A realization

For the first time in longer than I can remember, I don't have anything that I'm especially looking forward to. I can't help but think that this isn't especially good for me, but I suppose I could be wrong about that. It is probably good for me to remember this timely FB post.

A friend, the son of dear friends

In therapy we discussed how you can still have mixed feelings about someone long after you have forgiven them. On your birthday, J., I am praying that you are in the presence of the One who loves you best (that is, I truly want the best for you), and ask that you would join me in praying for those you hurt most, including your parents, widow and young son, and my precious daughter, who thought the world of you until that night. It is impossible to know which of those two tragic choices did more harm to your soul, but I hope you're healed of all of it.

Ah! Today's word, not yesterday's . . .

pinchbeck \PINCH-bek\ - 1. made of an alloy of copper and zinc used especially to imitate gold in jewelry  2. counterfeit or spurious

Love the new word, even if its second meaning is a besmirching of Mr. Pinchbeck's good name.

(Somehow they had this one posted yesterday by mistake, which they then took down and replaced with "cocoon." Today, they have this one back up.  I hope it stays this time, as I'd hate to have to edit the hyperlink back out again!)

Another %*$(! dream (edited)

I am really beginning to hate that our brains don't just switch off when we sleep.

I was being seated as a replacement in a room with a jury that was deliberating the level of guilt of a child sexual abuser. In that weird way that dreams have of not being quite right, we were in some sort of cross between a petit jury and grand jury environment. There were prosecutors in the room with us, explaining the thirteen (!) levels of offense of which the defendant could be found guilty. They clearly felt that he was deserving of the highest level, and my fellow jurors and I seemed to agree. But as we jurors were deliberating, one of the prosecutors handed another one the paperwork for another case. It was also a child abuse case, and had my name on it as the suspect! The prosecutorial staff began observing me closely, silently communicating among themselves whether I should be removed from the present case, given my past record (?) and my apparent involvement in this new case. However, when we unanimously voted according to their wishes on the current case, they didn't want to put their result at risk by bringing in another juror to replace me.

After the other jurors left the room, I began speaking with one of the prosecutors about my case. I knew I was not guilty of this charge, so didn't mind speaking to them. I didn't know the victim at all. I told them that I already have a lawyer that I work with, at which point they seemed to expect me to not speak further. Still I cooperated with their interview. It seems that there was not yet any analysis of physical evidence which tied me to the crime, only the victim's insistence that I was the one who had attacked - her? him? this wasn't clear in my dream. I had been clipping my nails during the previous jury vote, and offered my clippings as a DNA sample. The prosecutor told me that fingernail tissue doesn't contain DNA (not true in real life). Still, my clippings, which were now a substantial pile of fingernail remains, could be useful for analysis against the pattern of fingernail marks from the victim's wounds, so could help clear me. The prosecutorial staff remained skeptical of my innocence, and I was afraid of being railroaded for a crime I didn't commit. They told me that I should take my clippings and deposit them under the juniper tree (dreams!), so I walked along the fence line - yes, I was now outside - holding my pile of clippings in both hands cupped together, and desperately looked for where they meant. When I reached the trees, I couldn't tell which one was the juniper, and there was no one in sight with whom I could deposit my clippings. I was suspicious that they were just trying to get me to dump any evidence that might clear me of the crime they were certain I had committed based on the victim's account and my past.

No, really, I'm starting to become leery of going to sleep. Now it occurs to me (a little later) that the outdoor part of that may have been a separate dream, as my dreaming throughout the rest of the night had this investigation hanging pendulously over me and over whatever else I was dreaming about.

I dunno

I'm just going to try not to think about what it really means, because it hurts too much when I do.

A field of dreams

My purpose really was that I love this game so much and love what it will lend you if you allow it to. Because it's just an incredible game of failure, and life is nothing more than failure. - Lou Presutti, founder of Cooperstown Dreams Park

I hope he means "failure is as big an element of life as any other individual component is," rather than "in life there is nothing other than failure." I'm not so sure he's right in either case, but I'm a little comforted today by the first thought.

"A bad day golfing"

On Saturday, I found myself invoking the old saw about how a bad day at a fun hobby is better than a good day working. It turns out that I'm really glad this is going to be the last outing.

On the shotgun start, our threesome was the furthest out on the course. This made us the lead group; everyone else was behind us. I had golfed once this year. The most regular golfer on our team goes out every other week, and as a senior, has no distance to his tee shots. My friend Tom was the third, and he has also golfed very little this year. We had a good-natured debate at the outset over who was stuck with whom. We did okay (for us) on the first couple holes, though, parring them both in the increasingly heavy rain. On the third hole, we were on our third shot, about a hundred yards out from the green on a par four - very bad for a best-ball scramble to not at least reach the vicinity of the green in regulation - when the horn sounded calling us in because of the weather.

It would be about two hours before we could resume. Things didn't get any better. I think we had only one double bogey, scrambled to "save" a couple of bogeys, and made par about a third of the time. The best team posted 12 under par, but was eliminated for failing to sign their scorecard, so the winning score was 9 under. We finished 22 strokes behind the winners, 25 behind the best score. Still, I wasn't too concerned, and was having fun.

Except apparently my fun, or our combined incompetence, was interfering with others' enjoyment of the day. The sun came out about two hours after we resumed, we were drying out, and it was becoming an enjoyable day.  We had to go over to an adjacent green to pick up two errant shots that the double-hitter on that hole (in a best ball threesome, to keep things fair with the other groups, group members rotate playing an extra ball on each hole) had knocked astray. At that point, the youngest brother of the deceased for whose son the educational fund-raising tournament has been held each year told us that we needed to speed things up.

Well, here was the problem: we weren't playing slowly. We didn't spend a lot of time looking for errant balls we'd hit; if we didn't find them quickly, we just let them go, and sometimes we didn't bother looking at all. Also, we didn't spend much time standing over our shots, taking a bunch of practice swings. We were just playing very poorly. On the two "longest drive" holes, we were hitting our third shot from the marker where both the men's and women's longest drives had been hit. We took over 33% more strokes to complete the course than the best scoring teams did, including 42% (!) more than the disqualified team. Taking that many more strokes simply takes way more time. The only way to speed things up would have been to quit mid-round. So I attempted to explain this to John, who merely became insistent that, since we'd already had a two-hour rain delay and we now were slowing things down even further, we should do whatever it took to speed things up. As if just by him saying so we could start playing better.

