Warning - contains gross imagery.
It all started last night. Sue was having trouble sleeping due to sinus drainage so she went downstairs to sleep on the couch. However, she had trouble sleeping due to some uninvited visitors that were making strange noises in the laundry room at first, and later beside the TV. I thought I would set a trap for the visitors to ensure there would be no more strange noises keeping people awake tonight. The first time I went to check the trap the peanut butter was all gone, the visitors had won round one. The next time I set 2 traps near the site of the earlier defeat. Later in the afternoon, we were in the kitchen when I heard a snap. I went to look at the traps. One trap had killed one visitor, and the other trap had also killed a visitor. This was no surprise that is the function of the traps. However, this time there was an unexpected twist. One of the cute little mice had its head in the trap, but its legs were still moving. I had seconds to react. What should I do? Should I leave and let the mouse die on its own? Should I somehow help it? What if I don't react fast enough and he escapes? What is the most humane thing to do at this point? I decided to end the suffering of the mouse and stomped on its head about 7-8 times. But how hard do you stomp on a little mouse that is suffering to end its misery without needlessly making a mess in the laundry room? I tried to find the perfect amount of force to kill it as quick as possible without the mess part. I could not believe that it was still moving at stomp number 5. I especially couldn't believe it when I picked up the trap and saw the gory remains of the mouse. When we got back from Awana another mouse was in the trap and this time he was lucky enough to die before we got to the trap. It was lucky for me also. One murder is enough for one day.
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Interesting ?? Quotes
Oh God, I don't love you, I don't even want to love you, but I want to want to love you!
- Teresa of Avilla
When we get our spiritual house in order, we'll be dead. This goes on. You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don't expect faith to clear things up for you. It is trust not certainty.
- Flannery O'Connor
If knowing answers to life's questions is absolutely necessary to you, then forget the journey. You will never make it, for this is a journey of unknowables - of unanswered questions, enigmas, incomprehensibles, and most of all, things unfair.
- Madame Jeanne Guyon
I was once asked to sign Christianity Today magazines statement of faith "without doubt or equivocation." I had to tell them that I can barely sign my own name without doubt or equivocation.
- Philip Yancey - Christian Author
When good things happen, I accept them as gifts from God, worthy of thanksgiving. When bad things happen, I do not take them as necessarily sent from God - I see evidence in the Bible to the contrary - and I find in them no reason to divorce God. Rather, I trust that God can use even those bad things for my benefit. That, at least, is the goal toward which I strive.
- Philip Yancey
Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
- John Donne
To live in the past and future is easy. To live in the present is like threading a needle.
- Walker Percy
Some things are loved because they are worthy; some things are worthy because they are loved.
- Ian Pitt-Watson
As a journalist, I have a tendency to distance myself to observe my surroundings like some invisible person who does not enter into but glides in and out of the scene, taking notes all the while.
- Philip Yancey
It's dark at the foot of the lighthouse.
- German proverb
Those who say that they believe in God and yet neither love nor fear him, do not in fact believe in him but in those who have taught them that God exists. Those who believe that they believe in God, but without any passion in their heart, any anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God-idea, not in God.
- Miguel De Unamuno
We receive enlightenment only in proportion as we give ourselves more and more completely to God by humble submission and love. We do not first see then act: we act, then see...And that is why the man who waits to see clearly, before he will believe, never starts on the journey.
- Thomas Merton
It's much easier to act your way into feelings than to feel your way into actions.
- Philip Yancey
If you find God with great ease, perhaps it is not God that you have found.
- Thomas Merton
God gives us just enough to seek him, and never enough to fully find him. To do more would inhibit our freedom, and our freedom is very dear to God.
- Ron Hassen
I keep hitting a glass ceiling, for though I excel at doubt and honest self-appraisal I see a frustrating lack of progress in qualities like joy and love. And just when I think I'm becoming more patient and gentle, I get cut off after waiting on hold for twenty minutes on the telephone and start pounding the desk with my fist.
- Philip Yancey
The real 'work' of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me.
- Henri Nouwen
There are three coping mechanisms children learn in order to survive a dysfunctional setting: Don't Talk, Don't Trust, and Don't Feel. Later, as adults, these same survivors find themselves incapable of sustaining an intimate relationship and must unlearn the pattern of indifference. Christian counselors tell me that wounded Christians relate to God in the same way. Reacting against a strict upbringing or feeling betrayed by God, they squelch all passion and fall back on a more formal, less personal faith.
- Philip Yancey
If Saul proves that 'To obey is better than sacrifice,' then David proves that relationship is even better than obedience.
- Unknown
5 stages of spiritual growth:
1) Loving ourselves for our own sake
2) Loving God for our own sake, in view of what God does for us
3) Loving God for God's sake, unselfishly
4) Loving ourselves for God's sake, in awareness of God's great love for us
- Bernard of Clairveaux
5) Loving others for God's sake
- Philip Yancey
In a fundamental human paradox, the more a person reaches out beyond herself, the more she is enriched and deepened, and the more she grows in likeness to God. On the other hand, the more a person "incurves," to use Luther's word, the less human she becomes. Our need to give is as great as anyone's need to receive.
