Extravagant

Mary washing Jesus feet with expensive perfume was an extravagant act.  Mary needed to show her love for Jesus.  It was all about her relationship with him.  What is our relationship with Jesus?  There is nothing more important.  It will never be taken from us.  It was promised at your baptism.  God, says - with whom I am well pleased.  What small extravagant act can you perform?  God has given us so many gifts, what can you give back?

Rock and Roll

Heard a powerful song by Cody Jinks called Rock and Roll.  The song is about certain things he doesn't want or need anymore - Rock and Roll and whiskey.  Also, he also doesn't want to miss his loved one anymore.

The songwriter has reassessed his priorities in life and made a decision to make some changes.  At least not the way I did back before, that life tried to kill me and to tell the truth it never thrilled me.  I don't mean to disappoint you, but there's a chance I going to.  Many times we may have felt this way, but we go back to the old behavior.

Do you think he will make it?  Will he get rid of the whiskey and the lifestyle, will he get his lady back?  He wants to, but does he have to the willpower and the support?  What if his lady doesn't want HIM anymore?  He needs to do this for himself.

He mentions that the crowd around him won't be as big and some won't like him as well, I hope he has the sense to disregard those thoughts.  If they care about him, they will appreciate his situation and support him getting healthy.  He can't worry about them, he has to worry about himself.

The 12 Steps are needed here very much in my opinion...

Cahalen Morrison & Eli West - Loretta (Live @Pickathon on KEXP)

Minnesota

Minnesota isn't about marketing and promotion; it's about real people who live in a lovely place among rivers and lakes, with majestic prairies and woodlands, in a culture that values decency and progressive thinking, which means we intend to pass this culture on to our children.  Garrison Keillor.  

Optional

We are church shopping and I was very impressed with a sermon I heard.  The Pastor talked about a big study that was done regarding weight loss and a book that was written stating the study results.

Pastor asked if we could guess what some of the findings were.  We said good diet, exercise, sleep and don't smoke.  The finding were the same as our guesses - common sense really...

Same with being a Christian, we know what we're supposed to do - and these things aren't optional people!!

Great message I thought.  

Airplane

Pastor Joel talked about the 4 things that affect a plane: lift, thrust, weight & drag.  Joel said we should surround ourselves with lifters and thrusters and stay away from weights and drags.  What if important people close to you are weights and drags?  Are we ready to make those hard choices?  Joel said these people are keeping us from God's best.

Invested

The nephew of Clarence Clemons - who has stepped into the big shoes of his uncle - said that Uncle Clarence was always "invested" in his life.  This got me to thinking, am I invested in the lives of the people I care about?  No, certainly not to the degree I should be.  What will I do about this?

Free

HAZ is right, today we celebrate our Independence, why not celebrate OUR independence from drugs and alcohol?

Celebrate your freedom

Today in the United States; we celebrate our nation's independence. Why not take a moment to celebrate your independence as well? Whether you've found freedom from an addiction or from codependency, or you've discovered the freedom to live your life as fully as possible, take a moment to honor and acknowledge how much that freedom means to you.

It's good to identify our problems. Through the awareness of what's wrong and what's broken, we learn what to repair and fix. It's good to focus on the health and the goodness in our lives, too. Becoming aware of what's right and what's working is how we discover joy.

Look back along the winding road of the path of your life. See how far you've come? It looks good to me. How does it look to you?

Hurray! We're finally free!

God, thank You for setting me free.

I Don't Know

Pastor Gary had a great sermon last week.  He said there are 3 little words that can be very powerful for us to remember, I don't know.  Mt first thought was I love you, but Gary was going somewhere else on this day.

Gary warned us about the overabundance of know-it-all's in our world, and we might fall into this mentality.  Suddenly, in order to keep up, we are passing judgement and throwing out opinions as if we are the experts.  It's better to step back and admit you don't know why this or that occurred.

Gary mentioned that at funerals it's okay to observe that we don't know what God is up to by taking this person.  I've thought alot about this in the past week.  On one hand, we want our Pastor to have all the answers.  On the other hand, I would appreciate the truthful "I don't know" and the simple "I'm sorry this happened" approach.

    

When My Time Comes

I Love the song When My Time Comes by Dawes.  I wasn't sure what the song is about but I know it moves me.  Here is one person's view from songmeanings.net:


I think this song is about growing up and how we all forlornly escape the present to the future. We have a very structured world with governments, and religions, and ideologies and at first we think that those things will grant us an opportunity to be great. Then we start looking at all the bad things or "side-effects" so to speak in the world and make out our own way towards self-discovery and greatness. And it all results in the futile efforts of finding meaning. So we keep singing about how the future will be better if only to escape the reality that we don't know how that will happen.

The idea of this song is something commonly expressed in books, movies, tv, songs and all types of art but Dawes does it in an incredibly moving and almost heart-wrenching way. Great song. I really dig it. Hope this helped.


I'd like to tell Dawes to consult his Higher Power!!

Jeff's Recovery

In the new Rolling Stone, Jeff Tweedy was asked about his past problems with painkillers.  He said it's been 7 years since he was in the hospital, but getting well doesn't make you forget the impact of addiction, or the memory of the anguish you can experience.  Jeff said a lot of the song "Sunloathe" is mocking the internally manufactured abyss of addiction.  He said a common thread in a lot of his songs is being angry at his own self-pity, or self-pity in general, in the face of real suffering in the world.  Jeff says he's feeling great and more and more comfortable in his skin.  In his creative life he has infinitely more stamina and ability to focus on the joy of making songs up.  Jeff used his year mostly to be home and take his kids to school and have a bit of a normal routine.  It was the first year of high school for his son Spencer so Jeff thought it would be a good time to have a dad around.

I often focus on the joy of listening to Jeff's music, thankful that he overcame his addiction.      

Speaker Meeting

Attended the Speaker Meeting at Serenity Path last night and was inspired by Mary.  Mary knows her big book!!  Mary looks and talks like a person that has it all together, but by sharing her story you find out that she has had a long tough battle with the booze.  Time for me to spend some time with the big book!!    
Good to see everybody, especially Debbie.  What a gift to have someone look at you, smile and sincerely say "it was really good to see you."  There are very few walking this earth that will say that and mean it, please cherish those people.  Happy Birthday Bill, thanks for all you do.
http://www.serenitypath.org/