Happy Numeric Cannibalism Day

7-8-9

Visualize Melted Butter

Today, on my morning bike commute, my left calf cramped up. Not having any options other than pedaling on, I tried to vizualize myself out of the pain with mixed results.

Vizualization attempt #1 was to tell my left calf that it felt like my right calf, which lead to jealousy and resentment in the face of such a blatant lie. And following the hurt feelings, more pain.

Vizualization #2: "you're relaxing on a sandy beach on a warm tropical isle". My left calf said I wasn't speaking in terms it could understand and continued to moo in agony.

Attempt #3: "Left Calf, you're butter. Warm butter, melting down into my shoe." It worked! My calf was no longer in pain. Now, on to cleaning out the golden, oily mess from my sock.

Drifting Dominion

purity released
unhindered yeast conquering
murky purposes

Matthew 13:33

Chores

A Father's Day Demand

You'll all be relieved that my good eye healed up really quick. As a matter of fact, it felt so good that I ignored doctors orders and rode my bike to church with Joy and the kids. That was my father's day gift/demand; forcing them on a 13 mile bike ride, resting for an hour and a half, and then turning around for another two hour ride back home.

We didn't make it all the way back, and I had to go get the truck to pick up the crew and their bikes, but we made it most of the way, and I'm a super proud dad and husband. One of my long held fantasies is that we would one day arrive to church emissions and consumption free, and we did it! Kind of. Part of the sermon referred to Paul's exhortation to run the race as if we wanted to win, rather than half-heartedly jog walking; I found that message hits home when you have the endorphins to understand!


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Conjunctiva Junction

(not my eye)

Yikes. The doctor told me I can't drive for a week, which translates to no bike riding for me. He also told me to stop rubbing my eye and get some new glasses because I won't be wearing my contacts anytime soon. Tonight, I got some road grime in my eye on my way home and ended up with a corneal abrasion and a swollen conjunctiva in my good eye, no less.

While I was sitting in the urgent care waiting for Dr. P to get back from Quiznos, I was picturing myself going through life with an eye patch...but, arrr, things are not as bad as I was fearing. First he put numbing drops in my eye, which is a weird sensation to have a numb eye, then he squirted me with iodine and put me under a blacklight, and now I get to have antibiotic ointment in my eye every 6 hours! Yay!

I noticed when I was looking at an eye anatomy chart that there is a thing in my eye called the "canal of Schlemm" that I never knew I had. Sounds oozy.

-Chris

Jonah

Jonah Hiding Below Deck, by Violette

Last night, our home community did a recap on the book of Jonah. As part of the study, we took some time to reflect visually on the story.


Jonah Enjoying God's Mercy, by Yzzy

Jonah Is Sent Over Board, by Sylvan

The Baptism of Jonah, by me.

My two favorites are by Leo, shown below. He has such an interesting perspective. I find his visual focus on the peripheral elements of the story to be helpful in understanding that the land and sea is ministering relentlessly to us on behalf of the Creator.


Jonah and the Hot East Wind, by Leo

The Ocean After Jonah Was Swallowed By the Great Fish, by Leo

Some of the observations that came up last night from our group were the following:
-God can minister through his children, even if they are disobedient. Take the sailors, for instance, who turned away from their false gods in favor of the God of Jonah. It was God's mercy and power in response to Jonah's open rebellion to the Almighty that showed the sailors the way. (Jonah 1:15,16)
-God is merciful to the point of aggravating mere mortals (Jonah 4:1-3), not erratically wrathful and impersonal.
-You can't hide from God.
-Know who's onboard before you set sail.
-If you feel like you need a sabbatical, God can arrange for a large fish, injury, bankruptcy, sinking economy, etc. to remove you from the distractions that hinder you from serving Him.

Anyone else have other observations to add?

Don Miller Drawn and Quartered by the Weekly Standard

Don Miller isn't taking comments on his recent blog post which is a rebuttal and fact-clarifying effort in response to the Weekly Standard's recent article about him. Nor, is the Weekly Standard publishing my comments to its article. So, alas, ill-fated reader, you're doomed to peruse my observations here.