- Philip Yancey
Inspection stickers used to have printed on the back 'Drive carefully - the life you save may be your own.' That is the wisdom of men in a nutshell. What God says, on the other hand, is 'The life you save is the life you lose.' In other words, the life you clutch, hoard, guard, and play safe with is in the end a life worth little to anybody, including yourself; and only a life given away for love's sake is a life worth living. To bring his point home, God shows us a man who gave his life away to the extent of dying a national disgrace without a penny in the bank or a friend to his name. In terms of men's wisdom, he was a perfect fool, and anybody who thinks he can follow him without making something like the same kind of fool of himself is laboring under not a cross but a delusion.
- Frederick Buechner
- Teresa of Avilla
When we get our spiritual house in order, we'll be dead. This goes on. You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don't expect faith to clear things up for you. It is trust not certainty.
- Flannery O'Connor
If knowing answers to life's questions is absolutely necessary to you, then forget the journey. You will never make it, for this is a journey of unknowables - of unanswered questions, enigmas, incomprehensibles, and most of all, things unfair.
- Madame Jeanne Guyon
I was once asked to sign Christianity Today magazines statement of faith "without doubt or equivocation." I had to tell them that I can barely sign my own name without doubt or equivocation.
- Philip Yancey - Christian Author
When good things happen, I accept them as gifts from God, worthy of thanksgiving. When bad things happen, I do not take them as necessarily sent from God - I see evidence in the Bible to the contrary - and I find in them no reason to divorce God. Rather, I trust that God can use even those bad things for my benefit. That, at least, is the goal toward which I strive.
- Philip Yancey
Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
- John Donne
To live in the past and future is easy. To live in the present is like threading a needle.
- Walker Percy
Some things are loved because they are worthy; some things are worthy because they are loved.
- Ian Pitt-Watson
As a journalist, I have a tendency to distance myself to observe my surroundings like some invisible person who does not enter into but glides in and out of the scene, taking notes all the while.
- Philip Yancey
It's dark at the foot of the lighthouse.
- German proverb
Those who say that they believe in God and yet neither love nor fear him, do not in fact believe in him but in those who have taught them that God exists. Those who believe that they believe in God, but without any passion in their heart, any anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God-idea, not in God.
- Miguel De Unamuno
We receive enlightenment only in proportion as we give ourselves more and more completely to God by humble submission and love. We do not first see then act: we act, then see...And that is why the man who waits to see clearly, before he will believe, never starts on the journey.
- Thomas Merton
It's much easier to act your way into feelings than to feel your way into actions.
- Philip Yancey
If you find God with great ease, perhaps it is not God that you have found.
- Thomas Merton
God gives us just enough to seek him, and never enough to fully find him. To do more would inhibit our freedom, and our freedom is very dear to God.
- Ron Hassen
I keep hitting a glass ceiling, for though I excel at doubt and honest self-appraisal I see a frustrating lack of progress in qualities like joy and love. And just when I think I'm becoming more patient and gentle, I get cut off after waiting on hold for twenty minutes on the telephone and start pounding the desk with my fist.
- Philip Yancey
The real 'work' of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me.
- Henri Nouwen
There are three coping mechanisms children learn in order to survive a dysfunctional setting: Don't Talk, Don't Trust, and Don't Feel. Later, as adults, these same survivors find themselves incapable of sustaining an intimate relationship and must unlearn the pattern of indifference. Christian counselors tell me that wounded Christians relate to God in the same way. Reacting against a strict upbringing or feeling betrayed by God, they squelch all passion and fall back on a more formal, less personal faith.
- Philip Yancey
If Saul proves that 'To obey is better than sacrifice,' then David proves that relationship is even better than obedience.
- Unknown
5 stages of spiritual growth:
1) Loving ourselves for our own sake
2) Loving God for our own sake, in view of what God does for us
3) Loving God for God's sake, unselfishly
4) Loving ourselves for God's sake, in awareness of God's great love for us
- Bernard of Clairveaux
5) Loving others for God's sake
- Philip Yancey
In a fundamental human paradox, the more a person reaches out beyond herself, the more she is enriched and deepened, and the more she grows in likeness to God. On the other hand, the more a person "incurves," to use Luther's word, the less human she becomes. Our need to give is as great as anyone's need to receive.
- Philip Yancey
Inspection stickers used to have printed on the back 'Drive carefully - the life you save may be your own.' That is the wisdom of men in a nutshell. What God says, on the other hand, is 'The life you save is the life you lose.' In other words, the life you clutch, hoard, guard, and play safe with is in the end a life worth little to anybody, including yourself; and only a life given away for love's sake is a life worth living. To bring his point home, God shows us a man who gave his life away to the extent of dying a national disgrace without a penny in the bank or a friend to his name. In terms of men's wisdom, he was a perfect fool, and anybody who thinks he can follow him without making something like the same kind of fool of himself is laboring under not a cross but a delusion.
- Frederick Buechner
Ideas Wanted
Being new to this posting stuff, I was wondering what people want to read. Please send back any suggestions serious or otherwise. Thank You
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Welcome
Welcome to Joe vs the Volvano. About the name... I feel that the Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan movie Joe vs the Volvano spans a wide array of emotions and poses some interesting questions. While this blog will not be updated very often probably. I hope it can make some readers stop and think and I hope their comments will be intriguing as well. The creation of this blog is also a response to an ugly (though somewhat founded) rumor that I am creatively challenged. In fact, it got back to me that the last creative thing I came up with was the name Jobywon. Also, after helping write papers for Reagan that had to sound like a 10 year old, and papers for Beka that had to sound like a 12 year old, and papers that had to sound like Ryan of Doom -- I wanted to see what I write like when I am trying to write to sound like someone who is not creatively challenged.
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