Well, we did the best we could without quitting, which was really no better than before.

After dinner - which was originally going to be lunch - when we were waiting to say goodbye to Jeff (the deceased) and John's dad, who is my good friend, one of the other regular golfers was still chewing on his ear about what he needed to do to keep the problem from happening in the future. Well, this was already the last year for the outing - they've hit their fundraising goal - so I think they've fixed the issue already. But just in case they change their minds, they will never have this problem with me again.

*Now* it's over, but only for now?

I wasn't punishing you last night, but then, I don't think you know how hurt I was, so I don't think you knew how hard it was for me to choose not to intentionally hurt you in return. Still, while I determinedly kept contact with you, I could not respond to you as you wanted. I'm sorry. I wanted to; I just couldn't. And I know that must have hurt you even though that wasn't my intent.

We can't be close when you make entertainment decisions that push me away. I know, guys are supposed to be up for it any time, and women are supposed to need emotional closeness first. Maybe you always feel emotionally close to me, even as you make decisions that distance us? But if the stereotype about guys is mostly true, then I am definitely an exception.

I was concerned this morning, when you didn't respond to me in turn, that we might be getting caught up in a cycle of hurt and rejection, but once you were awake that didn't seem to be the case. So I hope that this is behind us, at least until the next time that something you want to watch takes precedence over our time together. Just last weekend you said that you didn't want it to be this way anymore. Don't you see the choices you make do this to us?

This morning I just want to withdraw from everything I do. I don't think I would survive that, though.

Balance in relationships

There are a couple of very different ways that the relationships in our lives can become unbalanced. One occurs when we elevate a relationship to an inappropriate level of importance among our other relationships. Another way is for a given relationship to be more important to one member than it is to the other.

I've been keeping close guard against both of these, and have been blindsided by one of them nonetheless.

Called to love tenderly

The last presentation last Saturday, by Roger and Kathy Chmiel and Fr. Dennis Koopman, was hard to hear, especially when Kathy was speaking.  Roger and Kathy are an older couple, and Kathy was having issues with getting her microphone positioned properly. Most of what I did hear of what they shared was the obvious stuff.

I don't know why Encountered couples who share about their sexuality manage to miss the emotional mark on it, but it happens almost every time that they come off as being titillated by talking about it. It's as if we can't enjoy our sexuality in proper context.  Some of the moments that I have felt closest to God are when I have been closest to my wife. I realize most people will find the idea odd that our sexual intimacy should be a sacred experience. Most people - even most Christians, I suspect - will tend to think that this is one realm in which they don't want to have a sense of God being present. Perhaps it is because of society's insistence on treating sex as something fun but tawdry, and of treating marriage (or less) as a sex license. Yet I think that the union we experience as a married couple, which finds one of its most beautiful and intense expressions in our sexuality, brings us a fuller experience of God than almost anything else we do. Our ecstatic union shared between each other reaches and stretches beyond us, even leading to the incomprehensible wonder of the creation of another life. This certainly doesn't mean that we're doing something wrong if we aren't thinking of God's presence during every act of intimacy we share - or even the majority of them - but I think that this awareness of and closeness to him may also be part of God's intent in giving us this gift. Yet sometimes it feels like couples who are sharing about their sexual intimacy are crowing about their naughtiness rather than celebrating their holiness. It is as if we think more of society's view of our sexuality and only paying lip service to God's plan for it. Still, I am glad when couples share about this aspect of their relationship, if for no other reason than that it fosters an atmosphere in which we can take the tawdry out of it and discuss things like this.

There was a wonderful moment (that I missed the first part of) in another area of this talk that was pretty central to it, a beautiful story about a time that Roger was upset over a project he was working on and Kathy, rather than withdrawing in the face of his anger, simply took his face in her hands and reminded him of how much she loves him. It completely defused his frustration. What a beautiful moment.

There was another phrase they used, though, that I wish Catholics would avoid the secular sense of. They talked about how deciding to love tenderly when the beloved my not be acting in a lovable way "can feel like martyrdom."  I think martyrdom is another most misunderstood gift of God.  We tend to speak of it as a sacrifice to be avoided. I am convinced that true martyrdom looks and feels like love in action; this is the consistent characteristic of every act of martyrdom that I've ever read about. And this is a great gift which God provides to a privileged few. If it were his plan for me, I pray the Holy Spirit strengthens me for that moment.

Meanwhile, I will settle for dying to myself in the ways to which he calls me each day.

Today's word

labile \LAY-byle\
a : readily or frequently changing: as
b : readily or continually undergoing chemical, physical, or biological change or breakdown
c : characterized by wide fluctuations (as in blood pressure)
d : emotionally unstable

I think I'd heard this one before, but wouldn't have known its meaning without context.

poniard \PAHN-yerd\ - 1. a dagger with a usually slender blade of triangular or square cross section  2. To pierce or kill with a poniard

I'd heard of this one, too, but not the verb form.

Strange dream

It would be pointless to relate it here, even though it's part of a recent pattern of dreams (which I also have not related here). Even if they are at all revelatory rather than just being the meaningless firing of synapses in my gray matter, what they're revealing could serve no purpose except to knock me off of my life's path and turn my family's world upside down.

Sudden awareness

(Warning: TMI ahead. "I'd turn back if I were you . .  .")



Well, I believe figured out what caused last night's gluteal pain, and it was only partially the evening's intestinal issue. It seems that I need to let go of my pride in being able to wait to reach a good break point before relieving myself.

Called to act with justice

After the Saturday morning session concluded with Mass, we broke for lunch.  Teri had packed food for us so that we wouldn't have to eat out at every meal, so we headed back up to our room and considered which of the afternoon sessions she was going to skip. She was growing bored or overwhelmed, so attending them both was out of the question (as is any hope of us ever doing another weekend, where each presentation builds on those before it, so skipping isn't really an option). The two remaining themes to be presented in the afternoon were "Called to act with justice" and "Called to love tenderly." I preferred for us both to attend the latter session, so we agreed that I'd take in the first one on my own. I think I'd have chosen the same way had I known how they were approaching this. My expectation, for no particular reason, was that this would be about how we should seek justice as a couple toward those outside of our relationship, rather than how to act with justice within it. Still, Teri has lived this concept of justice under extraordinary circumstances, so even after the talk I still thought this was the better presentation for her to miss. (She does a nice job in the other area, too, mind you, but I wanted us to both share in that one.)

