Tea and ... another ritual

"To awaken, sit calmly, letting each breath clear your mind and open your heart." Oh, and one more thing: don't listen to the morning news - the reported mayhem, violence and pestilence can have an adverse affect. At least wait until you've had a cup of tea.

Sunday Ritual

When I first moved to the States 34 years ago I never shopped on Sunday. I'd lived in several different countries as a child and young professional. None of them had stores open on Sunday. In fact, none of them had stores open past 5 p.m. except one day a week. Being raised in a Christian household, it never occurred to me that Sunday wasn't everyone's day of rest and I firmly believed in that day of rest. But there are different religions with different obligations. Besides, several professions - medical, for instance, require 24/7 shifts that would make it difficult to get to the shops during "regular" hours. So over the years I come to recognizd the need for Sunday and evening shopping hours. But I still believe we need a down day, even if it's not Sunday. It just makes sense - a time for regrouping, relaxing and refreshment. Rather like switching off the computer to reset it, our brain and body need to switch off from daily routine, do something totally different so we can reset ourself.

So how come I find myself with so many others cruising the shopping aisles on a Sunday dressed in our "going-to-meeting" clothes? Has this just become a Sunday ritual?

Can you relate?

Seeing into the Distance

What do you think?

Last night in an interview with Charlie Rose, Catherine Drew Gilpin Faust, President of Harvard, said that today there's a lot of information available to us but that's not the same as knowledge or wisdom. Juxtaposed to my recent experience at the Social Media conference, I find that worth thinking about. What do you think? Are we losing out with all the sound bites and minutia that's out there on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook?

The Future is Now

I've just returned from a Ministry2.0 conference on Social Media. Wow! The organizers (and they were brilliantly organized I must say) packed a lot into two days. My head is swimming with ideas and know-hows and go-tos. Hopefully they'll all still be there next week. One thing that Deacon Geri and I want to do is make this blog successful, which for us means getting all y'all in on the conversation. So first things first: if I've coded it correctly :>), you can now receive new postings via email, by clicking Subscribe to Musings on the Bluff by Email or just click on the link on the sidebar to add "Musings" to your homepage.

Inglourious Basterds

I've just returned from watching the newly released movie, Inglourious Basterds, with a friend. I don't know what bothered me more the huge amount of gratuitous violence or the audience's reaction to it. When German soldiers were being brutally clubbed to death, movie-goers laughed - not the kind of embarrassed laugh but the "Yeah, go get 'em, tiger" laugh. Juxtaposed to that was the cinema within the movie that had the mainly Nazi audience laughing while over 200 American soldiers were being picked off by a German sniper. It was hard to gauge the reaction of those around me to that scene. I wonder if those who laughed earlier saw the similarity. The total lack of humanity in this movie - not to mention the total lack of historic fact - is appalling and the audience's applause at the end is frightening. How many of these movie goers will be sitting in church tomorrow?