Grief, depression, intuitive - instrumental, and the future

In addition to being a grieving widower, I have, for pretty much all of my life, been a depressive.   My depression is diagnosed as treatment-resistant.  I also have suicidal ideation.  This means that I don't just simply wish that I were dead, but that I actually formulate plans to carry it out.  (Okay don't panic: yes I do have a religious objection to committing suicide.)  It used to be that my depression was cyclical but now it is more or less permanent.

Therefore it was interesting a few days ago when I realized that I was thinking about the future.  Generally when I think about the future, it is with a sense of disappointment that God has not yet killed me and I am not dead already.  It usually constitutes a kind of existential dread in that there are things in the future that I must do and I don't feel that I have the energy to do them.  And so it was with some surprise that I realized that while I wasn't making any definitive plans, I was thinking about the future in somewhat neutral terms as something which probably would happen, and without any particular sense of dread.

This got me started thinking about the intuitive/instrumental grieving styles.  Intuitive grieving is about feelings, talking about feelings, and talking about the past.  Talking and *thinking* about the past.  So intuitive is primarily about the past. Instrumental grieving is about cognition, work and grief work, and planning for the future so instrumental grief is about the future.

At the moment this is just an idea.  But, given that intuitive/instrumental has never been a dichotomy between men and women, and is in fact a continuum for each individual, this means that individuals generally process grief in both intuitive and instrumental ways.  And given the inclusion of both intuitive and instrumental components in the Grief Guys program, is it possible that all grievers go through periods of intuitive and instrumental grief at different times during their own grief journeys?  Should we be including the possibility of intuitive and instrumental periods of grief in any grief support program?

Grief topics: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/06/grief-table-of-contents-and-resources.html

Volunteer management - VM - G - 2.20 - governance - metrics

Volunteer management - VM - G - 2.20 - governance - metrics

Metrics, numerical data with real values measuring characteristics or activities, is of enormous importance to management overall.  The metrics gathered in volunteer organisations are possibly different from those gathered in other organisations but are no less vital.  The aphorism that "what you can't measure, you can't manage" is possibly not entirely true; however this is accepted wisdom in the management field for very good reason.  In management literature you will also see references to KPI or key performance indicators and this is, essentially, talking about metrics.

(I mention real values because numbers and digits are sometimes used simply as arbitrary identifiers.  We are talking here about the measurement of characteristics, activities, measurable outcomes, and other real factors.  Performance is often mentioned here, such as in the key performance indicators, but performance is a rather vague term with regard to metrics and metrics should be specific.  In the next piece I will be talking about a very useful set of guidelines for determining what can be considered metrics and what shouldn't be.)

One factor in regard to choice of metrics that I should mention, right off the top, is that you should choose metrics that are relevant to the operation and objective that you are pursuing.  The collection of numbers simply so that you can have numbers to store and/or report is contrary to the entire idea behind metrics.  If you are just collecting data for no particular reason, your volunteers will definitely understand that and will resent having to collect numbers "just for show."

W. Edwards Deming was a significant name in studies of management during the 20th century.  He is also seen as the father of the concept of quality engineering in regard to management.  He is credited with the saying "Without data you are just another person with an opinion," and that is not only true but significant to management.  It's also significant to your specific management of your volunteer organisation.  Having the right kinds of data allows you to understand how well you are doing in pursuit of the organisation's objective.  This allows you to justify proposals that you have for modifying your operations.  Having the wrong kind of data, or having no data, usually means that everyone is pursuing their own opinions and agenda and also usually means that you have no management of your organisation and volunteers at all.

I mentioned the importance of having real and relevant data.  It is also important to present this idea to your volunteers.  As noted with regard to having relevant data, the volunteers will understand what is useful and what isn't.  If they don't, or just in general, it is a good idea every once in a while to go over the statistics that you are asking them to collect and report, and to point out why this is significant.

