A long time ago, I decided I would not spend much money on a grill that was just going to rust out and end up on the curb in a couple of years. So I bought a relatively inexpensive one along with a decent cover from Covermates. Four years later, I’m still using my four-burner Nexgrill from Home Depot. It’s lasted longer than any other I’ve owned.
But nothing lasts forever. The innards were rusty and barely hanging together. Do I spend money on parts? Or on a new grill?
When I checked to see if I could get parts, I found a whole replacement pack for forty bucks. It included 4 burners, 4 heat plates and 4 ignitors. Sweet. Thanks to Amazon, it arrived a few days later.
Once I removed the rusted out pieces, I wiped out years of grease from the inside. I was amazed at how much had accumulated in there. All the replacement parts then fit perfectly. It looked and worked a whole lot better.
The ignitors presented a puzzle. The new connecting wires would plug right in if I could figure out how to get the old wires out. I watched a few unhelpful YouTube videos and decided to go for it. I grabbed one with pliers and yanked on it. Once it was out, I could see exactly how to plug the new one in. Piece of cake.
Anytime I can rehab and old grill and save a few hundred dollars is a good day. I grill meat just about every day, so it’s always a good investment.
The men’s bible class I attended last week began with prayer rather than saving it until the end. Usually, the leader gets sidetracked or the table discussions is really good, and we don’t get to prayer until 7:59 (class ends at 8). But this time, the leader said, “I’m going to let you guys share with each other and pray for about twenty minutes. Then we’ll get into the study.”
Four or five men were seated at each of the six tables. Even though I know most of the guys who come each week, I had just met the three others at my table. One had been a member of the church for about thirty years. Another had just moved to Florida from Oregon. To my left was a thirty-something guy who just started a data science degree program at the local state college.
Typically, the majority of prayer is devoted to those we know who are ill or recovering. Tonight was different. At my table, our petitions were all ones of gratitude. Bob’s son had come back to church, his faith renewed. Kevin was adjusting well to a new home, job and church. Mike’s life was getting back on track and enjoying his studies. I was thankful for time spent with grandchildren.
After we jotted down our prayers, we all took turns praying. Sometimes people are reluctant to pray, but not this group. Not one of my new friends hesitated to offer up thanks for the stuff going on in our lives. I thought to myself, “This is a powerful time, praying with these men.”
The class leader commented that talking about our prayers usually took up more time than the prayers themselves. He was right. We only prayed for about five minutes. But that’s OK. God was listening in on our pre-prayer discussions. That was prayer time, too.
The plan worked well. The leader lost track of time and we didn’t even get through half the night’s discussion questions. It’s a good thing we started with prayer.
When I was growing up, our family was always involved in the church. My parents were involved in teaching and leadership, and as soon as we were old enough, my brother, sister and I were involved in the youth ministry.
Youth ministry looked a lot different in the early 1970’s. The high school youth group was called the Walther League. The Junior League was for those in Junior High School, which was grades 7 through 9 in our community. I don’t remember much about Junior League, except that we could wait to be old enough for Walther League.
Walther League was run entirely by the youth. There were a couple of adults there to make sure we didn’t break anything in the church and provide transportation. Other than that, they watched us have our meetings. We elected a president, vice-president, secretary and treasurer. The president ran the bi-monthly meetings, the secretary wrote down minutes in a notebook, and the treasurer kept a little lock box with our cash in it. Meetings consisted of reading a devotion from a devotional magazine, reading last meeting’s minutes, hearing how much money we had, ate a snack, played a game, and decided what else we wanted to do.
The only activities I remember were going to play miniature golf, going to a movie, going out for ice cream, and raising money to play miniature golf, go to a movie, and buy ice cream. The church gave us half of the Sunday morning coffee and donut money if we helped serve and clean up. We collected newspapers which we could take to a dump and sell for $2.00 a ton. My dad actually let me weigh down the family station wagon for trips to south Philadelphia to make a couple of bucks. I don’t think we ever accumulated more than twenty dollars, but that’s all we needed.
Not everyone in our group was allowed to go see the 1969 movie “True Grit” starring John Wayne. The film included some gunfights and the dialogue included a few obscenities (“Son of a b****”). I know, sounds mild compared to what’s on TV and in films now, but at the time, it was a big deal.