I'm expanding significantly on the ideas expressed in this presentation by Jim and Jill Serpe and Fr. Syl Taube, such that what follows is more a reflection on their talk than a reflection of it.

The world's idea of justice is deeply intertwined with the concept of "fairness." It involves weighing and measuring, and at least the impression of impartiality. The image of blindfolded Justice holding her scales is deeply ingrained in our cultural psyche. In relationships, the resulting approach to justice involves giving equally, ensuring that our contributions at least roughly balance out. This becomes our sense that the responsibilities for our daily living are divided in an equitable way. This sounds completely reasonable; I mean, there's got to be something to this approach, right? Still, partners' conceptions of equitable balance often differ greatly, as can their perceptions of when it has been violated. This often evokes feelings of resentment and (real or perceived) hurt.

Likewise, when one partner has indeed done something objectively hurtful to the other, often things aren't considered to be resolved until the hurt partner judges that offending one has experienced a similar level of misery, either through the pain of contrition and consequences or through some level of retribution exacted by the original victim. The victim may withdraw from the relationship until they judge that this balance has been achieved. This temporary - or even permanent - loss of the relationship can be viewed by the victim as the appropriate consequence of the offender's actions, or he or she may feel that it is only right that they should exact punishment. The interruption or termination of the relationship is considered to be the offender's fault, not the victim's.

This "fairness" approach to justice in various areas of a relationship involves a high degree of evaluating and score keeping, often by both partners. But keeping score inevitably interferes with our love relationship, in a couple of different ways. It repeatedly interrupts the flow of love and care in our marriage whenever one partner believes things are out of balance. And when partners disagree over when things are in balance, or even over what balance really is - and I posit that no two different individuals will ever be in full agreement on these things - inevitably there is conflict and tension in the relationship. Each partner becomes more interested in convincing the other of their own way of thinking; defensiveness and, more basically, fear prevent each partner from seeing their own actions accurately and owning up to their own offenses; the pursuit of equity takes precedence over loving. Being right becomes more important than fostering a loving communion with our partner. Communication breaks down when justification takes priority over an open heart.

The 50-50 myth (or even it's adjustment to the more lofty sounding "we each give 100%") causes strain and resentment when either partner (or both) feels that the other is not doing their fair share of the contributing or bearing their just portion of the pain in the relationship. A phrase used repeatedly in the presentation was that each individual tends to act as "judge and jury" in the relationship. I will decide what is equitable, when I've been wronged, when my need for recompense has been satisfied, and who is right in any conflict - which will, of course, be me!

God's view of justice is very different from society's. Rather than insisting on balancing the scales with us, God gives his very and whole self to us, without condition, in the full knowledge that we are going to fail to do the same. When we choose not to give ourselves fully and God has every right to condemn us for it, God instead shows mercy, forgiving us completely even before we ourselves are able to receive that forgiveness; God never keeps score with us as we do with each other, merely holding our offense in abeyance to be brought back up against us in the future. Even in the Hebrew Scriptures (Micah was cited), God's view of justice is shown to encompass humility and kindness.

The full expression of God's commitment to justice for us is found on the cross, not in any condemnation of his Son but in their joint outpouring of mercy for our sake. I love Fr. Neuhaus' suggestion that God did not condemn his Son to die in our stead, but we did, and in their love the Father and Son accepted our judgment.

Yet the result of death to ourselves is a resurrection beyond our wildest dreams. This is true as we die to ourselves in our marriage, as well.

Pain in the glutes

Literally.  Last night I was dealing with some uproar in my bowels. I have to really be on guard against this. Older people (older than me) have to watch out for dehydration. I have to deal with fatigue and quite significant pain in the muscles around my backside, probably from clenching. I was up for a couple hours with it last night. Ugh.

It's my blog

I can be honest here, right?

I'm just not enjoying playing the guitar right now.

I hope the work will ultimately be worth it.

Today's word

fard \FAHRD\ - to paint (the face) with cosmetics

A completely new one on me!

An oddly tough dream

In my dream, we were in a house I've never been in, with several other people, and I sat down on the sofa to join the conversation. Teri got up almost right away and left the room. I don't think that's where the dream started, but that's the first part that I remember. In just a couple minutes, she announced she was "going canvassing," (this was clearly a dream!) and started heading for the door.

In my dream, I felt annoyed with her, but decided that I should probably support her, and this would be a chance to spend time together doing something she wanted to do.  So I  called her name and asked her to wait. She dismissed me with an "I'll be back soon."  At that point, in my dream I was upset that she was leaving without kissing me goodbye, which in real life we never do. So I looked around the wall to where I could see her going out the screen door, and she was walking out it with another guy who was there.

In my dream I felt crushed. I knew she liked this other guy, and that she was choosing this activity to be with him instead of me. Then I woke up.

In my waking, I knew this scenario was ridiculous. Yet in my waking I felt the echoes of our tumultuous past, in which the "canvassing" would have been alien, but the rest of the emotional dynamic was very accurate. In my waking, for the first time in a long time I felt our past hurts, rather than remembering them in the distance. I am grateful that this nonsense is behind us, and annoyed with my brain for reminding me of it. And I am hopeful that my bride's dreams never reminder her of the hurts I have inflicted on her.

"The only thing I care about is winning"

- Tom Brady

You have to take this statement in context, I guess. He was being asked about Aaron Hernandez.  Still, I sincerely hope for his own sake that he's not speaking truth with that statement.

Called into relationship to serve one another

We started the day on Saturday with morning prayer, which was apparently a new twist for the conference. I love this format for prayer, so felt right at home with it.  The morning presentation was then on serving one another, and there wasn't too much new in it for me. The one note I took on this presentation, I mistakenly posted as if it was from the keynote presentation.  It was not a new idea either, but a good one for me to have reinforced:

We may have entered into our marriage for all the wrong reasons, but God can still make of it a Sacramental relationship. Many of us begin our adventure together rooted in self-centeredness. But God's plan for us is greater than our own plan or vision for ourselves. 

So, in a rich marriage in which we have embraced the adventure that we are on together, we will learn to set our self-interests aside and serve one another, enrich one another, build up our partner rather than focus on our own perceived needs. This is probably the biggest and most consistent mistake I see in troubled marriages is that each partner focuses on their own needs and their partners shortcomings. In successful marriages, the opposite happens, as each partner works on their own shortcomings and nurtures their partner's needs.

