In Gennesaret

Y’all, God has blessed me with really good people in my life. People who love me, support me, appreciate me, and go out of their way for me. The gifts and kind words and all-day-long singing I received on my birthday last week were small examples of that. Seriously, friends . . . how do I deserve you? So many good people. So, I really shouldn’t give as much attention as I do to the one exception, right? One person. There’s just this one person . They are a constant burr in my saddle these days. They make my life harder – and if this isn’t intentional on their part, or at least passive aggressive, it is most certainly selfish. In almost everything they do, they seem to communicate a lack of respect for me.  It’s only one person. Why do I let this one person affect me so much? We’ve all got our baggage, you know. I’ve shared some of mine before here in this blog. One particular parcel I tote around unseen is an unspoken message I’ve heard in my heart since childhood – parti...

Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. ( Matthew 11:29 in The Message) I taught a breakout session at my school’s Parent Conference last week about discipling our children. (Read that closely: not "disciplining". Discipling. ) One of my primary points was that discipling is not teaching. We disciple not through words but through actions – through living life together. When Jesus called his disciples, he didn’t say, “Come – have a seat. Listen to what I have to say.” He said, “Follow me.” When he told them to love each other, he didn’t give them a definition to write down and recite back to him later. He said, “Love each other the way I have loved you.” We learn more by example than we learn by words – from our parents and from our Lord. Walk with me . . . work with me . . . being a disciple of Jesus involves with-ness. It’s concerned with acting more than it is with knowing. But those last words – the unforced rhythm...

I recently read The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov. Being a director and a playwright, I’ve felt a bit of shame at my ignorance of this classic playwright and his works. I have actually seen this particular work of his performed . . . although I don’t remember anything about it (other than the fabulous set designed by my friend Alfy, which was the reason for my attendance). So, I ordered a copy of the play with an Amazon gift card I got at the end of the school year. And I wasn’t impressed. I felt the same way when I finished a long-drawn-out reading of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina this summer. I will say that I at least knew what was going on most of the time in that novel; the play I had a hard time following at all. I appreciated the tragedy of Anna’s end and the joy of Levin’s enlightenment . . . but the journey to get to those moments was laborious. The Brothers Karamazov had a similar effect on me. Yay for the occasional glorious mountaintops . . . ugh for the long, winding ...

A friend of mine recently put her own birthdate on her son’s passport application by accident. A small, understandable error in the midst of the craziness that is a sudden, stressful, quickly organized move of a family of five to another country. But it had the potential of really messing up their plans, and she was, as you might imagine, quite distraught by it. During my daughter’s recent visit here, she had a car accident. She’s a good driver (she’s probably a better driver than I am). This was actually her first accident after nine years of driving. There were extenuating circumstances: it was pouring down rain, she was in a new car where she wasn’t yet familiar with the feel of the brakes, PLUS she was suffering a migraine. But the real kicker? We had yet to get her insurance adjusted for the new car, so the accident wasn’t covered. A brief period of our not being completely on top of things led to a misstep that has been an unfortunate pain in the butt for all of us. Small mi...

Just call me Team Shmuel. I mean, Lord bless that boy. He’s a fictional character created by The Chosen to represent the Pharisaic opposition to Jesus. And as the series has progressed, I’m coming to the opinion that this character is one of the most brilliant things about the show. Yes, he’s a Pharisee. He is passionate about the law. He really frustrates us at the beginning of the story because he seems to be the stereotypical Pharisee we all have in our minds when we read the gospels. The antagonist, always in Jesus’ face and bashing him behind his back. He’s black and white with no grays, and he’s trying to bring our man down. But people, give him credit for being sincere . As the story progresses and he moves up to Jerusalem to join the Sanhedrin, he is increasingly dismayed by the politics going on there. That’s not what this man is about. Shmuel loves the Lord! Shmuel loves God’s law! Shmuel loves his people and wants to bring them back where they should be in their cove...

I’m old, people. At least I feel old some days. You know when I feel most old? When moving is hard. Moving. Not moving from one home to another. Just moving . Moving my old, stiff body. Newton codified the principle in the law of inertia: “An object at rest will stay at rest and an object in motion will stay in motion – unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.” I’m a teacher on summer vacation, and the bulk of my body in any given moment is NOT in motion. And to make it move is more of a trial than it should be. But I have made a discovery. Starting to move is hard. But that’s the hardest part. Once I’m up and going, it’s just not that bad. Yes, that’s old news. That’s Newton’s law again – once in motion, it’s easier to stay in motion. The thing is, this is something we all need to be reminded of sometimes, don’t we? After my father passed away, my uncle told me a story about him. My dad was the first in his family to go to college, and my uncle was the second. About a ...

See this picture? I’m seriously considering posting it in my classroom this fall. That’s weird on a lot of levels – one being that I am not one to do much of anything visual or decorative in my room. I'm not artistic in that way, and I simply don’t have the time or energy to mess with it. My first year of teaching, I spent a good deal of my summer making a cute little bulletin board display that I don’t remember anything about at all other than the fact that I know it wasn’t nearly as cute or meaningful as I thought it was and it took way too much of my time to create. But I’ll admit that the idea of putting up this picture in my classroom is also weird because . . . well, just because it’s weird to display a big picture of an outdated farm implement. Like, what?? Here’s how I got to this place. I wrote a post here a couple weeks ago about rest – and that I had come to the tentative conclusion that rest is the laying down of burdens. (You can read  that brilliance here.) H...