One of the metrics that volunteer organisations very frequently collect is simply that of volunteer hours.  That may seem to be an oddity to volunteers because they are aware that in other jobs, with a paycheque, the importance of clocking in and clocking out is that it determines the number of hours for which you get paid.  Volunteers are not paid for their volunteer hours within your organisation, but you should point out to your volunteers that volunteer hours are very often used in submissions for grants and funding, to funding agencies and to governments.  Being able to show that you have a large base of volunteer hours and that your volunteers are putting in the hours towards your objective works in support of your requests for funding.

Volunteer management - VM - 0.00 - introduction and table of contents

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/05/volunteer-management-vm-000.html

MGG - 7.08 - Dead - CISSP online seminar

MGG - 7.08 - Dead - CISSP online seminar

Gloria died and I died as well.  I just didn't stop breathing.

I wasn't teaching.  I wasn't facilitating the CISSP exam preparation seminars anymore.  And I missed it.  Particularly since I had moved to a town where neither the high school nor the local college had any computer courses aside from graphics. 

So I decided to try and do something about it. 

There wasn't any point in trying to organise a course on the CISSP here.  Nobody would have been interested.  Nobody was working in the field so no one would have been qualified to take the certification in any case.

And I have never been terribly interested in online course delivery.  Yelling into the void has never held a particular appeal for me.  So far it has not worked out too terribly well for education overall.  Yes you can set up courses and hold them via Zoom, delivering the lecture via Zoom and with possibly other remote materials.  Most people don't do an awful lot of work in putting in the extra effort for additional resources that you need or to try and deal with the fact that delivering a course virtually via video doesn't really allow too much in the way of interaction with the students.  You tend to be looking at your own slide or your own set of slides and what slide comes next.  The screen setups, while they may allow certain amounts of interaction, definitely have problems in that regard.

But I figured that there wasn't anything preventing me from holding my own course and presenting my own materials simply by putting them up on the Internet.

I already had the course in terms of the structure and content.  I had been asked to do a course during the pandemic, and so I had taken the time to ensure that I had all the material up-to-date and comprehensively covering the entire field.

I figured that the course was simply going to be a lecture of the material.  At that point I hadn't yet got to the point of dictating out materials covering the entire course content and additional resources that people attending a seminar, workshop or course would need.

I also figured that it was a bit of an experiment in social media.  Using social media as a platform, how could I deliver a course without having people sign up for it, without requiring people to attend at specific times, and still provide the information to anyone who wanted to study it?

Since most of what was happening would simply be me doing lectures, audio recording would have been possible.  However, as I thought about it I figured that given the applications available to me, the easiest way to deal with it was to simply do video.  I could record the video on my phone as a kind of selfie video and save the file and then submit it to a social media platform.

Given that it was video, the platform that I was most familiar with in that regard was YouTube.  However, here in Port Alberni, Facebook is the default, and pretty much the only platform that anybody in town pays any attention to or knows how to use.

Since I was dealing with a professional topic I figured that I would include LinkeDin.  Because the girls had demanded that I create an Instagram account in order to show their mother their pictures and videos, I decided to put that into the mix as well.  Finally there was Tik Tok, which had become the social media platform for young people and dealt with video although in rather short form.

Including TikTok turned out to have a pretty drastic effect on the project.  TikTok is a short-form video platform and at that time the maximum length of a video segment was ten minutes.  Therefore I decided to record all of the segments in ten-minute lengths.  When I eventually got done, it turned out that most of the video clips were about eight minutes long, since I was concerned about running into the cut-off boundary and truncating what I was saying.

So I started recording mostly as I was walking around town.  At that point I hadn't yet completely lost energy and I was walking about ten to fifteen kilometres per day as I was walking to various places.  This gave me time to record the videos as I was walking.  I tried initially facing the phone and camera, but I got feedback from some of those who watched it, saying that it looked very much like the "Blair Witch Project."  Eventually I just recorded video of the paths and trees that I was walking past because the video wouldn't be terribly important.

There were a lot of learning experiences along those lines.  How long could I talk?  How much would I need in terms of content to cover in a seven to ten minute segment?  What kind of video was appropriate?  What kind of video was inappropriate?  Making sure that I didn't film other people who were walking in the same area as I was.  (Although given I was the only pedestrian in town, this was a very minor consideration.)