20,000

I don't really believe this number. But I still think it's cool that Blogger thinks I've had this many page views now.

Where we invest our trust

In the U.S., even our banknotes and our coins remind us where we should invest our trust. For some reason, we keep looking to merely human sources to be our heroes, as if excellence in an endeavor or in a moment equals overall purity of character. But each of us is merely human, and we all have our shortcomings and failings.

Knowing this, I'm never so invested in a sports or cultural hero that I can't accept their flaws. Ryan Braun's PED use doesn't surprise me, nor did Miguel Tejada's nor Lance Armstrong's (etc.), even with their denials. Because of this, I don't have to condemn them to the degree that I see many people doing. I can want the best for them, knowing that living in integrity in the future will be more important to them than sports success will be. 

When we place our trust in Jesus Christ instead of ourselves, we are better positioned to support others when they stumble along the way rather than to judge them.

. . . Give your heart to the adventure! (edited)

The keynote address at this year's WWME Region 6 & 7 Convention was given by Karen and Tim Hogan, a couple from Plymouth, MI, who work together in therapy, training seminars, and retreats to bring healing to marriages. Tim is a psychologist who also writes and speaks on human sexuality and marriage.

There were four key points that they gave us to consider which can help us give our hearts to the adventure that is our journey to heaven together. They related these to a mountain climbing experience that Tim had with their daughter on her graduation.

1. Choose a playful spirit.  This is the part that is largely attitude, but I am finding that the general reminder to give my heart to the adventure helps me to make this choice. Our attitude can be affected by many things, and we too often attribute it to the factors that are beyond us, ignoring the contribution that our own choices make to our frame of mind.
2. Avoid the ruts.  They're not talking about avoiding routine completely. Of course our daily lives are going to have a degree of repetition. But because of that, our brains become trained to respond to one another by rote instead of by choice. We need to interrupt our habitual, automatic brain processes to keep from burying our partner under them.
3. Focus on what is right in front of you.  In mountain climbing and in life, if you focus your attention too much on the big picture, it can seem overwhelming. When you combine this with the habitual thinking, we can fail to focus on the person we're in relationship with. We can miss the nonverbal cues which convey so much more than the words they might be using.  Particularly, we tend to overlook our partner's feelings of sadness when we ourselves are feeling anger or fear. But for me, the importance of this point is also related to the idea that the challenges of our lives and our marriage can seem overwhelming sometimes; when we focus on the part that's right in front of us, the next step that we have to take up the mountain, we will find the foothold we need and will be able to manage that one step that we need to take next.
4. Don't lose sight of the summit!  At first this seems contradictory to the last one, but it's really complementary. Sometimes we need to remember that we're headed somewhere that's worth going. Sometimes we need to make sure that our individual steps are mostly taking us in the right direction. Remembering where we're going both motivates us and keeps us on track.

The other big takeaway for this keynote session was from our dialogue. Our question was about what we could specifically do to nurture a spirit of adventure in our relationship, and both of us honed in on the issue of setting aside our separate interests for the sake of spending more time together. My bride hates the dialogue process; she judges the way she expresses herself, which interferes with her ability to appreciate as I do the simple fact of her sharing herself with me, making a sacrifice for me in order to share herself with me. Yet time and again, when we do it we are amazed at how, despite our differences of personality and interest, we really are of one heart in so many ways.

Today's words

chicanery \shih-KAY-nuh-ree\ - 1. deception by artful subterfuge or sophistry : trickery  2. a piece of sharp practice (as at law) : trick

A word I knew well, except I'd have mispronounced it with a "ch" at the beginning.

irascible \ir-RASS-uh-bul\ - marked by hot temper and easily provoked anger

I almost knew this one, too; though I'd have used it as a synonym of "crotchety."

hawkshaw \HAWK-shaw\ - detective

Ah. This is a new one on me. And if I'd guessed at its etymology, I'd have been well off base, too, though perhaps Taylor had something in mind like my thinking of the sharp eye of the hawk 150 years ago when he named his fictional detective.

When the going gets tough . . .

. . . give your heart to the adventure!

The theme for this weekend's WWME Section 6 and 7 Convention was We Are Called.  The Saturday presentations were all on different phrases from the liturgical song that we know so well, and the band did a really nice, driving 4/4 arrangement of the song that we used throughout the weekend. But the entire tone for the weekend was set by Friday night's keynote address.

The one thing we haven't brought in from the car yet is our bag with our conference materials in it, so I can't consult with my notes at the moment, so I will wait until later to share about the couple that presented and some of their supporting points.  But there were a few ideas that really stood out.

The theme of their talk was Called to Adventure.  Most of us, they reminded us, when we were first married, had a sense of embarking on a great adventure with the person we married. We had no idea what life would bring us, but knew we wanted to face whatever it might be together. We often had a "bring it on" attitude; we knew that we'd be okay no matter what happened as long as with we were with this special person for the rest of our lives.

"But what makes for an adventure?" they asked us. The unexpected, the challenges, the people we're spending it with, the out-of-the-ordinary, we responded. Yet as these things arrive in the course of our day-to-day living, we often fail to recognize them as elements of our adventure together. Instead, we view them as drudgery, as (my words) a pain in the ass. But there are ways for us to approach these same circumstances that allow us to embrace them as part of the adventure we're on, and they're not simply a matter of having a better attitude about them - though that is a part of it, as well. More on those details later after I've consulted with my notes.

The Saturday talks reminded us of our call:

to serve one another, giving ourselves to each other in what we do each day.

to act with justice in our marriage, but justice according to God's plan rather than the world's. We have learned that God's justice toward us is actually something we have learned to call "mercy," and doesn't involve keeping score against each other as we frequently tend to do, even if we don't intend to.   

to love tenderly, choosing to express our love for each other even in ways that are counter to our nature, and especially in those moments when our spouse is acting in a way that makes loving them a challenge. 

More on these later, too . . .

Sometimes . . .

 . . . I wish I'd understood more about how life works when I was younger.

Today's word

addlepated \AD-ul-pay-tud\ - 1. being mixed up : confused  2. eccentric

I wouldn't have needed much context to get this one . . . 

