Travelling with Gershom

By now, you have likely seen Susan Boyle from Britain's Got Talent (if you've been wandering on the outer fringes of Borneo for the last 10 days, click here to see it). The 47-year old was laughed at when she came out on stage and announced her dream of being a singer, hoping to be as successful as Elaine Paige. One young woman in the audience smirked and derisively rolled her eyes. Why this reaction? Susan is not beautiful, slim, young, blonde, or any of the other things we have been conditioned to associate with the music industry, or with the entertainment industry generally. It is that simple. She didn't fit the picture - Christina, Britney, Madonna, Beyonce, and the like - so people expected her to be an untalented joke. And then she sang, and blew the room away. Susan Boyle is a wonderful singer. But what if she wasn't? What if she was tone deaf? Or if she had simply walked off the stage in the face of the reception she received? There probably would not have bee...

My dear wife sent me a note in response to my last post. Trudy reminded me of something important: when strangers speak to us, we have an opportunity to brighten their day. And while she was too gracious to say it, we have an obligation to interact with them, to love them. The flip side to the problem of uncensored self-exposure discussed earlier is unreflective withdrawal. I forget that we are all wounded (me included), and that grace received must become grace extended. Too often I retreat, preferring to escape the situation than to engage in it. While he probably wasn't thinking of all this (though maybe a variation of it), Wordsworth comments on the source of both sides of the problem, and their solution, in the fourth book of his long autobiographical poem The Prelude : When from our better selves we have too long Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop, Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, How gracious, how benign, is Solitude; How potent a mere image of her swa...

Why do people I have never met insist on telling me things I don't need or want to know about? Picking up the Globe and the Telegram at a local convenience store yesterday, the clerk told me about asking for an ID from a guy who had been trying to buy beer a few minutes earlier. His response was "You've got to be freaking kiddin' me!" Of course, neither he nor she said the euphemistic "freaking". Two things. First, why does she think I am interested? If this had happened just this once, I could ignore it. But it occurs from time to time, enough to be annoying. I must look like my day will be incomplete without tales of sales-clerkian tragedy. This is a look I will learn to eradicate from my repertoire of facial expressions. Perhaps Tim Roth can help! Second, why is it okay to use the F word with someone you've never met? I hope it isn't the case that I invite this as well, and that it says more about the other person than about me. It certainly ...

I mentioned in a recent post that I would be looking at two questions: what does it mean to trust God?, and how do I trust God? I started exploring this in Matthew's gospel, specifically the sixth chapter. In verses 25 through 34, Matthew records Jesus as teaching about worry. Or more exactly, about not worrying. In this passage, Jesus tells us "do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on." He goes on to say that God "knows that you need all things" and if we "seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness...all these things shall be added to you." (Yes, I am using the New King James translation, a slightly modified version of the original King James, which is, of course, the Bible Jesus used!) Sounds like good advice. So how do I stop worrying? I think the clue lies at the beginning of this section: "Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life..." "There...