Introduction: Spiritually Speaking…

“When someone talks about spirituality or being spiritual, what do you think of?  What do you think the other person is thinking of?”

In my January post, “Deeper and Deeper,”  I began with these two questions but then  did not directly address them.

So, I want to return to those questions as springboards to initiate JNC’s new series on Spirituality.  I’m sure you’ve noticed that in the last several decades there has been a surge of interest in “spirituality” of all sorts. How do you respond?

I grew up in a spiritual home. Continue reading

Categories: Perspectives on Culture, Spiritual Growth | Tags: | 2 Comments

Back Door to Belief: Moral Outrage

Unbelievable. Believable. Certainty. Doubt. Trust. Betrayal. Outrage too?

The theme I’ve been researching for this blog has been caught in bad weather. I’ve been researching responses to the question, “What is spirituality?” and was about to post the first article in a new series, comparing and contrasting various spiritualities. Spirituality is popular today. The purpose of this blog is to nourish a specific spirituality, the spirituality of following Christ. Thus, the Pedestrian Theologian motto and underlying theme.

However, the raging forces of what is called “moral outrage” has “tsunamied” many in our country, and I can’t help but catch some of the blast. Raging media waves. Raging thought waves. Raging rage. Fire and water. FEMA or not, in time, Lord willing, I’ll rebuild on my little lot (this blog).

Strikingly, along these detoured highways of moral outrage, I observe “spirituality” billboards. There it is!  A connection between outrage and spirituality. Hmm. Unbelievable. Believable. Now, I can add moral outrage to my list of back doors to belief – in God.

Continue reading

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Learning Curves

Sometimes my learning curves take me in circles! However, the circles often roll forward. Not always. This is what I call the “recursive process” — of writing, of learning — of life.

For much of today, Ive been exploring my WordPress blog operations, trying to make some ideas work. I wanted to add some pictures to my Photo Gallery found when you click on my Gravatar, that picture of my face, below the header.  I couldn’t figure out a way to add pictures. I don’t know how those pictures that are there got there!

Finally, I decided to try another avenue. I started a new “page,” added pictures and some text, and thought I sent the post to you! It is there on JNC now, but it did not get sent to your email box, so you don’t know I made a new post, on a new page within JNC.

I’m sending you this from my main page to inform you, that if you click on “JNC Special Pictures” which is hanging above the header (the picture of the mountainous, Pacific coastline), you will find today’s post, which is on a different page. Apparently, somewhere in my “dashboard,” there is presented a way to add this page to my mailing list of readers. Someday, I may figure this out, but I’ve done enough figuring out for one day!

So, click on JNC Special Pictures, Continue reading

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Deeper and Deeper

When someone talks about spirituality or being spiritual, what do you think of?  What do you think the other person is thinking of?

Before you read further, please click on the link below to access some J. S. Bach performed on classical guitar (!!!) while you read this, if you would like. Oh, I think you would!

This is my first post of 2019. My last post discussed light. Energy. “Let there be light.” And before that, I wrote a series of posts about my father, since my father’s 100th birthday was in the fall. I doubt he celebrated it, but we did! He’s been in heaven since 2004.

Last January, I made one resolution. (Note the January 1 and January 11, 2018 posts.) I resolved to keep on keeping on. I have. Enabled by the energy God has given me daily. Yes, I’m still tired. But I’ve not given up! I’ve not given in!  It was a huge year for us — moving in the summer from Prescott Valley, Arizona to Fort Wayne, Indiana! Oh, my! A whirlwind year. (I’m writing this in Florida, where we’re spending a month with dear friends from the Good Samaritan Mission, happily avoiding below zero temperatures in Indiana!)

So, now a new resolve to make for 2019 and a new series to start: Continue reading

Categories: Spiritual Growth | Tags: , , | 9 Comments

The Personality of Light

Lights, lights, lights. ‘Tis the season: Christmas lights on trees, wreaths, houses, and stores.  This, of course, triggered my thinking: What is light? Literally. Figuratively.