Today's word

booboisie \boob-wah-ZEE\ - the general public regarded as consisting of boobs

I think I've heard this before, and of course knew what it meant immediately even if I haven't. Yet I believe this shoe fits me too well . . . 

demurrage \dih-MURR-ihj, -MUH-rihj\ 1. the detention of a ship by the freighter beyond the time allowed for loading, unloading, or sailing  2. a charge for detaining a ship, freight car, or truck

sudatorium \'sue-duh-TOR-ee-um\ - a sweat room in a bath

And, finally, this is how you do a word-of-the-day that everyone knows already.

stop. being. greedy.

Disconcerting thought

It occurs to me that in every. single. relationship. in my life (okay, aside from work), I am pretty much the initiator. I don't think it has always been that way in most of these relationships, but it sure seems like it is now.

I don't like any of the implications of that thought.

More on the skydiving experience . . .

As I was climbing to our jump altitude in the late afternoon, as I looked out the door of the aircraft to the earth far below and felt the thrill of the moment, as I fell through 9000 feet of free fall, as I felt the parachute open, as I floated beneath the canopy, I just kept telling myself: "Heaven is going to be unimaginably better than even this!" (Oh, I don't know, maybe that wasn't completely coming from me?)

I think I might still be a little addicted, though. I'm checking out online ground school, learning stuff about skydiving. If I get to the point where I'm deciding to spend more money, I could be in trouble!

An (edited) FB post, for future reference

1. That moment when the wheels left the ground, and I realized I wouldn't still be on the plane when it touched back down. Very cool. 
2. That moment in front of the open door, when I wondered "What I could *possibly* have been thinking when I signed up for this? Am I *really* *doing* this?" and just that quickly, "Here goes!" 
3. Looking around at the beautiful day we had in southwestern Ohio as I fell through nearly two miles of clear sky. 
4. The satisfying pull of the harness as the 'chute filled. 
5. The float down under the canopy, with the chance to steer a bit and and look around more.
6. The chance to realize that, as awesome as that was, it's nothing compared to what heaven will be!
7. They're right: the beer just tastes better after that!

It's fun again!

As a boy growing up between Baltimore and Annapolis in the sixties and seventies, it seems like I had a baseball glove with me everywhere I went. It was far and away my favorite sport, though I never played on an organized team. Somehow I developed a love for it despite my dad's frustration over my lack of athletic talent. Mom later told me how her heart broke for me when he would play with the neighborhood kids in the Sun Valley neighboorhood we lived in - that never happened when we moved to the Mountain Road house, which was more rural than suburban at that point - while I looked on, too small and young to join in. Oddly, I never really felt left out; though I did long to be big enough one day to join them, in those early days I attributed it more to my age than my dad's impatience with me. Now, once I got older I realized how he felt about me, how disappointed he was that I wasn't more of an athlete. But by high school he had permanently removed himself from our lives . . .

I suppose that I picked up my love for baseball from him anyway. It was more, I think, than just wanting to share an interest with him. It was more a matter of wanting to matter, as I felt I didn't, or wanting to be a hero. I fantasized about being a baseball star, of snagging a ball just before it went over the outfield fence, or of hitting the game-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth. I know my dreams were shared by many young boys of that era. Of course, I was an Orioles fan through-and-through. I remember how we rooted for Paul Blair - who was never the same hitter after taking that fastball to his face - and Boog Powell, Mark Belanger - who flirted with the Mendoza line every season, it seemed, but man, that guy could field the shortstop position! I see from his career stats that he did manage a couple of decent years with the bat, too - and Davey Johnson; that array of pitchers: Dave McNally, Miguel Cuellar, Jim Palmer, Pete Richert and Eddie Watt and, later, Doyle Alexander and Pat Dobson; Frank and Brooks Robinson, of course. Brooks was my hero.

I'd go to games at Memorial Stadium sometimes with my dad, who had a Sunday plan season-ticket package. I'd have probably gone to more if mom could have trusted him to stay sober. I remember, in fact, at least one occasion when the first stop we made after leaving the house was the packaged goods store a block away. Dad had the bottle of Old Granddad open before we hit the highway. On another occasion - shoot, I guess it could have been the same one, come to think of it - I asked him why there were crowds of people lining the bridges. He explained that the train carrying Bobby Kennedy's casket was supposed to be passing through. I probably still have pictures somewhere of a photo day that he took me to, when we were allowed down on the field before the game to take pictures of the players.

The team was consistently good back then. I was too young to have much awareness of the '66 world championship, though I do seem to recall an air of excitement about it. I still have a scrapbook that my mom put together that year, and sets of glassware that she ordered after the team won the pennant and the World Series.  By '69 I was more aware, and just knew that the Mets were cheating to beat them in the Series. '70 was magical, and it's funny to hear the local Reds' fans reminisce about it from the opposite perspective. Clemente, Stargell and the rest of the Pirates crew broke my heart in '71, but it seemed like we'd go to the World Series every year by then. It turned out that there were a couple more division championships, but with ALCS losses to the A's.  The final year I really remember well was the '79 loss to the Pirates (again) in the Series. By the time they won it all again in '83 I was living in Mississippi, and didn't feel so connected to them, though my uncle made sure to share a couple of commemorative Coke bottles with me on my next trip home. I finally opened them and drank them at some point, and don't have the bottles anymore.

That '83 team featured a rising star at shortstop who ended up being the team's high point for much of the next two decades. There was the wOful '87 team that lost 109 games, which the Capitol Steps lampooned when I saw them as part of Wright State's Artist Series while I was getting my engineering degree. (I took Christina to her first concert there, too: Dizzy Gillespie.)  The '89 team kept me entertained during my first few months at Shemya, losing the division to the Jays the last weekend of the year. The thing is, it was hard to really follow your team from a distance in those years. In '95 I was in town - and in the stadium - the day before Cal tied Gehrig's consecutive games record. There was pretty much no chance of me getting tickets for the day he tied or broke the record, but I remember seeing him hit a home run in that game, as he did each of the following two nights, too.

That was the end of my life for a while. It was right after we got home from that trip that we learned what "dealing with things" was going to mean for us. During the '96 and '97 playoff runs I was occupied trying to get myself and my life back together, so didn't follow much baseball. After that, there were the fourteen consecutive losing seasons. Fourteen. The Pirates' longer - and still current - streak was no comfort whatsoever.  I'd still go to a game when we were in town, but that was more to enjoy the atmosphere of Oriole Park at Camden Yard, which is still a great place to catch a game.  We also went to a couple of games in other stadiums: one at U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago and another at The Jake in Cleveland.

