Did a wallpaper for church. Didn’t like it, so I redid it with a similar theme but different ‘feel’. It wasn’t used, but I won’t mind comments and crits. Enjoy! Oh, yeah, photos were from stock.xchng.
PS: Please excuse me if you comment and don’t see your comments. I moderate comments (due to spam), but I don’t often login to the Blogger website. I’ll work on making logging in a habit.
My sweetheart just sent me an email with this in. Laugh at it, but please remember the real point: a successful and prospering relationship needs the two parties involved. Enjoy!
Mike was going to be married to Karen, so his father sat him down for
a little chat. He said, 'Mike, let me tell you something. On my
wedding night in our honeymoon suite I took off my pants, handed them
to your mother, and said, 'Here - try these on.' She did and said,
'These are too big, I can't wear them.' I replied, 'Exactly, I wear
the pants in this family and I always will.'
'Ever since that night we never had any problems.' 'Hmmm,' said Mike.
He thought that might be a good thing to try. On his honeymoon, Mike
took off his pants and said to Karen, 'Here - try these on.' She tried
them on and said, 'These are too large. They don't fit me.' Mike said,
'Exactly. I wear the pants in this family and I always will. I don't
want you to ever forget that.' Then Karen took off her pants and
handed them to Mike. She said, 'Here-you try on mine.' He did and
said, 'I can't get into your pants.' Karen said, 'Exactly. And if you
don't change your smart ass attitude, you never will.' And they lived
happily ever after.
I first saw this post’s title from Kirk Franklin’s Twitter timeline. The last few days have brought to me with great force just how endemic fear is. I refused to start learning again because I was rusty – because I was afraid to grow. You refused to take that responsibility because you thought it was too much for you – you were afraid of “blowing it” and falling flat on your face. Every day, in every area of life, we meet a new face of this extremely versatile enemy. We cannot estimate how much good is not done, and how much evil is allowed to propagate because of fear.
Today, I ask to join me and face your fear against the surge of adrenaline (you probably have no idea just how accurate the “fright or flight” name is). Meet your fear face to face. Then ignore it. And do just what it doesn’t want you to do. Every day, you will meet this enemy. You may never completely conquer it – none of us does – but at least you will have lived instead of have cowered out an existence.
“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt
“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.” – C.S. Lewis
Sorry about the short post. My brain is about to quit on me and go to sleep. It’s jes’ pure, cussed stubbornness that’s keeping me going right about now. That, and I’d like to see how succinctly I can summarize a point (I’d like to be like Teju Cole, who tells interesting stories in 140 characters or less. He has mastered using Twitter, in my opinion)
I was chatting with my special lady today, and I wanted her to do something for me. She said she would, but for some reason I felt like asking her to confirm it. I realized that itch was my lack of trust in people in general coming to the fore (when you’ve been shot at several times, unless you intend to die, you learn to move away when you see an archer), but that it was a really bad seed to sow into our relationship. Right there, I had to tell myself that if I needed her to trust my words, then I needed to do the same to her.
Who do you need to trust today? Who needs you trusting them today? Think about it, and look for relationships where distrust is carrying over into, and potentially ruining.
Talking with my special lady about a couple of things, she mentioned that I should read books and listen to mentors. When we talk sometimes, she mentions going to see a mentor about stuff (yup, she consulted with a mentor about me). Not being the first time she’d brought up the matter, I had to ask myself if I had any mentors.
Before I try to attempt to deep-dive into the issue, I need to address the definition of the word “mentor” itself. It has become one of the most overused – and equally misused – words in the English language, as far as people in my age bracket and country are concerned, anyway.
The word “mentor” is from Mentor, a character in Homer’s Odyssey. Mentor was a friend to the hero of the Odyssey, Odysseus (or Ulysses, if you prefer the Roman form). Odysseus left his palace, his wife, Penelope, and young son, Telemachus, in Mentor’s care. Mentor was supposed to raise Telemachus as Odysseus would have have. Please see this Wikipedia article for more information on Mentor and mentoring.
By implication from the source, mentoring implies a close personal relationship between mentor and protégé, which is a cause of much personal amusement when some young person proudly says, “So-and-so is my mentor”, and I’m certain know So-and-so doesn’t have the foggiest that that young person even exists! “Role model” would be a much more appropriate description, but I do not intend to become a semantics Nazi.
One of the duties of a mentor is to “scan the protégé’s life for viruses”, as I put it. One deliberately gives one’s mentor the authority to correct them. Unfortunately, so many of the self-styled protégés of the renowned people we have today would not be willing to put themselves under anyone’s authority, much less that of the people they call '”mentor”.
Anyhow, back to my original point: I’ve had to ask myself if I had mentoring, and have to conclude, by and large, no, I don’t. It’s a humbling discovery. If I’d had mentoring, I might have possibly done a whole lot more than I have at this point. I’ve to look for mentoring in the areas of my life I consider important, where I want to make progress in.
In my currently chosen area of endeavour, I don’t see a whole lot of mentoring going on. Most developers/techies have this “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps” thing going on. Probably because by nature, we’re independents, but that’s another thing.
I really would like to polish and make this post a lot better, but it’s in danger of not getting out of draft (I’m in “meh” mode. Again. Sigh), so I’d best hit that “Publish” button.
Do you have a mentor?