The entire project took about a year and a half to complete.  I recorded a little over 450 videos, comprising what I estimate to be a total of roughly sixty hours of content for the normal forty hour one week course.

I had gotten used to the fact that pretty much nobody was going to reply to anything that I posted on the Internet.  However, given that it was a course and given that CISSP exam preparation seminars are fairly expensive to attend, I did rather expect that I would get some feedback.  The fact that there has been total silence throughout the course of the whole project has been somewhat disappointing.

As the project neared completion, and then was completed, I did appreciate the fact that various people in leadership positions in the security community did support the effort and promote it.  It was very nice to see.

I have finished the course and run the race.  I have completed recording the entire preparation seminar and it is available on five different social media platforms to anyone who wants it.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/03/mgg-704-dead-sermons.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: TBA

Sermon 79 - Together: Healing the Left-Right Split

There are rather a lot of scripture verses about this topic.  This sermon started out (four hours ago, part-time), as systematic theology.  I guess it's Biblical theology, now:

Psalm 133:1

How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!

Job 34:4

Let us discern for ourselves what is right; let us learn together what is good.

Job 41:17

They are joined fast to one another; they cling together and cannot be parted.

Psalm 34:3

Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt his name together.

Isaiah 11:6

The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.

Mark 10:9

Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.

Ephesians 4:16

From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

1 John 4:18

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

There has always been a left-right divide in the political spectrum.  Over the past decade it has often seemed that the right has been supremely and sometimes increasingly ascendant.   Increasingly and sometimes spectacularly so, occasionally it has seemed as if the rise of the political right would never ever stop.

Whatever your personal position on the political spectrum is, unfortunately, the ascendance of the right has been very closely allied with, overall, a very disturbing set of characteristics.   It has been marked by an overall sense that whoever is not for us is against us; a sense that those who are not inside the fold are, in some sense, subhuman; and, most distressingly, a pervasive and overall sense of cruelty.

Therefore it was heartening, somewhat comforting, and extremely interesting to notice the Together Alliance March.  This is the coming together of a vast array of groups, most of them generally seem to be part of the left wing of the political spectrum.  Trade unions (of course), campaign groups for various social improvements, politicians, and an enormous list of representatives from modern culture.  But what is most heartening is the name: Together Alliance.  This is a grouping "for," not a protest "against."  This is not combative and not anti-anything.  This is a promotion of the positive and a bringing together.

I think that the Christian Church should not only be joining this forum but seeking a leadership position in it.

The world needs this.  Right now, possibly more than anything, the world needs "together."  We are too fragmented and too divided and our adversaries are taking advantage of this fact.

The church, of course, has always had its own left and right wings.  The church, and religion in general, have always had a slight leaning towards the conservative.  But there have always been those who are taking the injunction to love your neighbors very seriously, and have been active in social improvement and social justice.  Those who have been extremely conservative have often felt that the social justice wing is watering down and polluting the central and conservative aspects of Christianity but that's another division.  Right now we definitely do not need more divisions.  We need to come together.  And we need to help others come together.

We need to heal.  We need to help others heal.  God is not cruel.  God is love.

I do not wish, in asking for this, or saying any of this, to create yet another split in the church.  Don't let anyone, anyone at all, use my words to create a separation between us.  I'm not against those of conservative persuasion who are trying to protect the church's central and very important concentration on God, and his holiness.  This is, as I say, central, fundamental, and foundational to Christianity.

But, as I have said elsewhere, we do not need to protect God.  It is almost blasphemy to consider that God would ever need our protection to maintain his inherent holiness.  God can protect himself without our help or assistance.

What I am saying is that this is what God commands us to do.  God tells us to love our neighbors.  God tells us to love each other, to love one another, more than anything else except loving him.