Last year I had one good chance to take in a game, but my back was killing me after the drive from Ocracoke and I just didn't feel up to driving anymore. It looks like we may go back up to Cleveland on Labor Day, which will be especially fun if they're still in the hunt. And if they make the playoffs again this year, I'm going home for a game.

But it has been so much fun to follow them again! I'm excited for their core of players, and enjoy how they play the game. And it's way easier to keep in touch with the team in the Twenty-teens than it was in the Nineteen-eighties and -nineties!

Short shots . . .

If there's one thing worse than when the WOTD is already in the vocabulary of 98% of English speakers, it's when they don't bother to share any etymology, either . . .

Today I am having jealousy issues. I'm sure they will go away tomorrow, though, in my first free fall - well, of more than a few feet, of course; everyone has fallen that far . . .

Sometimes I have to remind myself that I'm glad to be a person who at least considers each day how I should be spending my time, rather than just deciding all day long what I want to do next . . .

So I've been asked to serve as treasurer instead of leadership team member. Maybe it's just the thing I need to get over my fear of dealing with money; maybe it's a good thing for me to do that with someone else's money, where there would be no chance for surprises. Umm, probably not . . .

Looking through possible recipes for Sunday and Wednesday, and realizing that most of the ones I'm rejecting look positively yummy to me . . .

Okay, time to get back to how I should be spending my time.

Practicing what I preach

With confidence that God' plan for me is best, I refuse to wrap myself around the axle of my current feelings. I recall, instead, that this is temporary, and that I am deeply loved.

Oops

I made a pretty significant mistake in my early morning post about a suitable sacrifice.  It is a natural enough one to fall into, and a very common one, which I always make it a point to address when I encounter it.  I guess it was because I was riding my thought train in one direction that I didn't see this lurking.

We talk all the time about "what God wants from us," and I did the same at one point in this post. But because of the fully self-sufficient and perfectly loving nature of God, the truth is that God never wants anything from us.  Rather, it is always a matter of what God wants for us.  This is invariably a greater good than whatever we want for ourselves. The nature of sacrifice, then, is to give up what isn't perfect for us, no matter how wonderful we might perceive it to be, for the sake of what is.

Today's (edited, with more) words

éminence grise \ay-mee-nahnss-GREEZ\ - 1. a confidential agent; especially : one exercising unsuspected or unofficial power  2. a respected authority; specifically : an elder statesman

An interesting etymology explains how this phrase has come to have such disparate meaning. 

phalanx \FAY-lanks\ - 1. a body of heavily armed infantry in ancient Greece formed in close deep ranks and files; broadly : a body of troops in close array  2. one of the digital bones of the hand or foot of a vertebrate 3a. a massed arrangement of persons, animals, or things   b. an organized body of persons

Somewhere along the line I apparently learned the correct pronunciation of this word.  When some friends and I stumbled across it in high school - I learned the first definition in the context of a creative writing project when I was searching for an analogy to use for a rook in chess - we mispronounced it as \fuh-LANKS\.  Perhaps I picked up the correct pronunciation along with the second definition, in a graduate-level anatomy and physiology class. 

(Subsequently adding these two from today's Dictionary Devil:)

phonon \FOH-nahn\ - aquantum of vibrational energy (as in a crystal)

I'd never heard of this one at all.

gnomon \NOH-muhn, -mahn\ - 1. an object that by the position or length of its shadow serves as an indicator especially of the hour of the day: as

a. the pin of a sundial
b. a column or shaft erected perpendicular to the horizon  

 2. the remainder of a parallelogram after the removal of a similar parallelogram containing one of its corners

I might have heard of the 1a. definition of this one, but definitely not the rest.

Don't complain about a problem . . .

. . . and then make unnecessary decisions that worsen it.

A suitable sacrifice

"A sacrifice is the giving over of something that has value to the giver . . . " - Dr. Tony Evans

Just for the record, I don't often listen to Dr. Evans' program.  His preaching style just doesn't suit me, and sometimes I think his theology is just a touch off kilter.  He certainly is enthusiastic, though, and I find that there are nuggets he shares that God uses to direct my thoughts very differently from what Dr. Evans may have intended.

That's the case with the program I heard about half of last night.  I'm taking this quote (well, maybe it's a paraphrase) completely out of context, though Dr. Evans was careful not to imply that anything that we do obliges God to act in a particular way toward us.  But this quote got me thinking about what I consider valuable that I might offer to God.

For in sacrifice you take no delight
Were I to give a burnt offering you would not be pleased
My sacrifice is a contrite spirit
A humbled, contrite heart You will not spurn - Ps 51: 16-17

What God desires from me is my trusting obedience. That's often the hardest thing for me to give. I usually know what I (think I) want, and it is often at odds with what Scripture and the Church tell me are God's desire for me.  Sometimes I fall back into the trap of thinking of God as a stern parent who wants to keep me from having fun (I'm pretty sure that this isn't what Jesus meant when he said that we must be like children!); at such times it can be hard to believe that what God desires for me is greater than what I want for myself.  Yet if I have any faith in God at all I must believe this about him.  So when I want my own way, when I don't see the harm in my own desires - or even perceive possible harm in choosing God's revealed way over what I think or the world says would be better - well, I believe that to sacrificially subject my own will and wisdom to God's pleases him more than any other thing I might offer. Further, when I do truly do that, I will withhold nothing else from him.

Challenges to obediently trusting that God knows and reveals what is best for us - for me - come in many different forms. In our increasingly sexualized world, the beautiful sexual expression that God has given us is taken out of context more often than it isn't, and we're encouraged to think of ourselves and others in ways that we were never intended to think of most people. In our increasingly material world, we're encouraged to disregard the selfishness of purchasing our next creature comfort while our brothers and sisters throughout the world struggle against starvation, war and oppression. In our increasingly technologized world (to coin a phrase), we're encouraged to eschew simplicity and humility and embrace the latest scientific marvels and all that comes with them.  In our increasingly ambitious world, we're encouraged to put advancement and experiences ahead of relationships.  etc.

The gifts of coming into God's presence, acknowledging that He is so much greater than we are (praising him!) and just spending time with him, and then of truly connecting with those he has put into our lives, become neglected as we get wrapped up in investing ourselves in our temporary physical world at the expense of our spiritual lives. I'm not talking here about shirking the legitimate demands which our lives and the people in them place on us, which we may also resent as an imposition on us, but of carving out our time with God first so that we might recognize and respond to those demands with wisdom and insight. Instead, we often view this as another demand on our time which we resent rather than a gift from God which he wishes us to give ourselves, too.

