Better than blogging

I can't remember when I first started to read looking back...looking forward. Today, I went a step further and met Richard (the man behind the blog) for lunch in Kitchener, half way between us. When you meet someone you've read for a long time, it's not like meeting a stranger. Richard, thanks for a great lunch. I hope it won't be the last time.

My kind of assignment

Christina finished a school project early, and has been bugging me to reward her accordingly. I've been bugging her back, all in good fun. Christina's turned the tables on me, and has come up with a scheme. She's assigned me a book of my choice - although it has to be a chapter book, not all pictures - to be read over my next three days off. If I finish the book, she takes me out for dinner. So I get to read on my days off and not feel guilty, and at the end I have a dinner date with my daughter. I'm liking this.

His name is Gordon

Real Live Preacher's name can now be known.

Death of a church

This post is from the defunct blog "Dying Church"

From Bill Easum:

I think there is too much lamenting over the death of a church. Who really cares? I doubt if God does. Isn't the real point what we are doing with Jesus? If we all took this direction, we would concentrate on introducing people to Christ and helping them grow deeper rather than building a church.

In Praise of Slow

My latest fix shipment from Amazon included a book that's been all over the TV and newspapers lately: In Praise of Slow.

My whole life has turned into an exercise in hurry, in packing more and more into every hour. I am Scrooge with a stopwatch, obsessed with saving every last scrap of time, a minute here, a few seconds there. And I am not alone. Everyone around me - colleagues, friends, family - is caught in the same vortex. In 1982, Larry Dossey, an American physician, coined the term "time-sickness" to describe the obsessive belief that "time is getting away, that there isn't enough of it, and that you must pedal faster and faster to keep up." These days, the whole world is time-sick...Why are we always in a rush? What is the cure for time-sickness? Is it possible, or even desirable, to slow down?

The book looks great so far, and there's also a website. I may try to read this one slowly. I'm getting tired of time-sickness. (Canadian edition also available)