God tells us, in the Bible, specifically, to support and care for foreigners, more than he ever tells us to reject sinners.  God tells us to love and bring the sinner back into the fold.  God does, occasionally, tell us to separate ourselves from the sinners, but he tells us that far less than he tells us to bring in the foreigners, and when he does tell us to reject the sinner, it is almost always more for *our* benefit and protection than for His.

If only there were someone to mediate between us, someone to bring us together!  OK, well, I guess that would be me (1 Samuel 3:10).  Or, possibly also, you.  How can we do anything, anything that God wants us to do if we are not together?  Do two walk together unless they have agreed to do so?  Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?  A house divided against itself cannot stand.

God is not divided.  He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.  In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple.  

I want to stress once again that nothing in what I am saying here is intended to cause a division.  I am not in any way calling for anyone who disagrees with me to be cast out.  Of anything.  Divisions are created by fear.  There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.  I'm not saying that anyone who disagrees with me should be punished by being banished.  The one who fears is not made perfect in love.  And we should find out what it is that they fear and why they fear it.  And we should comfort them in their fear to bring them in alongside us into full fellowship in the church.  Let us cling together so that we cannot be parted.

Of all the songs that Gloria sang (and she sang wonderfully), my favorite was the one that ended up with the quotation from Romans 8:38-39.  "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."  I have always felt that this was not only a statement about our togetherness with God but about the identity and connection of the entire church.

If any of this has upset you, I hope you can forgive me.

We have a tendency to see our religion as the Ten Commandments: a list of thou shalt nots.  We tend to forget that the first of those Commandments is to love God.  And that the restatement of the commandments, in the New Testament, has primarily three Commandments: 1) thou shalt love God, 2) thou shalt love your neighbours, and 3) thou shalt go and spread the word.  We should have this in common, and promote it together.

We should be joining together.  We should be promoting together, and togetherness.  We should be loving our neighbours.  We should be spreading the good news of loving our neighbours.  This is what it is to love God.

Job 9:33

If only there were someone to mediate between us, someone to bring us together

Psalm 85:10

Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other.

Ecclesiastes 4:11

Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?

Amos 3:3

Do two walk together unless they have agreed to do so?

Matthew 23:37

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.

Acts 2:44

All the believers were together and had everything in common.

Ephesians 2:21

In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.

Ephesians 2:22

And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

Ephesians 3:6

This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:17

Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do.

Colossians 1:17

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Colossians 3:14

And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

1 Thessalonians 5:10

He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him.

Romans 8:38-39

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Philippians 4:8

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.

Colossians 3:1

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

Colossians 3:13

Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

2 Chronicles 20:4

The people of Judah came together to seek help from the Lord; indeed, they came from every town in Judah to seek him.

2 Chronicles 34:29

Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.

1 Corinthians 11:18

In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it.

Philippians 1:27

Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in the one Spirit, striving together as one for the faith of the gospel

Sermons: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/09/sermons.html

Non-recreational drug

After a fairly extended dry spell, in the past two weeks I have written:

• eight sermons
• two additions to the AI series
• two more additions to volunteer management
• three more pieces of my memoir

(No I know you haven't seen all of it. Some of it's still in the bin. I don't want to post all of it at once.)

The thing is, two weeks ago the shrink put me on a new antidepressant drug.  So far it has not made any difference to my mood.  My physical energy is still pretty much in the toilet.  I should also note that my hand tremors, which have been sporadic, now seem to be more or less continuous. They are also sometimes accompanied by whole-body shivering.  Having worked hard to get my sleep back up to seven or eight hours per night, now I'm getting three or four.  (I also seem to be having quite a few grief bursts and other emotional bursts.)  And, despite the increase in productivity, I don't have any sense of accomplishment over any of it.

My mental health counselor says that it shows that something is working although we don't know the outcome quite yet.  I would tend to agree with this assessment.  Generally speaking with antidepressants it takes at least a month before you have any kind of an idea whether you're getting a benefit out of it or not.

This is my ninth trial of an antidepressant drug.  I'm not holding my breath.  I have low expectations.  I'm not going to quit yet.  But the weird symptoms are just a little bit disturbing.

Sermon 9 - Opportunities

Sermon 9 - Opportunities

2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

2 Corinthians 9:12

This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God.