I don’t remember what else we did. By the time I was out of college and involved in youth ministry, much had changed. The leaders did the programming and teaching, and the youth came to be fed and entertained. In fact, parents expected the church to feed and entertain their children to keep them out of trouble. This became harder and harder to do since the world offers much more and better entertainment on TV, devices, and the internet.
I believe the best youth ministry happens when we give our young people something to do. They couldn’t wait to take on leadership responsibility during Vacation Bible School. Summer mission trips were times of spiritual growth. They benefitted by the experience of being part of the body of Christ, hearing and learning, going and telling.
Fourteen years ago, I wrote about going to see the manatees at Blue Spring State Park in Orange City, Florida. On that January day, I thought 299 manatees were a lot. We went to see them again today, and the ranger station tote board announced a count of 677. Cold water, cool air, and overcast skies make for great manatee viewing. By the time we got there in the late morning, it wasn’t as cold as the last few days, and some of the manatees had already begun their slow float back to the St. John’s river.
A healthy crowd of locals and tourists came to see the manatees today. The popularity of manatees is an interesting phenomena. They aren’t much to look at. They don’t do anything. They just float around, coming up for air once in a while. Yet we paused at four or five viewing platforms to watch these big gray blobs float by.
Manatees have state and federal protection. According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission website, “It is illegal to feed, harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, annoy, or molest manatees.”
Several organizations allow you to adopt a manatee. If you do, carefully maintained scar records enable you to pick out your manatee among all the others in the spring.
According to signs at the state park, manatees have no natural predators other than people. Boat propellers and trash are enough of a threat to earn them a spot on endangered species lists and have their own awareness month (November).
Favorite zoo animal? Typical answers include elephant, lion or tiger, and the giraffes. But when the manatees show up at the spring, we drop everything to go and see them. Their natural charisma makes them irresistible.
After searching the whole rack of leashes, collars and harnesses at my favorite local pet store, I had to ask an assistant manager, “Do you still carry leather leashes?”
He said, “No, but I wish we did.”
I replied, “I guess they make them too well. You only ever have to buy one.”
Unless you get a second dog. When we took our shepherd/lab mix pup for training, the first instructions were “Get a metal prong collar and a six-foot leather leash.” We were glad we did. Nylon and cotton leashes cut into my hands, unlike the leather, which gets more comfortable the more we use it walking, exercising and training a large (or small), energetic dog. The one we have has lasted over twelve years. Even the vet commented, “Nice leash!”
Our newest pup, a Great Dane, isn’t large yet. But she visibly grows each day. With a Westie one hand, we need a second leash for the other. None of the local pet stores have leather leashes. I found a cheap nylon one on the pet store clearance table that will do for now, but it’s junk and I hate it. So it’s off to Amazon we go.
I like to support local businesses, but they don’t often have what I need. I don’t enjoy feeding the Amazon monster, but there I can usually find what I’m looking for.
My wife and I are students of minimalism in pursuit of the uncluttered life. However, on any given day, there is a drawer, a cabinet, a closet or some room that can be de-cluttered. It is never-ending quest. Where can we reduce clutter in our lives? Just about anywhere.
The normal rhythms of life constantly contribute to clutter. No matter how good I set up my filters, spam clutters my email inbox. We accumulate shopping bags with each trip to the store. Books we’ve read and will never read again fill up shelves. Dog toys are strewn around the rooms of our home. Souvenir pens, extra birthday cake candles, and unused plastic forks accumulate in kitchen drawers. Receipts from the store, records from the veterinarian, and daily-arriving tax documents suddenly generate a pile on my desk. Dumbbells litter the floor of the garage gym after a workout. One bedroom closet is cluttered with items from decluttering efforts that we intend to sell or donate.
Where can you reduce clutter in your life? Do it right where you are. Put something in its place. Throw something away. Add an item to the donation pile. Sort the mail over the recycling bin. File away the important receipt.
Don’t think of reducing clutter as a destination. It’s a journey.