And then there is the challenge of how to encourage others to see the nature of such decisions without trying to impose those decisions on them, and without thinking ourselves superior in some way because the specifics of their struggle is so different from our own.

Well, all of this could turn into a rant or a lament instead of the reminder God wants it to be for me to come spend some time with him . . .

How to have peace of mind?

James MacDonald, of the radio program Walk in the Word, is in the middle of series on how to have peace of mind.  He defines this in a very different way from what most of us would, but one that gives people of faith the only good starting point for the whole discussion. Peace of mind, he says, is the confident assurance that, whatever I may be going through, God is doing what is best for me.  Peace goes hand-in-hand with trust in God.

He then referred to the famous quotation from St. Paul to the Philippians: Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things (Phil 4:8), and said something I thought was very important to keep in mind: we have to fight for our peace. Thoughts that don't lead to peace come naturally to us. We tend to be anxious about many things, to be drawn into the impure, to focus on the egregious examples around us of injustice and wrongdoing; our thoughts easily drift to things that steal our peace from us. We have to be told what to think about because it takes effort to turn from our natural thoughts toward those that nurture us.

The thing that first caught my attention was the clip at the beginning of the program, which I didn't get to "hang around" long enough to hear again in the context of his talk but which rang true for me as I was hearing it. "We are constantly preaching to ourselves, in our minds," he said.  What are our inward thoughts telling us about our children? our finances? our marriage? our sexual purity? our holiness?  If our own thoughts aren't speaking to us the truth (God's truth) in any of these areas, we are going to struggle to walk in peace.

The thing about this is that it underscores something I learned in my last round of therapy, something that I need to come back to. Most people think that the biggest drivers of their happiness come from outside of them, that they are circumstantial. We tend to think that we'll be happy when something to which we're looking forward comes to pass, or we would be if some situation hadn't happened. But "studies show" that, while there are some things affecting our happiness over which we have no control, most of these are actually internal, and in some cases in our genetic makeup. But the biggest variables affecting our ability to be happy in life (and to be at peace) are in how we respond to the things that happen to us: how we think about them and how we choose to act. There are often underlying beliefs - often inaccurate ones - about ourselves and others that affect these thoughts and actions, and we sometimes need help identifying and changing these assumptions, but we can learn to think about and understand ourselves and others in ways that nurture rather than undermine our happiness and peace.

The only thing missing from this whole discussion (which was probably not missing from MacDonald's talk, which I didn't hear nearly all of) is that this makes it sound as if everything is still up to us. But if we try to trust in God of our own volition we will find ourselves just as incapable of happiness, just as overwhelmed by our inability to do or be as we think we ought, as we tend to be when left completely to our own devices. Rather, it is only in coming into God's presence that we are regularly moved and formed by the Holy Spirit in ways that help us to grow. This time must start with praise and thanksgiving, lest it become just a litany reinforcing how we aren't happy rather than a true touch point allowing God's kingdom to flow more fully into our world.

Mikey

It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. We were going to travel further west that evening, to get a bit more of a head start on our travel home the next day at the end of a long week of vacation. We'd driven from Dayton to Ocracoke Island on the weekend - well, ferried the last part, of course - for our nephew's wedding, with a visit with Ashley and Garrett tossed in along the way, an overnight in Richmond, VA, a backtrack to retrieve the camera I'd left in the hotel room, and the unnerving discovery that the night clerk had pocketed our cash payment rather than enter us into the computer system. (He actually indicated a cancelled reservation, when we hadn't had a reservation to begin with!)  There had then been a two-hour drive each way on Monday to pick up our daughter and son-in-law who'd gotten a ride halfway down from Norfolk with her childhood cohort in "crime." (I sure hope those quotation marks are called for.)  On Friday we'd driven back to MD, which included an unanticipated couple-hour wait in stopped traffic due to a car fire on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel - which, let's face it, wasn't nearly as bad for us as for the folks whose car caught fire. Still, that long drive had left my back seriously aching, to the point that we'd decided not to go to the Orioles' game as we'd planned. I definitely didn't want to be too rough on it again just two days later.

So we had to think about it when my cousin in Ellicott City invited us to stay with them overnight. I'd planned for us to get about another hour further west after the wedding, making the next day's drive that much shorter. But we didn't have reservations anywhere yet, and we enjoy Matt and Jen's company, so took them up on their offer.  That was when we first met Mikey.

We'd heard him once before, when we'd visited for a pool party, but that day he was kept out of the reach of the company. Mikey was huge, maybe a collie-German shepherd mix, but he was also definitely showing his age. He didn't seem very amiable, and since my wife is nervous around big dogs, Mikey spent most of the evening in the basement after the introductions were done.

I awoke fairly early the next morning, and went downstairs to use the powder room. I noticed the basement door was open, but didn't think anything much of it, until I heard Mikey's distinctive growl through the closed bathroom door. When I was finished my business, I cautiously opened the door, but Mikey wasn't there. I started to make my way back upstairs to grab a few more winks of shut-eye. Except there on the landing, very clearly standing guard, was Mikey. I started to go up past him, and his posture and his growl made clear that I wasn't going to be allowed to go upstairs to where his people were.

I did eventually get past him, but it took a long time for me to convince him that I was maybe not a threat, and he kept a close eye on me even when he did finally suffer me to pass.

Mikey died today. He was a good and faithful guardian and friend. My heart goes out to my cousin and his family.

Today's words

infantilize \IN-fun-tye-lyze\ - 1. to cause to be or remain like an infant or young child  2. to treat like an infant or young child

I knew what this meant, but didn't really think about what the correct pronunciation must be. This makes more sense thatn \in-FANT-ih-lyze\ would.

ephebic \ih-FEE-bik\ - of, relating to, or characteristic of a youth of ancient Greece or a young man

I didn't know this one, though.

Hunted

In my dream, he was hunting me because I refused to have sex with him.

