May 21, 2012

• Enthusiasm to Offspring

  Dear Folks,

     It is early morning, 6:15 aye em.  I will have a large cup of herbal tea, probably ginger spice from Celestial Seasonings, as it were, per se.  I used to drink coffee, almost a cup a day, only skipping when I forgot or was too busy.  Now, I go for tea, which has less caffeine and is probably better for me.  Still, if I am in town and another person offers me coffee, I feel I should not turn him down, but rather should sit there and enjoy the tea or coffee together, for intimacy and communion in the name of Jesus Christ. You never know when the Holy Spirit is going to work through you to plant a seed that saves a soul, as it were, per se. 

   

    In The Neighborhood:

     I like our neighborhood better now, after having lived here a year.  Most of the neighbors are materially impoverished and relatively under-educated, which leaves them somewhat challenged as conversationalists vis-a-vis the people I hung out with in college at Chapel Hill.  (And Chapel Hillians" have their own impediments at times, looking at the world in a mentally deficient way.)

  Still, this neighborhood seems to boldly qualify as fertile grounds for me to proselytize and allow the Holy Spirit to work through me to make new converts for Christ.  That is nothing to sniff at by any measure.

  
  

    At The Park: 

     I took my five children to the park yesterday.  We have a 130 acre park seven tenths of a mile down the road from our home.  I will upload some photos from our time at the park.  My Flagship (oldest son) took about five to eight small frogs to release in the pond there.  He caught them a couple of months ago in a pond (one more pond video) a few miles away.  We were on a bike ride through the countryside and stopped to rest by a pond.  He also released an Eastern Box Turtle, named "Boxer," (presumably not eponymous to the senator or the rebellion in China).  Then, he stayed by the pond, as he is wont to do, and caught many mosquitofish fry with a small net and his deft movements.  

     My Shining Knight, sitting on the steps in the photo above, has been interested in remote control cars.  He has gotten a few for free from seminary students on campus, and he took one to the park yesterday to run it about on the grass and paved biking trails.  I passed clubs with him and My Flagship.  My Dandelion juggles, too. She worked on contact juggling, balancing a beanbag on her forehead and trying to drop it down to a balanced position on her temple.  Didn't work.  That takes mucho practice galore.  I am glad she has that interest.  It is better than flirting with boys and wearing revealing clothing to school and church, the way others her age do here.  She quit school in February because the other twelve-year-old girls behaved like first graders, arguing much of the time about petty things, like what belonged to who, or who was the prettiest -- when oddly most of them are fat and indolent, weak at math, and uninspiring, not well read.

    I have been trying to do some activity with each child every day.  Yesterday I played padook with My Clever Lad after we came home.  My Dandelion and I like to read books together on the porch swing, which is huge, a great place to lie down and read.  Home schooling my two older ones gives me a lot of time with them.  The trick is seeing to it that I get enough time with the two elementary school boys, My Shining Knight and My Clever Lad.  The youngest, My Little General, gets a lot of my time.  

     My father was quite busy and did not have so much time to spend with us on special things to do together.  I remember building fences with him and building a barn together.  I greatly enjoyed working with him on projects like that.  In this respect, it would have been very nice for me and my siblings if he had been a full time farmer.  The Lord used my father well as one to read Bible stories to us at night and follow with a prayer.  This was regular when we were young, but stopped when we became teens.  That was a wonderful time together.  I aim to extend cheery moral support to my children in their studies at the college level.  My father was unable to do this, perhaps from fear.  

     I believe that his lack of enthusiasm for the suggestions I put forth as choices of a major for me to pursue at Chapel Hill failed to provide me with some essential support that my peers had and which I want to give my children when they go to school.  Lacking his enthusiasm and moral support, I believed I lacked confidence on some level in his commitment to support me financially while I studied, though he and my mother were overtly committed to that, which left a gap.  I would have been perhaps far better off if my father had matched his moral support with his objectively stated commitment to support me.  

     The result was that it seemed that I may have felt tenuous support, as if the money spigot could be turned off at any moment.  That would explain why I usually lived on a shoestring, in squalor, sharing rooms and homes with psychotic people in the poorest rent in town, or living in a travel trailer in Moody's trailer lot on the West side of Carrboro (50 dollars a month rent), or my van (free parking space in F lot) while showering at the gym. 

    Though I have not yet graduated from Chapel Hill, I have never blamed my father a bit.  I hope to continue my studies there after I finish seminary studies and have some time, perhaps in my retirement.  I would like to do a major in math, classics and English. Those are my interests.

     I know my father loved me dearly and did the best he could under the circumstances of his job. He was a wonderful father overall, and a far sight better than the fathers of many of my school acquaintances.  For a family in Christ, every generation of fathers should be growing, learning from the past, and that is what I aim to do.  I try to express much enthusiasm and hope for the career desires of each member of my burgeoning brood.  I believe that even if it seems they may lack the capability to do something, they should do just fine with it if they have a proper foundation in Jesus Christ, establishing them firmly in a pursuit of moral excellence, similar to that we see in the character qualities elucidated in 2 Peter 1:3-15, as it were, per se.  

    I believe that if I am properly enthusiastic towards my children, giving them moral support (and of course, if they are firmly established in the grace of Jesus Christ), then my children will so honor me that they would jump over the moon for me, overcoming all obstacles to do well in their chosen fields.  The critical aspect of any endeavor in life is the moral foundation, and moral support. 

  2 Peter 1   King James Version

  1 Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ:

  ² Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,

  ³ According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:

  ⁴ Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

  ⁵ And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;

  ⁶ And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness;

  ⁷ And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.

  ⁸ For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

  ⁹ But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.

  ¹⁰ Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall:

  ¹¹ For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

  ¹² Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present truth.

  ¹³ Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance;

  ¹⁴ Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me.

  ¹⁵ Moreover I will endeavour that ye may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance.

   

    P.I.C. & P.I.E.: 

    I very much enjoy my seminary studies.  I just finished a course in Christian ethics of sex.  I enjoyed Augustine's work best of all our readings.  Augustine was surely on to something when he rated voluntary celibacy as the highest form of loving lifestyle on earth.  Nothing is more precious than when I lie beside my wife and put my arm around her.  

  I believe Physical Intimacy Consummation (Hereafter P.I.C.) and even your basic P.I.E. (Physical Intimacy Engagement)  are more important in the beginning of a marriage, when you are having children and forming a powerful bond that will last a lifetime.  At any rate, it was for us.  We find that the better our relationship gets, the less we feel a need for P.I.C. & P.I.E.   

   

  • 10:02 am
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