What is darkness? Well, except for the obvious contrast, maybe the latter will have to be explored at another time!

Light?  Immediately, I connected the light theme with Scripture. Jesus claimed, “I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).

Hmm. I’ve always found this phrase, “light of life”, to be a curious expression. John 1:4 says, “In him was life; and the life was the light of men”.  Life’s light; Light’s life.

I need to explore.  But I can only do so if I slow down in my cluttered busyness to “be still” and learn to “know” something of what is available to be known. Research creates another kind of clutter. Out come stacks of books, spread all over our dining room table! Oh, no! Not much time! Must clean this up by tomorrow! So, here is what happened:

Continue reading

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The Child is Father of the Man

I hope you are enjoying this continued story about my father and his family. Throughout Dad’s life, from childhood to deathbed, Dad tended to bubble with a kind of joy, a Jesus-joy. It made him delightful to many and peculiar to others. William Wordsworth’s poem, “My Heart Leaps Up” reminds me of my father’s heart — established in childhood, shaping the man and his life.

My Heart Leaps Up

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety. Continue reading

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The Problem Was the House

Part III: We left off here:

“The problem was the house. Now, the house becomes a main character in this real life story.”

If I were writing a book about my dad and his family (which I’m not), I could develop this “main character”, the house,  beyond the details I’ve been given. I’m thinking of houses as characters in literature.

I think of the professor’s house in C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  Or, there’s  221B Baker Street in London, the “home” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle creates for his character, Sherlock Holmes. Last summer, my first daughter visited a place in London, a museum, actually designed to match Doyle’s descriptions of Holme’s apartment! Continue reading

Categories: Biography, Joy & Suffering -- Good & Evil, Moving | Tags: , | 2 Comments

From Whence Marion Came

I began the story about my father in my last post, just a week ago. Since this is my father’s birthday month, and 100 years have passed since his birth, I want to post multiple times this October, narrating some of his story.

You may want to go back and read the previous post, if you haven’t, and enjoy the pictures.

So, I left you wondering,  what happened to Marion and his family when he was ten years old? To make sense of it, we have to look back further in time. Before Marion was born.

Continue reading

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Happy 100th Birthday, Dad! The Breeze Still Blows

I’ve been anticipating this day for a year.  October 5, 2018 marks the 100 year anniversary of my father’s birth.

Marion Ray Thomas at age 2.

“Happy Birthday, Dad!”

I called him “Daddy” most of my life. Marion Ray Thomas. Born on October 5, 1918 and died on July 26, 2004 at the age of 85, nearing 86. I miss him. In his latter more quiet years, I heard him exclaim numerous times, “Oh, I’m just a happy boy!” Dad faced many troubles and stressors, and often responded emotionally, but always found equilibrium, returning to his “happy boy” position in Jesus.

Dad was a gardener, grocer, factory worker, public school teacher, Brethren preacher/church planter, poet, letter-to-the-editor writer, and writer in general. I’ve been reading some of his journal writings and poems.

Sometimes, he wrote on any paper he could reach. Around the year 2000, he handed me a 9 x 12 inch sheet of pink construction paper on which he had written Continue reading

Categories: Biography, Christian Reader, Spiritual Growth | Tags: | 4 Comments

Reminds Me Of….

Have you taken one of those tests where you are shown an object and asked to state the first thing the image makes you think of or the first word that comes into your mind? You are shown a yellow circle, and you may respond with “egg yoke” or “sun”.  I suppose most of life can be like this. We experience something in this physical world, and if we’re alert, we see connections to the invisible world, the spiritual world. This reminds me of my most recent favorite passage, II Corinthians 4:16-18 (NIV).

Verse 17 states, “Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” I often repeat this verse in my mind. “Wasting away.” Do you see it all around you and in you? Seems discouraging. But then, “renewed day by day”. “We are being renewed day by day.” The contrast of the inner reality to the outward experience is the reason to “not lose heart”, to not give up. Does this verse encourage you, infuse you with courage?  Continue reading

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