The house wasn't at all like either of his houses where he actually abused me; in my dream, it was set well back from the road amid farm fields. He was waiting for me to come back from across the road to the house. He could see me there, knew I was avoiding him, and I knew what he wanted and I didn't want to go back. As night fell, he went back inside, so I made my way back along the field to the right of his house and hid in a culvert, well behind it.  Early the next morning I crept along the edge of the property line on the other side. There were no windows on this side, and I knew he wouldn't be able to see me until I crossed the road again. Now it seemed as if the road was far enough away that I thought, in the early morning light, he wouldn't be able to tell me apart from one of the ducks in the field (silly dream), which cooperated in my flight by crossing the road toward where he was now looking out for me.  I thought he spotted me, though, and started making my way away from him along below the (now) frozen ridge, about six feet high, separating the fields on this other side of the road. I kept looking back, and from several hundred yards away I thought I saw him beginning to follow me, now on my side of the road. I wasn't sure, at first; maybe he was just trying to get a closer look, but as I hurried, trying to still keep low to the ground so he wouldn't recognize me as a person moving away from him, it seemed he was beginning to make progress toward me, and I could hear the faint strains of him singing as he came along behind me. I was preparing to move in another direction, where I thought there was better shelter from his searching eyes, when I awoke in a panic.

In my dream he was definitely my step-father. But I've been taught to interpret my dreams as if every element represents me in some way.

I can't hide and can't escape, no matter how desperate I am to get away . . .

I'm afraid to go back to sleep.

Feeling terrible

So this morning I was feeling amorous.  But my bride wasn't, and apparently said so but I didn't hear her. So a little while later she basically whined, practically pleading with me that she didn't want to. First I was hurt that she did; she could have just said as much and that would have been fine with me. Then she explained that she'd already said so, and then I felt terrible for how she must have felt. But I was not trying to be insistent, I just hadn't heard her.

We have a lot of history here to complicate this simple miscommunication. First, I don't hear well. Second, she has a record of thinking things to herself that she subsequently swears she said out loud. For instance, I'll ask her a question and look directly at her for her response, and her lips never so much as quiver, yet when I press her for a response it starts, "I said . . . ," when she hasn't really said anything at all. But I'm pretty sure that isn't what happened this time.

But the biggest thing is my history as a recovered abuser, which brooks no excuse for imposing my own wishes on someone else, especially in this area, even by accident. And for my wife to have felt as if she had to plead with me over this makes me feel like a complete turd.

Today's word

syllogism \SIL-uh-jiz-um\ - 1. a deductive scheme of a formal argument consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion  2. a subtle, specious, or crafty argument  3. deductive reasoning

I'm sure I've seen this definition before, but I can never remember precisely what this word means when I see it.

Dying to self

Unrelated thoughts, maybe, from yesterday and this morning:

There are some "parts of ourself" that are not nearly so valuable as we - or our culture - delude ourselves that they are, and we will never really miss out on anything if we manage to let them go.

I hate it when I've been doing a great job of guarding my heart and mind, choosing the things I should, and my unconscious mind grabs my attention and jerks me back down into the mire of carnality. But I also know this is the result of the accumulated experiences of my life, including decisions I myself have consciously made over my decades. Perhaps such dreams will be with me for my whole life as a result, and that would not be anything but my just (spoiled) desserts. But God sees the future which is hidden to me, and it may be that he is merely in the process of drawing a contrast for me between what has been and what will be, that I will appreciate more fully because of what I am experiencing now in my mind. (Now, to figure out how to come against that combination of feelings - best left vague than analyzed, I think - upon waking.)

By the time anyone reads this . . .

. . . it won't be true anymore, but this blog has had 19191 page views.

Discernment

When we think God might be asking us to do something, it's a good idea for us to consider some basic questions to help determine which of the three possible types of influence - godly, worldly, or evil - is really at work.

• Do I want to do this thing?  If so, it might be my own desires rather than any leading from the Holy Spirit.
• Will I take pride from this thing?  Here I'm talking about more than feeling good about an important work. Rather, could my reason for being drawn to this be that people will think highly of me? It isn't wrong for people to think well of me, but it isn't good for that to be my motivation for choosing what I do. But this also carries a trap: I should not specifically choose (or not choose) to do a thing because I think it will provide evidence of my humility.
• Is there any possible conflict of interest that might bring benefit to me or give the perception to others that I might be benefiting in some material way from this ministry?
• Will this thing take away from things that I should be doing instead?  Here's a trap I fell into "early and often" - as they joke about how one should vote in a corrupt democracy - in my faith journey. I threw myself into ministry opportunities without much consideration of how they would affect my family. Particularly, I must sincerely seek to know:
• How does my bride feel about this, and why? It isn't that I should never do anything that she doesn't agree with, but in a marriage that is equally yoked, one's spouse's dissension should be a major red flag to take a much closer look for unmistakable evidence of God's direction and to reach true consensus before moving forward. Also, my partner will often have insights into what I am really up to that I might be hiding from myself.
• Is where I am spiritually consistent with this thing I'm being asked to do? We cannot fake our  spiritual standing for very long, and attempting to do so merely provides us with great opportunities to scandalize the Lord.
• Do the people who are asking me to minister in this way know what they need to about me?  Have I kept anything from them that might affect their impression that I am the right person for the role they have asked me to fill?
• Are there any clear signs that I should, or should not, serve the Lord in this way?  

So after I check in with my beloved one more time, after putting before the Lord the one area in which I believe I might otherwise remain spiritually vulnerable (and how timely this article is in that regard), after verifying that the other members of the leadership team have considered my background (of which they were already aware), it looks as if I am going to be accepting an invitation to serve on the leadership board of CREDO.  

I do not want to do this. But I believe that I should.

Today's words

benedict \BEN-ih-dikt\ - a newly married man who has long been a bachelor

Nope, didn't have a clue on this one. Although words that have their etymology in Shakespearean comedy tend to be fun!

shivaree noun \'shih-va-REE, SHIH-va-'ree\ - a noisy mock serenade to a newly married couple

I'd heard of this one before, but couldn't recall it. 

Today's words (second added)

lenitive \LEN-uh-tiv\ - alleviating pain or harshness : soothing

Just as new to me as this word was the write-up's revelation that "lenient" originally meant "relieving pain or stress," from which it took on its common meaning today.

suzerain \SUE-za-rin\ - 1. a superior feudal lord to whom fealty is due : overlord   2. a dominant state controlling the foreign relations of a vassal state but allowing it sovereign authority in its internal affairs

From today's Dictionary Devil.

A broader perspective

Lord, my God, thank you for being greater than my weariness this morning, and for reminding me that my day will be more in you than what I anticipate through my tired eyes. Oh, and especially, thank you for that realization related to my previous prayer, in the sleepless part of the night.