Anyone who’s read any of my blog posts would know that dogs are at the top of my list. My life has been filled with dogs and dog stories. I love going to the zoo to see the elephants, lions, and giraffes, but I love coming home to our dogs even more.
Other pets along the way have included aquarium fish, hermit crabs, a few cats, and a parakeet. They all had bit parts in our life. All the awards for best supporting actors go to the dogs.
Mild-mannered Gabriel the Labrador retriever pinned a suspicious repairman against the wall in our Baltimore home. Chica was the world’s fastest three-legged chihuahua. Michael the Labrador had enough energy to accompany me on six-mile runs through the snow in Des Moines, Iowa. Samson the lab/shepherd mix ran off energy by chasing a laser pointer at breakneck speed up and down the street. Sable the Bassett hound howled along with every siren in the distance. Gabriel and Rachel, yellow and black labs respectively, retieved balls until they dropped from exhaustion.
Each one was fluent in the dialect of our home. Their vocabulary included “ball,” “bone,” “park,” and “bike ride” as well as the requisite “sit,” “come,” and “heel.”
More than just animals or pets, they’ve always been our guardian angels. Presently assigned to us: Winston the West Highlands White Terrier and Willow the Great Dane.
“Hey, thanks for your Christmas card. It was really great reading about your year.”
Two people said that to me yesterday. But in the past few weeks, as classes and meetings and activities have resumed, I’ve heard it from three other families. I had no idea that a Christmas card, along with a simple one page letter about our 2023, would bring a grateful response.
This past Christmas was the first time in seven years that my wife and I sent out cards at all. Back in the nineties, before social media, we sent out about forty or so each year, and received at least as many. It was the way to keep up with family and friends in the places where we had lived.
In time, the amount of cards decreased. If we hadn’t heard from someone for three or four years, we dropped them from the list. As our list of friends on Facebook grew, we already knew what was going on in everyone’s life, so a Christmas letter was redundant. Emailed cards and greetings replaces those delivered by the mailman. Our mailing list shrunk until we finally concluded, “Let’s not.”
This past year we met a lot of new people and made a lot of new friends. We wanted to and needed to strengthen our connection with them. However, we’ve retreated from the advertisement-ridden, spam-filled, and bot-controlled social media world. “Let’s do it. Let’s send out Christmas cards this year.” So what if we had only gotten about two-dozen this year? So what if we would send out a variety of left-over cards from years gone by? So what if first class postage costs a whopping $.66? We’ll enclose an illustrated letter about our year and see what happens.
Of the cards we received this year, only contained had a newsletter. It was three narrow-margin pages of single-space, small-font prose, with a blurry photo collage on the fourth side. It was the epitome of TL;DR (too long; didn’t read). I was in charge of the letter, so I was sure to include lots of white space, a few high res pictures, and the facts, just the facts.
Next we had to assemble our mailing list. We had very few. Some we could look up online. But most name and address searches want your money before they will give names and addresses. My wife sent off a few emails to the right people, and we got all the info we needed.
When we had them all addressed and ready to go, I waited in line at the post office for about twenty minutes to get some Christmas-y looking stamps. We got them in the mail on the last day for delivery before Christmas. Mission accomplished.
We’re thankful for this chance to cultivate new and old relationships. (Oh, and by the way, we send out cards with baby Jesus on them. Just sayin’.)
I carefully choose my words. How many times has my online communication been misunderstood? Recipients hear emotions in my texts that I never intended. A missing exclamation point means I’m not excited. A delayed response is interpreted as disinterest. One cannot be too careful when communicating online.
Inefficiently
Everyone has a preferred means of online communication. Some send texts. Others use Messenger. Many turn to email. A few respond immediately on Telegram or Google Chat. Still others are only found on social media. Ironically, with so many ways to communicate, it is harder than ever to contact someone. If you want to reach a lot of people, you’ve got to be on a lot of different platforms.
Ineffectively
“Did you get my text?”
“No.” Or, “I did, but forgot to reply.” Or, “I did but thought it was spam.” Or, “No, my phone was dead.”
When I was working, I sent out a email newsletter opened by less than half of the recipients. Important weekly updates were lost in sea of spam.
Less frequently
More and more, I call. Online communication has lost it’s appeal.
Waite for it... 