The article in the WS was best not written or published at all...maybe they had a couple of pages that they couldn't fill with advertising, so poor Mark Tooley had to write something blindfolded...with his hands tied behind his back...on a manual typewriter. It was a hurried piece in that it didn't get certain easy facts right, such as getting Don's home town wrong as well as his marital status. Don suspects that the text was pasted together from internet "sources". Really, this article could have been about anyone or anything, and was merely a vehicle to echo anti-left sentiments found elsewhere in the WS publication, except that this one happened to mention Don Miller (my brother in Christ) and his darned liberal church (which is also mine, and is actually very conservative as far as doctrine goes). So here I come. I had all kinds of angry words to fire forth because they're picking on one of my own...but, I'll try to quench my tongue a bit and state simply that I do believe that the Weekly Standard confuses politics with religion, and only mentions Christianity as long as it is a familiar, and therefore acceptable, cultural component to being an American. In other words, I believe the publication wildly confuses the American way for The Way, and is therefore quite dead, spiritually speaking; a tool of the Devil to waste your time and divert your focus away from genuinely following Christ.

Leo

Cedar

The Beginning of the Pacific

For this shot, Joy used the tinted windows of our Suburban as a filter.

Astoria Bridge

Joy did a great job capturing this image of the Astoria Bridge. I must tell you that driving over it was a real rollercoaster ride that I hope to not repeat.

Swashbucklers

Super Dramatic Astoria Sundog

I like the ominous feel of this in black and white, but the mostly unmanipulated version is not half-bad either!

How Old Do You Think I Am?

This morning, I asked the kids how old they thought I was.

Their answers:
Violette-74
Leo-65
Sylvan-43
Yzzy-33

Propoganda

Just to be the man who falls down at your door.

Cyclist emerging from the train station in cycle-friendly Davis, CA.

Guess what? At the end of March, I hit another millenial mile mark but sharing this with you slipped my mind. That's probably a good sign, because it means that cycling has become normal and not extraordinary. As of today, I'm at an estimated 3,531 miles of bike commuting since I started at the end of July. I guess I'm overdue for an oil change.

You're all on the edge of your recliners to find out if Lance Armstrong called me up to give me one of his old bikes, but the Peugot that was bestowed upon me continues to be faithfully swift...so I guess I'm good...no further lavish bike blessings for now. The Peugot actually can only go fast because I'm having issues with shifting too far from low to high and end up with a jammed chain every so randomly...which makes me not very fast at all, just a bit hot-headed and greasy after wrenching it free from between the flywheel and the frame. I have a few large inclines on the way home: The Burnside Bridge, 28th to 32nd, 58th to 68th, 83rd, and the finale, 202nd to 212th. Back when I first started my commuting experiment, I was hitting the lowest gears possible to get over some of these humps, especially the one at 83rd and the last thigh-buster before home...and I still felt like I might have to get off and walk at any moment. But now, I'm able to hit all of these in high gear without crying...pretty crazy what the body is capable of after months of perserverence.

Anyone else ready to be the bandwagon?

Be The Bandwagon: Bicycling in a Post-Revolutionary Portland

AfterMass: Bicycling in a Post-Revolutionary Portland from Joe Biel on Vimeo.

Joy's Own Blog

With my new inspiration I felt like I needed my own forum.
So now I have my own blog, I have already posted my newest
paintings etc.
I invite you to come along and have a look, just Click on the title above.

Thinking about Blogs

As I have been reading more and more blogs, I begin to be inspired by the potential creative outlet it could be. Though there is the dilema, self-editing, who cares, and do I want everyone knowing what I am thinking.....

As I consider these, I wonder also, Is a camera required? Will the reader be bored without pictures? I have read some that include photos for no apparent reason other than to break up the page. Maybe to keep the reader interested. And others are only pictures, which I find sometimes uninspired. Don't we want to know why the picture is there, what the photographer was thinking, why this is special? The answer is YES!

As Spring is upon us I feel the sap of creativity rising, soon hopefully gushing out in some lovely form. As the kids get older I find that some of what I would consider my old (true) self is creeping back up from the basement of practicality. I feel mists of what used to come to me in downpours. I delight in these moments and pray to once again be in the full bloom of my creativity again, drenched in inspiration and most of all Motivation!