Life in a Small Town from a Big Town Person

I grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta, GA. As I grew up, I never considered what it meant to have a grocery store, gas station, restaurant, and drug store on just about every corner. And that was just the suburbs. As I got even older, I started to venture into the city and discovered a whole new world of shops and restaurants to enjoy. Life was good.

After “retiring” my career during the worst days of my illness, I moved to a small town to “take it easy”. I’ve been here almost four years and I can tell you that it’s nice to be surrounded by quiet. What’s odd, though, is that I sleep every night with ear plugs in my ears. The deafening quiet makes the sounds of the country come to life and bellow like church bells.

However, there’s a payoff. There were more stores in one shopping center in Atlanta than there are in the entire town I live in. Of course, there’s always the Wal-Mart. I’m not saying that we don’t have any restaurants, it’s just that we have only 10 or so, and most of those are chains. Aside from a Lowe’s home improvement store and the Wal-Mart, there’s no place to go shopping here. The closest larger cities are around 2 hours away. We had to drive 2 hours yesterday just to get somewhat of a sushi dinner (and it was at a place called “Joe’s”) or good Indian food.

There’s a tradeoff, I suppose. The traffic is much easier to navigate and I don’t constantly fear that I’m going to get my head cut off in an accident. There’s something about the big city, though that calls me back. When I lived there, I didn’t do anything anyway, so what’s the big deal? I stayed at home and watched movies on my TV. But I guess that it was the idea of having the option to drive a few minutes for a great Sushi Dinner, or a nice hole-in-the-wall pizza place that made it great to live in a big city.

In the end, I’m here for good, so I better get used to it. Honestly, though, I think I prefer it here.

The Sony PRS-300 eBook Reader – A Short Review

I bought the Sony PRS-300 reader mainly because I didn’t like the keyboard on the Amazon Kindle. I have no problem having to hook my reader up to my PC to get a new book downloaded, so the Amazon Whispernet feature didn’t appeal to me, either.

I just finished reading my first book on the device and I have to tell you that I didn’t even notice that I was reading on an electronic device. The only thing that was strange was the inherent flashing that occurs when you turn the page, but that’s the e-ink technology at work. A small price to pay. The page turns were fast enough to keep up with my reading, so this was no problem for me.
The menus on the device are simple to use and intuitive. I like the fact that I can be reading multiple books at once and it remembers my place in all of them. I can have multiple bookmarks, as well, so that’s a nice feature.
All-in-all, I love the device. The only reason I gave it 4 stars on features was because it doesn’t have a search function. But, I accept this because there is no keyboard, which I stated above is something I didn’t want.
All of the low ratings I’ve seen so far come from people who are reading PDFs on the device. I can’t speak for the PDF quality as I don’t use mine for that purpose. I buy books from the Sony eBook store and I plan to get some from other free sources (ePub), as well.

The construction of the device feels sturdy. I don’t plan on dropping it to find out, but is well-balanced in my hands. One-handed reading is not a problem, either.

If you’re looking for an inexpensive device to read books on, this is the one. Because it’s Sony, I trust that it’ll be around for awhile.

Philip K. Dick Kick

I’ve been on a Philip K. Dick kick lately, reading short stories. But of course, nothing compares to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I finally read that book. What’s amazing is that it was written in 1968 and provides some pretty awesome science-fiction. If you’re not familiar with the story, it is the book that was later made into the movie Blade Runner, one of the greatest science-fiction movies ever made.

Many of Dick’s books were made into movies, including:

We’ll remember that for you wholesale – Total Recall
Minority Report – Minority Report
A Scanner Darkly – A Scanner Darkly

And I’m sure there are more that I’m unaware of.

Anyway, pick up some books by Dick and give them a read if you like science fiction.

The Christ Spiral

In a previous entry, I briefly mentioned the Fibonacci Spiral (or Golden Spiral). In my meditations on the spiral and my walk with God, I’ve thought of something. The spiral is infinite as God is infinite. My current position in my walk with God is a point on that spiral.

As I move along that spiral, I am either moving closer to God, or away from God.

I’ve heard the term “Christ centered life” and I wonder, how can you have a center of an infinite spiral?

I don’t believe that we can. However, I do believe that we can do our best to live the life that God has set before us while using Christ as the template up the spiral, allowing the Holy spirit to move us along in the proper direction.

I don’t know, I was just meditating and these thoughts came out.

Conclusion to Ecclesiastes

I’m skipping chapters 11 and 12 in Ecclesiastes because I can’t fully relate to them and don’t want to come across as a dork. They have to do with aging and the older parts of life (I think).

However, I would like to share the conclusion of the book:

“Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter:

Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.

For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”

This is pretty much all I have for Ecclesiastes. I  thoroughly enjoy this book and recommend it to anyone, Christian or not.

Over the past few days, as I’ve been studying the book, I’ve noticed that life takes on a new order and seeing it through the teachings of God has made it much more interesting. He is speaking to me more often, or, perhaps I am listening more often.

I’m finding that I’m still the same person, I just have a new outlook on life that I didn’t have before.  Solomon’s words echo throughout my day and make me glad I studied them.

Money is the answer for everything

 

“Woe to you, O land whose king was a servant and whose princes feast in the morning.

Blessed are you, O land whose king is of noble birth and whose princes eat at a proper time – for strength and not for drunkennes.

If a man is is lazy, the rafters sag; if his hands are idle, the house leaks.

A feast is made for laughter, and wine makes life merry, but money is the answer for everything.”

Ecclesiastes 10:16-19

I have trouble with this. Is he truly saying that money is the answer for everything? My study Bible suggest that this was the attitude of the carousing princes of the day. It references verse 16.

