Stretching My Mind on the Elliptical

I am always being stretched by the technology out there. At the moment I am learning to access podcasts. I can listen on my phone while walking on the treadmill or elliptical at the club down the road and distract myself from my body’s complaints about the distance or speed—not that either of those is the least bit impressive to anyone who isn’t used to spending her day in front of a computer.

 
The two “channels” that have motivated me to figure this out are Quick to Listen from Christianity Today Magazine and Rewrite Radio from Calvin College’s Festival of Faith and Writing.
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Christmas Bells

 

​​I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
 
I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
 
Christmas joy. That’s what this time of year is about, isn’t it?

The View from Inside My Body

  ​​I am racist.

I think we all are racist. In this world we cannot help but be influenced by the color of our skin. Much as I love my brothers and sisters at Solid Word Bible Church where we worshipped when we lived in Indianapolis, my white skin has given me different life experiences than their black skin. I cannot help but view the world from inside my white body.

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Walking in First-Century Sandals

 ​I recently read Walk in Her Sandals, a collaborative effort including a friend of mine, Stephanie Landsem. (Note: I received a free e-copy of this book for review purposes. You can read my full review on Amazon or on Goodreads.) I marveled at how a book with ten authors could come together so beautifully. Walk in Her Sandals combines devotional reading and Scripture with Biblical fiction, thoughtful questions and suggestions for putting faith into practice. The authors are Catholic and their intended audience is Catholic, but as a Protestant I found very little with which I didn’t identify.

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Not Just "Women's Issues"

 I had long heard about Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, but just got around to reading it. Or rather listening. My to-read list is so long that I regularly get audio versions from my library that I can listen to in the car or while doing household chores. In this case, I wished I had the print version so I could underline and more easily follow up on websites mentioned. Do what works for you, but I highly recommend this book for Westerners who want their eyes opened to abuses of women in other parts of the world.

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A Difficult Read

 ​I recently read American Sniper by Chris Kyle. It isn’t great writing, just an ordinary soldier (make that an extraordinary soldier) telling about his experiences. I’m American, but let’s just say this was a cross-cultural experience for me. The book showed up as available on my library app, and I had heard a lot about it when the movie came out, so I thought, why not? “It’s a really good book,” I was told, and I certainly can’t fault it for excitement. Kyle was definitely an adrenaline junkie.

 
But I found Kyle’s attitudes hard to comprehend. He is a brother in Christ according to his own testimony; we believe the same things about Jesus, see Jesus as the same highest priority in our lives and yet, Kyle finds war fun? He kills people for a living. How can that be? 

Strangers in our Midst

The community choir I sing with had our Christmas concert yesterday. We filled a local Catholic church to the brim twice over on a snowless Sunday afternoon. Most of the music was unique arrangements of traditional carols like this pulsing version of "O Come, All Ye Faithful". Some was totally new like "Let There be Light" by an friend of my youth, Craig Courtney.

A piece that has especially stuck with me was this Scottish carol, "What Strangers are These?" The first two verses are typically Christmas, the babe in the manger, shepherds and magi, adoring their King, Jesus the Savior. It is the third verse that haunts me.
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