Psalm 50:13

Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?

God doesn't need us.  God doesn't need anything from us.  God didn't need the sacrifices that the Israelites brought to the temple or the tabernacle.  God doesn't actually need our belief or our praise.  God does not need our help.  God does not need for us to follow his law.  God does not require anything that we say that we do for Him.  God doesn't need us.

There is nothing that we do that God cannot provide for himself.  God can do everything himself.  In fact probably better than he can do it with us.  Any of you who have children will understand this.  When you are bringing up your children one of the things that you are trying to do is get them ready to perform certain tasks that are normal and essential for normal life.  Like cleaning up your room, picking up your clothes, learning how to cook, learning how to do the laundry, learning how to run the vacuum cleaner.  You know that when children try to help it would often be much easier just to do it yourself.

It is interesting to talk to your children, or grandchildren, and see what they remember from their childhood.  It is often much different than you remember.  I remember taking our grandchildren to see the aquarium.  They remember coming to Grama and Grandpa's house and taking the garbage out to the garbage bin.  They also remember helping out on shopping trips.

I definitely remember them helping out on shopping trips.  We would make a shopping list; then we would go to the store.  The grandchildren would ask what the first thing was on the shopping list and I'd tell them.  We would have to go and get that first item, regardless of where it was in the store.  If it was the furthest item in the store we still had to go and get it first.  Then we would look at the second item on the shopping list and we go and get that.

Shopping trips, which might have taken a total of seven minutes if we were by ourselves, would take about one hour and thirty-four minutes with the grandchildren.  We walked back and forth across the store in a very inefficient path in order to get all the things on the list in the order that they were on the list.

I really enjoyed going shopping with my grandchildren.

We gave them an opportunity to help.  God gives us an opportunity to help.

For the past quarter of a century, I have helped those who work in the field of information security prepare themselves for certification as security professionals.  They have an extremely difficult examination in order to achieve certification.  It used to be written down on paper and consisted of 250 questions.  Nowadays the exam is computer-based and if they are really good they can finish the examination in as few as one hundred questions.  Because it is computer-based, the examination is modified as the examination progresses.  For example, at a certain point in the exam if you fail a question in a certain subject area, the candidates for the exam will find that they are presented with additional questions that relate to that same subject area.  A lot of the candidates for the exam kind of freak out at this point.  They think that the computer is out to get them.  It has found their weak point and is hammering away at it.

In the preparation seminars I try to dispel this idea in advance.  I tell the candidates that if this happens, the computer is not attacking them repeatedly in the same subject area.  The computer is actually giving them multiple chances, multiple opportunities, to prove that they do know something about this subject area.

Some years ago I read a short story that turned on the same theme.  For a mystery story it had quite a profound theological point to make.  One of the characters in the story noted that when we were faced with difficulties it wasn't God jabbing at us with test after test after test.  It was, in fact, God giving us chance after chance after chance to do the right thing.

God gives us chances.  God gives us opportunities.  To help.

God does not need our help.  God could do everything he needs to do, but God gives us opportunities.

And so sometimes when we look at a disaster or when we look at a difficulty that someone is facing, we ask ourselves, why do bad things happen to good people?  Maybe that isn't the right question.  Maybe the right question is, is this an opportunity?

When there is a disaster God does not need our help.  God could provide safety and security and provision for everyone who has been harmed in that disaster.  But maybe it's an opportunity for us to help out.

When there is a person homeless and hungry on the street, God does not need our help.  God could provide that person with shelter and food.  But maybe this is an opportunity for us to go to those places where the homeless congregate, or to that one person alone on the street and see what it is that they need.  Maybe it's an opportunity.

When someone is facing a personal tragedy or trauma, God does not need our help.  God can comfort the afflicted and probably better than we ever could.  We could go and simply sit with them.  We could go and ask how they are doing and really *listen* to the answer.  Maybe it's an opportunity.

