About Karen Thomas Olsen
Born and raised in Ohio, I attended college and graduate school in Indiana, moved to Scotts Valley, California south of San Jose to teach, back to Ohio for many years, to Arizona for 11 years with my husband, and finally to Ft. Wayne, Indiana to be near family. (Leaving Prescott Valley, Arizona in 2018 was very hard. Sigh. But for family? Worth it.)
I have taught in three Christian high schools and one community college. My first teaching position was in Scotts Valley, California. In the summer of 1980, a tall, dark, and handsome 26 year old California boy, who had recently completed his degree in Aeronautical Operations from San Jose State University, followed me to Columbus, Ohio where I had accepted a new teaching position at Worthington Christian High School.
There in Worthington we were married. Paul became an Air Traffic Controller, and we raised two beautiful girls in Piqua and Troy, Ohio. We now also have a son-in-law and two precious grandsons born in 2009 and 2012. In 2007, Lockheed Martin transferred my husband to Prescott Valley, Arizona, which was a great adventure for us. Arizona was a good place for my health and great for Paul, a California boy who loves the sunny southwest! However, being far from family is not easy. So, in July of 2018 we moved to Ft. Wayne, Indiana, where we are near relatives and just hours from each of our daughters, one near Chicago and one north of Cincinnati.
For years, I worked in Christian school curriculum design and development, which was challenging, exciting, and satisfying. After retiring in the summer of 2012, I focused on completing a doctorate, pursuing some writing projects, and being involved in Christian education at our church. Maintaining this blog continues to be important to me. With great gratitude to the Lord who carried me through the process, I graduated from Trinity Theological Seminary in August, 2016, earning a DRS (Doctor of Religious Studies) with an emphasis in theology. My dissertation is entitled "A Taxonomic Theology of Suffering and Joy Designed to Assist in Christian Growth."
Besides reading, learning, teaching, and writing, I love to swim, stroll around the neighborhood on my bike, take Water Aerobics classes, mingle with neighbors, and participate in our local church. As my health permits, I love to travel and see God’s amazing creation.
I’m wearing my eye glasses or “life lenses” which instruct me to “Look for the Lord in every page of Scripture, in every corner of nature, and in every chapter of my life." No matter the direction of my life, it's a journey north.
What a beautiful day today is! I’m sitting at my dining room table typing on my laptop while looking out over our side yard, viewing dwarf fruit trees in full foliage and tall rose bushes in prolific bloom — scarlet, yellow, and peach colored pedals. Billowy clouds herald God’s majesty.
The heavens and our garden declare the glory of God.
Nature presents numberless volumes of divine literature: “The heavens are telling of the glory of God and the expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech and night to night reveals knowledge “(Psalm 19:1-2 NASB). Telling, declaring, speaking, revealing. “God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). From my window I’m reading a happy book. You have such books all around you in your nature’s libraries. Nature’s Divine Library.
In my previous post I presented suggestions for another library, your home library. I presented a dozen books as suggestions for your Biblical Literacy shelf, and then I described the first six. Today I’ll address the latter six books. Biblical Literacy (knowledge of Scripture’s narratives and declaratives; note post dated March 29, 2017) is the first of six points I’m offering as guidelines for navigating our reading experiences as Christ-followers — or pedestrian theologians — or salty, savory sailors on the Reading Sea. As Emily Dickinson declares, “There is no Frigate like a Book.”
Let’s look over the second six frigates, a small but powerful fleet. Ship Ahoy! (I hope you don’t mind my metaphors!) Continue reading →
I always encourage young people to start their own, personal libraries — to begin with just one shelf in their bedrooms to place books worth keeping for a long time, some for even a lifetime. Whatever our ages are, we can equip ourselves with excellent resources to help us disciple ourselves in Christ and to guide us in whatever we read.
In our last post, I presented six points (guideposts, navigator’s criteria) to guide the Christian reader. You may wonder why my first point would be Biblical Literacy. Employing our ship/ocean metaphor that I set up in the last post, I am identifying Biblical Literacy as the anchor to ground us, the ballast to stabilize us, and the rudder to guide our vessels — as Christ-followers, thinking and interacting with what we read, whatever we may be reading. Therefore, I’d like to offer you a concise bibliography of core books to build your biblical base. You may have a number of these or some similar to them. You may find some here that you may want to add to your wish list. A person growing in biblical literacy and alert thinking will want to use books such as these. Continue reading →
And what is good?
I have the next post in our series ready, but today is not the appropriate day for it. I awoke this morning, meditating on the meaning of good in Good Friday. You have probably heard much on this theme over the years, but we can never get enough nourishment.
My mind traversed various verses on this good theme. “The Lord is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting and His faithfulness to all generations.” “No one is good but God.” “You are good and do good.” “O, taste and see that He is good.”*
I thought of the first usages of the adjective, good, in the opening chapters of Genesis which describe God’s response to His own work: “And God saw that it was good”, repeated after each day’s work, but after the sixth day’s work, God saw that it was “very good”. God is good and does good work.** I thought of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I thought of pure goodness, as in God’s character and His work, in contrast to the more complex goodness expressed in a fallen world.
I thought of the cross as the ultimate expression of that good-bad goodness.
