Luddite, but sending an electronic communication seems to have become tantamount to being present with them and demanding a person’s full attention. If I were to receive a phone call at my house (yes, I still have a land line) at dinnertime, there is a pretty good chance I would not answer it until after dinner unless it was one of my kids. That does not seem unreasonable, and you may have the same protocol. Why then, should we allow texting or anything else to be more intrusive? Why feel compelled to read it or answer it immediately?

More here-

http://www.fltimes.com/opinion/denim-spirit-sometimes-we-need-quiet-time/article_923526d4-19fe-11e7-917a-53f6ce0f7eaf.html

Sunday, September 1, 2013

God is pro-union After all, Moses was a labor organizer

From Pittsburgh Post-Gazette-

The two jobs I work complement each other nicely. One pays my bills but sucks my soul, while the other heals my soul but doesn't pay enough to cover my bills.

The soul-crushing job is in full-time retail. And in the interest of continuing that employment, I hasten to say that I'm not knocking my employer but the dynamics of the industry itself. The soul-healing job is in part-time pastoral ministry. Working between these material and spiritual spheres of life can generate some social and ethical insights -- at least I'd like to think so.


For example, at my retail job we have an entire cooler door devoted to energy drinks: Monster, Rockstar, Red Bull, Amp, you name it. And let's not forget the five-hour one available at the counter. I doubt that many customers give much thought to using them to get through the day. But I look at those products and think, "What's wrong with us? When did we start needing so many additives to keep us going? Didn't God make days off so we could rest up and recharge?"



Read more:

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/perspectives/god-is-pro-union-701577/#ixzz2ddYkJNnK