The past week has been a little overwhelming, and I find myself without a newsletter article for you this week. Hopefully you’ll forgive me if I dip into the archives for a reflection that may have some bearing on our current lives—particularly if we’re getting a little frustrated with each other. This article was originally posted in December of 2017, as I was wrapping up my preaching class…
“And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.” Mark 11:25
- Details
Ambiguous images are single visual forms that can resolve into more than one distinct image. In 1892, the German humor magazine Fliegende Blätter published one of the earliest and probably most familiar of these ambiguous images—the famous “rabbit-duck” image. The simple line illustration, depending on how you look at it, can either be perceived as a duck looking toward the left, or a rabbit facing the right. Ambiguous images can induce the phenomenon of “multi-stable perception,” in which a single image can lead to multiple, stable interpretations. The image is both a rabbit and a duck, or in the case of the Rubin’s vase, it is both a vase, and two elderly gentlemen facing each other, or in the “My Wife and My Mother-in-Law” drawing from a 1888 German postcard, the image is both a young woman facing away, and an older lady facing toward the viewer.
- Details
Back in the mid-1950s, Dwight Crandell was assigned to prepare a geologic map of the Puget Sound lowlands southeast of Seattle. The region is characterized by broad, level river valleys separated by forested ridges. Conventional wisdom interpreted these valleys as glacial in origin, deposited during colder periods from glaciers that had since retreated to the heights of Mount Rainier. What Crandell began to find, though, was a different story, one that was much more violent and disturbing.
- Details
Gratitude is a primary theme in Paul’s letter to the Colossians. Paul repeatedly encourages the little church there to express thanksgiving, and he’s clear in his example: “In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ…” Paul certainly had a clear idea that gratitude was important, but he’s not alone in this assessment. In 54 BC, the Roman orator and author Cicero said: “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.” Ralph Waldo Emerson encouraged us to “Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.” Meister Eckhart, the 13th century theologian and mystic, famously said, “If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.”
- Details
The men stacked rocks to make a crude rectangular windbreak, and then turned their longboat upside down on top to create a roof for their shelter. This shelter became home for the men of the Greely Expedition during the winter of 1883-84. Lieutenant Adolphus W. Greely and his 24 men had abandoned their camp on the shore of Lady Franklin Bay, on the north-eastern coast of Ellesmere Island, and traveled by boat and ice floe to Cape Sabine, where they hoped to find a cache of supplies. Tragically, they only found a few weeks of food, and a note detailing the failed attempts to reach them. One by one, the members of the expedition succumbed to the elements and their own hunger, leaving only seven of the original team to be rescued the following spring. They had been trapped in the Arctic for three and a half years.
- Details
Page 9 of 14