I’d like to present a few quotations, Continue reading →
Why is it that one Christian describes a book as a blessing from the Lord, another finds it flawed but useful, and a third sees it as dangerous? Listening to differing views has motivated me to do some research and to write a basic list of guiding principles that can help us navigate our reading experiences (religious and secular) in ways that lead us away from the shoals and toward solid Christian growth.
I apologize for the tediously long, recent post that set up this new series! Let me redeem myself, as it were, with a brief post. Here is a preview of the six points (as currently standing) that we’ll be exploring in future posts. Please note that I’ve moved from a guidepost metaphor to a map/voyage metaphor.
Six sailing points on The Reader-Navigator’s Map:
- Biblical Literacy = both anchor and rudder 2. Genre Identity = the ship’s hull 3. Knowledge Soup = the ocean 4. Thinking Habits = wind in my sails 5. Influence and Influenced = Reader-Pilot’s changes/growth 6. Impact = From Pilot to other passengers — changes/growth
This is where this series is launched. This is where this post will dock! I’m excited to write about Genre (not gender) Identity! With these points, I hope you can anticipate where my reasoning is sailing.
God bless you with wisdom and joy in reading, remembering as Emily Dickinson expressed, “There is no Frigate like a Book. . . .”
Comments welcome! Invite a friend to join us!
Continue reading →
R. C. Sproul recounts in his book, The Consequences of Ideas, the story of attending a parent conference in a public school when his eldest child entered first grade back in the 1960s.** Sproul listened to the principal explain the school’s philosophy and program, describing specific activities that promote particular aspects of child development. Every activity had purpose.
Finally, Sproul asked the principal, “What kind of child are you trying to produce and why?” The principal answered, “I don’t know. Nobody has ever asked me that question.”
Sproul replied, “I deeply appreciate your candor. . . but frankly, your answer terrifies me.”
The school’s methods stemmed from a purely pragmatic philosophy — what works; what succeeds. But succeeds at what? Pragmatism can foster a child who can do: read, write, compute, relate and respond. But what of the soul of the child? The composition of the heart? The character? The life? For what purposes is the doing?
This applies to our doing, and in this post, to our reading. “What kind of person am I aiming to become through my reading and why?” Continue reading →
I pulled three paper backs off the third shelf of our bookcase along the western wall in our living room at 2:00 a.m. this morning. Bodily discomforts of various sorts had awakened me. Sometimes I can return to sleep, but other times my body insists, “Forget sleeping!” My mind was immediately at work on a subject that has been toying with me for a number of days. Reading. What to read, how to read, when to read, and why read — all danced in my thoughts.
Quietly, I shuffled out to the living room, intent on not awakening my Paul. To the bookshelves. Taking the three volumes, I slumped in my leather, La-Z-Boy, covered myself with a blanket, took a colored pencil and a regular pencil, and opened the first book.
Jews and Christians are called “The People of the Book.” The Bible. We wear that label with great pride — both good pride and bad pride, I suppose. Books agitate. Continue reading →
Paul and I spent most of Inauguration Day, Friday, January 20, following the events via our online connection which we cast to our “big” screen (a 37 inch flat screen that is not hooked up to use as a TV). Watching “the peaceful transfer of power,” our patriotic spirits were exercised, and we almost felt as if we were there. Almost! Happily, I was curled up in my roomy, warm, upholstered chair. The hubbub, the music, the crowds, the motorcades, the who’s who entrances — all blended to evoke a spirit of belonging — similar to (for me in my simpleness) going to a county fair, but on a huge and impactful scale. This is more than the satisfaction of belonging to a local community or club; on this day, we gratefully sensed our belonging to our country, the United States of America. ( Much of the week end’s madness had not yet happened. I choose not to smudge Friday’s memories with it.)
As I ruminated over the day’s events and words, I asked myself, “And just what is government?” The teens in my Sunday school class and I had discussed this a few weeks before when we were reviewing a period in ancient Israel’s past, the era of the judges, which preceded the kingdom era of King Saul, King David, and King Solomon. In the era of the judges, everyone did what was right in his own eyes (Judges 17:6). I asked my teens, “What is government?” Their only association of the word is with politics — some form of civil government and economic system such as democracy or communism. Hmm. There is something important beneath these ideas, something preceding them.
Continue reading →
Ready or not, 2017, here we come! Really? That is, 2017 says to us, “Ready or not, hear I come!”
As I’ve thought and prayed over the themes to explore in 2017, I’ve found my mind full of more ideas than I can attempt. I’ve decided on some core focuses which will offer us plenty of space to travel! In this new year, I’ll continue to write one article per post, but I want to add a Pass Along section with each post (or most posts) in which I will highlight a resource: book, magazine, website, store, recipe, or whatever. I’ve been posting once month, but I may try twice a month.
Here are our core focuses as I presently understand that they should be for 2017: Continue reading →
It’s time again to say, “Merry Christmas!” That is, “A God-blessed Christmas to you!” In recent months I’ve written about the glory of Northern California with its mountains, Redwood trees, and the Smith River. I’ve written about my dangerous adventure in that river in contrast to the “peace like a river” described in Scripture. We’ve explored Psalm 136, the giving of thanks, and the exclamation of hallelujah. As the Christmas season culminates, this is a good time to look at Psalm 1 (as I promised) and think about trees. D. L. Moody so apply noted, “All the Lord’s trees are evergreen.” Continue reading →
Categories: Spiritual Growth
| Tags: Psalm 1 |
Journey North Character 