Oh man, it's late

I got carried away by my to-do list.

My big rocks got pushed out of the way by my little rocks.  Or better to say that there was no more room for my big rocks today.

J.D. Roth did a good job laying out his way of thinking about doing what's important.

Since I am going to keep you in suspense for one more day, here is something to read in the meantime.

http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2012/07/16/the-power-of-personal-tranformation-change-your-self-change-the-world/

Don't give your money to the church

I want to hear a pastor preach this sermon someday.

It's a pity when an important word becomes so loaded down with conflicting feelings, connotations and other baggage that it doesn't mean anything anymore.  Tithing is one such word.

A pastor talking about tithing stirs up feelings.  Guilt for some, at ongoing failure to live up to this high standard.  Pride, for tithers who hold themselves up (publicly or in their own hearts) as more faithful followers.  Anger and disgust for others, who feel that the pastor should not be harping on such things.  Often the pastor often doesn't help her own cause when this sermon becomes one of her most legalistic of the year.

Tithing is a spiritual matter.  That is the message that gets lost in all the baggage, even for a well meaning pastor who tries to separate the legalistic from the spiritual.  It is an outward sign of faith that God can take care of you on 90%.  Lean on him a little bit through giving money, and if he is faithful, perhaps you will lean a little more in other, scarier, matters.

Tithing is a relationship matter.  It's not about the church budget deficit, or the new building we want, or our new outreach program or even the new church plant.  How much one gives should not be dependent on how much the congregation needs to meet their obligations.  That is important to the church, but not to the individual believer trying to cultivate her relationship with Christ.  God has called his people to give 10%, not because he needs it, but because it is in our best interests to do so.  It is a faith action to give your money away.  By practicing faithfulness, one becomes more faithful.  One becomes more invested (literally) in the work of God around us.

(As an aside, isn't it interesting that giving is one and only area where we can quantitatively evaluate if we are being faithful?  (Boy, that sounds judgmental).  Wondering if you faith is growing?  Perhaps you can know, if you are increasing your giving.)

Preaching about tithing is a conflict of interest.   Here is why the pulpit call for tithing feels so uncomfortable.  The pastor is asking for more money for his own organization.  Isn't there a cynical piece of your soul that says  "all that stuff about building your relationship with God is just whitewash for wanting a bigger budget"?

The punch line comes tomorrow.

Holes in my knowledge

I hate having holes in my knowledge.  I read three weeks ago that it was the 30th anniversary of the Falkland Islands War. While I have distant memories of Reagan and Thatcher and missiles and boats, I knew nothing about the conflict.  Who started it and why?  At what cost did Britain maintain control?  So I just looked on Wikipedia.  I know now that Operation Corporate was the British defense of the islands after the Argentine military junta, failing in its power, tried to reignite a wave of nationalism through restoration of long-contested lands.  The Royal Navy lost at least one capital warship to Argentine fire, and Argentina lost many fighter aircraft.

Some of the air bridge techniques to support the defense were of the quality inspired only by desperate need - real Berlin Airlift style innovation free of stifling bureaucracy.  As an airlifter by vocation, I appreciate what some of those guys did, like the world record setting Hercules aircrew who flew for 27 hours straight.

Anyway, dear me, I want to know things that I do not know.  Wikipedia is great and when I run out of things that I don't know I don't know, I just look at a map.  For instance, why is the Sultan of Brunei so rich, and does he live in mainland Asia or on an island?  And where is Bhutan and is their Sultan equally rich?  Do they have a sultan?  I know these things now because I was looking at a map and realized that I didn't know.  Sparing the finer points of string theory and brain chemistry, I am now a few bits of information closer to the edge of human knowledge.  I need to get the slam-dunks down before I get to the real good stuff.

Maybe I will write some talks in order to cement this knowledge in my head.

He cared

So my wife has turned into a pretty proficient blogger, and entertaining to boot.  So can I do it every day for a month?

Mr. Mortimer, to let us breathe from being smothered in high school trigonometry, had talks.  During class, he looks at a kid and says, "What number?"  Looking down a list, he matches the number to his list of prepared talks and off we went.  To the physics of a toboggan slide, economics of the bowling alley to anything else that vagely had to do with math of some sort.  Now much time did he spend preparing these?  But more vexing, why?

I think he cared.  Cared about things enough to think about these subjects, investigate them, and actually write is thoughts down.  And then fed them to a captive audience who were happy to not be talking about trig.  I can't imagine that he gave these talks to adults (maybe he was a closet Toastmaster?), so I am sticking with the fact that he cared and needed an outlet.

Rumors

Military rumor-telling must be the longest held tradition of them all. We had not landed two minutes ago at our deployed location when the maintenence crew chief plugged in his headset and said. "How was the trip? Have you heard that we are moving to..."

Americans are wasteful. We are moving (not where the crew chief thought we were, thank goodness), so we have to clean out our rooms of all the collected junk that others have discarded. I took four HUGE boxes and one old duffel bag to the dumpster - a lot of garbage, but a lot of uneaten food. Spunkmeier muffins, bags of chips, half-eaten snack cakes. Meanwhile, the locals who work on the base go home to minimal food. It makes me feel disgusted with what our land of plenty has turned us in to. Selfish wasteful thoughtless consumers.

Family events make people nuts and excitement

Why do people that ordinarily get along get crazy around family events?

Adult vacations are either expensive, primitive or not that fun. You can buy a good time on a cruise or an all inclusive. You can go camping or hiking. Or you can visit family and stay on the cheap. Visiting family is fun for a while, but then you end up helping to clean the house or meeting people you won't likely ever meet again.

Our tax situation is finally a little clearer. The finance department of my company goofed up in a bad way on my W-2, so my taxes were filed with incorrect information. We got a huge refund that we shouldn't have gotten. Now we have to give some back...but we have it on hand. So now we can dedicate the rest to our debt snowball.

We are down to only two debt payments per month. Our mortgage, of course, and the student loan that seemed like it would be our perpetual friend. Our credit cards have been long paid off and the car was paid off with the tax refund that we will partially pay back. Now we took the car payment money combined with the minimum loan payment and we'll pay four times the minimum now. Plus extra money we are carving out of our budget....we hope to have the $24,000 debt gone in 24 months. And all on an entry-level salary. That is getting me hyped.

Nothing Interesting that's something this time

I think that many friends are better as long-distance friends. Friends that you look forward to talking on the phone with once or twice a week, or even less frequently. I especially look forward to visiting with these friends over dinner or for an afternoon when I am in their area. With the best ones I experience the time-lapse effect of completely bypassing the awkward introductory period. We can just jump right in to the banalities of our new families and houses and projects at work, instead of the old ones of idealized college dreams or high-school promises.

But that's it...if my long-distance friends come to visit, after two days they are driving me crazy. Sometimes I even ask myself why I am friends with them. But when they leave, I am ready to get back on the phone and ask how the trip home was. When I lived in Hawaii, I had people coming out of my old, old picture books to visit. Each individually suddenly realized how long it had been since we had seen each other, and had to rectify the situation. With free room and board. I even had two of my old high school students come out to visit after they had been through two years of college. Let's just say that they wore out their welcome fairly quickly.

Most of my friends are long-distance friends. As I think about it, there aren't too many people that I have met who have to be in my life on a daily basis. Or weekly, for that matter. I can occupy myself just as well. But I still want these interesting people in my life, and I think that I must play a small part in theirs. I guess we can build each other up from afar enough to make the continuing effort worthwhile.