Today, it seems that money is the answer to all problems. Just throw more at the problem and it will go away. However, when there is no more money, what do we do? Do we stop throwing? No, somehow we borrow from our future, like some sort of game.

I am not claiming to be an economist any more than I claim to be a preacher, but it seems to me that we have a deficit of love for God as much as we have a deficit of money.

When you have a problem with a spiritual matter, what do you do? Do you just throw more words at it? What happens if we run out of words? What if we are at a deficit of words? Aha, I think we’re getting back to an earlier point:

“Words from a wise man’s mouth are gracious, but a fool is consumed by his own lips. At the beginning his words are folly; at the end they are wicked madness — and the fool multiplies words.”

Ecclesiastes 10:12-14

What happens when we combine our monetary deficit to our spiritual deficit? Oh my, what a predicament we’ve found ourselves in.

What’s the solution? I don’t know, but I like the sound of this:

“The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouts of a ruler of fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good.”

Ecclesiastes 9:17-18

Cool! The new Widget is out!

A commenter (brother Spence) on my last entry quoted:

“I am tempted to laugh when I hear the claims about life changing modern products that will solve loneliness and satisfy our search for meaning.”

Solomon tells us that:

“All man’s efforts are for his mouth, but his appetite is never satisfied”

Ecclesiastes 6:7

Earlier in the chapter, he says:

“God gives a man wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing that his heart desires, but God does not enable him to enjoy them, and a stranger enjoys them instead.”

Ecclesiastes 6:2

I’ve felt this before. Not that I’ve had great riches (well, that’s a relative term), but I have acquired my share of “things” in my life. I’m always looking for the next one to satisfy my search for meaning. Just as the quoted comment points out.

It’s like some big race to get the next big Widget. The new car, the new phone, the new computer, the new electronic book reader. It never ends. I feel trapped with no way out.

But Solomon has an answer for this in 9:11

“I have seen something else under the sun:

The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance will happen to them all.”

“The race”. Is that what I’m caught in? A personal race to find satisfaction? When is that race going to end? When will it be over?

“Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come:

As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds taken in a snare, so men are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly on them.”

Ecclesiastes 9:12

How nice. This doesn’t end the discussion, though. I continue in later entries.

“Do good while they live”

Ecclesiastes 3:12-15

“I know there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil – this is the gift of God.

This is a little change from his previous message in 2:17 where he states:

“So I hated my life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me.”

It seems to me that he gets even darker in 2:22:

“What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless.

I think he’s getting to the point, now. To me, it seems that he’s teaching me to enjoy my toil, even if it is meaningless and grievous. For with that, “there is a time to weep and a time to laugh.”

“I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.”

Reverence. Whoa, there’s a word that sounds unfamiliar to me. For some reason, I have a deeply rooted problem. I can’t seem to enjoy the good things that God shows me. When I stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon, I honestly felt that I was looking into a big hole. Like something you dig to bury your dog in.

However, when I was younger, I did get a glimpse of God’s work when I discovered Fractals and self-similar constructs.

To me, Phi (the Golden Ratio as it is more popularly known) and the Fibonacci spiral are more of what God has to offer me than the Grand Canyon. However, I am NOWHERE near a mathematician in nature.

Wow, as I write this, God is revealing to me that I do have reverence for his work. It’s just on a micro level rather than on a macro level. It’s in the nature of the world, not the construction of it, since I can never understand the method of construction that God performed when he said, “Let there be light”.

The above images evoke reverence within me. It’s when I forget these things and get my mind boggled down in the daily grind of grievous toil, the chasing after the wind, that I get miserable.

What I like is the self-similar nature in the above images. Solomon expresses a self-similar notion when he goes on the explain:

“Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account”.

This statement is my absolute favorite in the entire book of Ecclesiastes. To me, it is the pivot point of the book so far. Though, I am nowhere near as wise as Solomon and I don’t understand the depth of life that he experienced and endured, I am still in awe of the wisdom it represents.

Solomon’s Loop

In software development, one of the constructs used often is the idea of the loop. A loop is simply something that is done over and over again. Loops are important when you want to analyze a list of information or create a new collection of items. They are very powerful as they help bring order to a series of items.

Solomon also implies a loop when he discusses the order of events for life:

Ecclesiastes 3 1-8

In Solomon’s loop, he illustrates that:

“There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven:”

“a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build up,
a time to weep and a time  to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time for hate,
a time for war and a time for peace”

What else is there to add? I’m sure some people could think of many things. Do modern times affect this loop in any way? I’m genuinely asking, because I don’t know. It would seem plausible. But we know that the Bible is the word of God, so who are we to change it?

I’m getting off subject here. I wanted to finish off Solomon’s statement’s about his “loop”:

“What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

What a frustrating existence! It drives me crazy when I feel a longing inside but never the satisfaction. That is the way of things. It is my life’s journey now to learn as much as I can about the beautiful things God has created. As Solomon says, “Everything is beautiful in its time.”

Ahh, the beauty of vacation!

Laurie and I decided to take a vacation to Savannah this weekend. We’ve had a great time so far,  but that just turned around. It seems a large group of guests in our hotel are here together having their vacation, too – and a lot of alcohol to go with it.

We wanted a change of pace, something other than the monotonous drudgery of another day on the “farm”. Laurie and I usually go to bed around 10:00 every night. Not tonight. I think we’ll be up reading until 1:00 with the way things are going around here.

So, we’ve definitely gotten a change of scenery!

It’s the little things in life that teach us so much.