When somebody is lonely and isolated, and scurries into our church without greeting anyone, and scurries out again at the end of the service without talking to anyone, God does not need our help.  God can comfort that person.  God can bring that person to salvation if that is what is necessary.  God can help out with that person's financial difficulties, or tragedy, or even loneliness.  God does not need our help.  But maybe it's an opportunity.

At the men's breakfast one morning, we were discussing the opportunity, for the churches, to become important to society once again.  The pandemic has left a great many people wanting some kind of social engagement.  The churches could take this opportunity to provide for different forms of social engagement, and different types of social services, and could possibly become, once again, the social center of the community.  The need is there, and the opportunities are many, if we can only be creative enough, and marshall our existing congregants, to provide a safe social setting, a listening ear, a caring heart, for those who are isolated and in need.

Can we?

The men around the table this morning all agreed that it was a great idea.  But when asked to contribute specifics in terms of what we could do, too often they diverted to stories of miraculous interventions, with no human involvement, wishes that the church would again become important, or complaints that the churches would not band together and agree to do this.  It was extremely difficult to stick to the topic of what we could do, and not a series of complaints of what we couldn't do.

The story goes that when William Carey came up with the idea of foreign missions, he went to the head of (uncomfortably for me) the Baptist Church, and that he was, famously, or infamously, told, "Sit down young man, when God wants to evangelize the heathen he will do it without any help from you or me."   And that statement is, in fact, correct! God doesn't need us.  But William Carey did not listen, and went on to found the modern missions movement, if that statement does not sound presumptive, seeing as how the Catholics had been continually doing foreign missions for many hundreds of years.  Are we faced with making the same mistake?  Are we complaining, and cavelling, and not doing what could be done about addressing the needs that we do see around us, and will we be seen as short-sighted in a few years?

Do you want to do God's work?  Do you want to grow God's kingdom?  Do you want the church to be important in the modern world?

If so, you have to do something.  You cannot simply sit and bemoan the fact that the church is no longer important in the modern world.

You have to start things.  You have to propose, and start, and work at implementing, things, many things, knowing that most of them are probably going to fail.  But you have to try anyways, or nothing will ever get started.

And, right now, the world is eating our lunch.  The world is doing better.  I am starting different things, in different places.  The hospice society is willing to take a chance with me on two separate projects.  I have proposed three other projects to the literacy society, and gotten a positive reaction.  I am helping with emergency services, and they are allowing me to assist in a number of areas.  All of these worldly societies, volunteer-based and charitable though they may be, are doing better than the church.  It is quite possible that soon they will eat me up too, and that I will be working, more or less, full-time for them, and will not have time to assist the church in any projects.

They don't have to be my projects.  One that came up at breakfast this morning was the idea of a men's breakfast that invites the homeless.  It's a good idea.  It fills a need.  It could be used as a conduit to the churches.  It has a number of benefits, both to the world, and to the church.  And, undoubtedly, to God's kingdom.  It just has to have some agreement behind it to do it, and a rather small amount of funding.  It's doable, it's a good idea, and I don't know why it's not being done.  But it isn't.  There are objections.  The churches won't agree to come together and help out with it.  Why not?

It's an opportunity.  Will we take it?

Sermons: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/09/sermons.html

Bruce Waltke

Bruce Waltke taught me systematic theology.

About a decade later, I'm not sure whether it was Gloria or Carl that told Bruce Waltke that I knew something about computers.  I'm pretty sure that Bruce was writing yet another commentary on one of the books of the Bible.  His publishers knew that he needed a fairly specialized word processor; one that could handle the Greek and Hebrew alphabet.  And possibly some others.  At that time this kind of specialized word processor cost about $20,000, and required you to add an extension onto your house to add a room to hold the word processor.  I'm pretty sure that it was Bruce's publishers who were paying for the word processor.  (I have no idea who was paying for the extra extension.)

So we went off to visit one of the only vendors in town who had one of these specialized monstrosities.  We discussed his needs and the machine's capabilities.

During that afternoon he admitted to me that the year that he had taught me systematic theology was not his finest ever year of teaching.  (Which I thought was pretty decent of him to admit.)