May the love of God enfold you

May the love of God enfold you

as you journey home to big sky country,

where your doggie awaits,

not knowing you're on your way!

Caturday ~ window cat

Bonnie told me she and Miriam were talking about how hard it is to open the windows in our building, so I thought I'd show everybody how it's done.  See?  Simple!

Clawdia, 'til next time   >^. .^<

Beginning ~ with its strangeness

The Lord's Prayer is Christianity’s greatest prayer.  It is also Christianity’s strangest prayer.  It is prayed by all Christians but it never mentions Christ.  It is prayed in all churches but it never mentions Church.  It is prayed on all Sundays but it never mentions Sunday.  It is also called the “Lord’s Prayer” but it never mentions “Lord.”



The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord's Prayer ~ by John Dominic Crossan, 2010

Crossan intimately explores the revolutionary meaning of the cornerstone of Christian faith: The Lord’s Prayer.

I'm especially intrigued by this sentence, also near the beginning of the book:

"Just as the content of the Lord's Prayer is deeply embedded in the biblical tradition of justice, so is its format deeply embedded in the biblical tradition of poetry" (p. 3).

Biblical poetry is created with parallelism, about which Crossan says:

"...the parallelism creates a vibration of thought, a metronome in the mind" (p. 4).

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays.  Click here for today's Mister Linky.

Wednesday Word ~ truculent

truculent ~ adjective ~ eager or quick to argue or fight; aggressively defiant.

• Example:  "His days of truculent defiance were over."
• Synonyms:    defiant, aggressive, antagonistic, combative, belligerent, pugnacious, confrontational, ready for a fight, obstreperous, argumentative, quarrelsome, uncooperative; bad-tempered, ornery, short-tempered, cross, snappish, cranky; feisty, spoiling for a fight.
• Another example:  "A number of staffers have complained that Wilson is too truculent to work with."

Meditating ~ Tao Te Ching 17

When the Master governs, the people

are hardly aware that he exists.

Next best is a leader who is loved.

Next, one who is feared.

The worst is one who is despised.

If you don't trust the people,

You make them untrustworthy.

The Master doesn't talk, he acts.

When his work is done,

the people say, "Amazing:

we did it, all by ourselves!"

__________

Acting simply

True leaders

are hardly known to their followers.

Next after them are the leaders

the people know and admire;

after them those they fear;

after them, those they despise.

To give no trust

is to get no trust.

When the work's done right,

with no fuss or boasting,

ordinary people say,

Oh, we did it.

__________

With the highest kind of rulers, those below simply know they exist.

With those one step down ― they love and praise them.

With those one further step down ― they fear them.

And with those at the bottom ― they ridicule and insult them.

When trust is insufficient, there will be no trust in return.

Hesitant, undecided!  Like this is his respect for speaking.

He completes his tasks and finishes his affairs,

Yet the common people say, "These things all happened by nature."

__________

1.  The best government, the people know it is just there.

The next best, they love and praise it.

The next, they fear it.

The next, they revile against it.

2.  When you don't trust [the people] enough,

Then they are untrustworthy.

Quiet, why value words?

3.  Work is accomplished, things are done.

People all say that I am natural.

__________

Top to bottom:

• Tao Te Ching: A New English Version ~ by Stephen Mitchell, 1988
• Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way ~ by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1997
• Lao-Tzu: Te-Tao Ching: A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-Wang-Tui Texts ~ by Robert G. Henricks, 1989
• The Tao Te Ching: A New Translation with Commentary ~ by Ellen M. Chen, 1989

Sunday Salon ~ bus trip

My life outside books

Road Trip
This afternoon, ten folks from the Crown Center (counting our driver) went out to eat at Rib City.  I got pulled pork, baked potato, BBQ baked beans, and fried okra as an appetizer with ranch dressing.  Restaurants now have such large servings that nearly all of us came home with leftovers for tomorrow.

Green plants
My friend Joan is moving back to Montana next Saturday, and her green plants now have a new home ― mine!  Not shown are the ones that hung down from the topmost bookshelf almost to within reach of Clawdia on the floor.  Those have been cut back and put in water to root.  One plant (on the right) has been repotted, since it was root-bound and needed more space.   I'll buy other pots for some of these and for the plants being rooted.  Access to the kitchen counter and to this counter between the table and the sink have been blocked from an inquisitive cat who wants to sniff and taste these green things.  Thanks to Joan for these oxygen providers.

My life in books

Here are the books I've completed since my last Sunday Salon two weeks ago, when I mentioned the first book on this list:

• Secret Sister ~ by Emelle Gamble, 2013, fiction, 9/10
  
• Whisper My Secret: A Memoir ~ by JB Rowley, 2012, memoir (Australia), 8/10
• The Art of Crash Landing ~ by Melissa DeCarlo, 2015, fiction (Oklahoma), 7/10
• Ask Him Why ~ by Catherine Ryan Hyde, 2015, fiction, 8/10
• Beneath the Surface ~ by Heidi Perks, 2016, fiction (England), 10/10
• Enzo Races in the Rain! ~ by Garth Stein, 2014, children's, 8/10
• Girl at War ~ by Sara Nović, 2015, fiction (Croatia), 8/10
• The Jesus Sutras: Rediscovering the Lost Scrolls of Taoist Christianity ~ by Martin Palmer, 2001, religion, 8/10

Bloggers gather in the Sunday Salon — at separate computers in different time zones — to talk about our lives and our reading.

Beginning ~ with a pack of cigarettes

"The war in Zagreb began over
a pack of cigarettes."

Girl at War ~ by Sara Nović, 2015, fiction (Croatia)

Zagreb, 1991.  Ana Jurić is a carefree ten-year-old, living with her family in a small apartment in Croatia’s capital.  But that year, civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia, splintering Ana’s idyllic childhood.  Daily life is altered by food rations and air raid drills, and soccer matches are replaced by sniper fire.  Neighbors grow suspicious of one another, and Ana’s sense of safety starts to fray.  When the war arrives at her doorstep, Ana must find her way in a dangerous world.

New York, 2001.  Ana is now a college student in Manhattan.  Though she’s tried to move on from her past, she can’t escape her memories of war — secrets she keeps even from those closest to her.  Haunted by the events that forever changed her family, Ana returns to Croatia after a decade away, hoping to make peace with the place she once called home.  As she faces her ghosts, she must come to terms with her country’s difficult history and the events that interrupted her childhood years before.

I just got this from the library today, so I haven't started it. But it looks interesting.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays.  Click here for today's Mister Linky.