lost and found

cash 2
Originally uploaded by youarewhatyoudelete.

This year, I made a resolution to try to find my voice. However, I've just finished reading Steve Turner's biography of Johnny Cash. It seems Cash spent his whole life looking for his - and found it, just as he began to lose it.

dead interesting

How Will I Die?
Originally uploaded by youarewhatyoudelete.

Donny Miller seems to have a way with words and pictures. His book Beautiful People with Beautiful Feelings is out on March 31.

following through

This way
Originally uploaded by Our Bold Hero.

Sometimes you need guts to follow the arrows to where you don't really want to go. Tom Fox of Christian Peacemakers was brave to go to Baghdad. His life brought life; his death is not in vain.

down to earth

pink arrow
Originally uploaded by txmx .2.

Jesus might be 'the Way', but where do we want to get to? Is it to heaven? Most would say 'yes'. And they could be right. But Jesus was about bringing heaven down to earth. Which surely adds flesh to the bones of the phrase, 'Follow me.'

on the up

Up
Originally uploaded by squarerootofnine.

'In a recent speech to his professional colleagues, Martin Seligman, past president of the American Psychological Association, reported that he had found over 40,000 studies on depression but ony 40 on the subject of joy, happiness or fulfillment.'*

I know exactly what hurts or depresses me; I don't know always what makes me feel alive. It's easy to pour energy into countering the downside; time, perhaps, to channel some of that into nurturing the up.

*quote from Marcus Buckingham's Now, Discover Your Strengths (Pocket Books, 2004)

the word

Underlined passage
Originally uploaded by osiris.

As a writer, I wrestle with the tension of turning words into action. When I rediscovered these great words of Jesus, I thought they might help:

'The words that I speak to you aren't mere words. I don't just make them up on my own. The Father who resides in me crafts each word into a divine act.'

(John 14, paraphrased in the Message version)

no justice

Number 26 Ramsay Sreet
Originally uploaded by richardpaddon.

Wisdom can spring from the strangest sources. On the Australian soap Neighbours today, Connor, who lost his girlfriend in a plane crash, sighed and said to the huggable Salvation Army stalwart Harold, "There's no justice in this world, Harold."

To which Harold, on his way to help at a soup kitchen, replied, "Then we must make our own justice."

We're all neighbours in the global village.

blink

blink
Originally uploaded by atanas.

I just did one of those psychological business assessments... and found that I'm the kind of person who doesn't like to be labelled by corporate analysts.

However, my initial reaction - that they were wrong in their conclusions about me - is changing a little as I think about it more closely. And I've realised that this is partly what Malcolm Gladwell's driving at in his book Blink, and what the film Crash is also exploring powerfully.

Snap judgements have great power, but they can be powerfully wrong if we base them on presuppositions, prejudice and automatic 'association'.

So I think I'll step back, clear my mind and approach these 'findings' without presuming that I know myself better than others. And maybe I'll learn something along the way.

happy days

Sakula
Originally uploaded by zargag.

What was it that made the happiest day of your life?

gitmo

gitmotrtr
Originally uploaded by trfcnte.

What would it take for Guantanamo Bay to become a centre for peace and reconciliation? Faith, after all, is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. The Guantanamo Peace Centre? Imagine it.