Laughing along with Life.

Life is so wonderfully full these days. I've been almost insanely busy...but it has been a good busy. Ya know?

 

Last Thursday I went to watch some friends in their production of "The Sound of Music" (as pictured on the left). In fact, I got to go twice! They did SUCH a great job and I had the music stuck in my head till....well it's still in my head.
The cloud formation (shown in the third picture above) was so unique I had to snap a photo! Aaaand the cartoon on the far right made me laugh so I am sharing it with you. :)

Speaking of laughter....

 

On Tuesday I became an employee at a financial office nearby. My 'official' title is "the assistant to the assistant." So basically I do a lot of photocopying, emailing, copying and pasting and filing. The Lord has definitely been providing for me! Passion Tea Lemonade! ;) Anyway, today on my lunch break, I popped on over to the nearest Starbucks which just so happens to be the same Starbucks that my good friend, Emily, works at. I had originally walked in to see if she was there, but saw her working at the drive-thru window. So I promptly hopped back into my car and went through the drive-thru to surprise her.  Getting to see her with her ever-present smile made my day! And you know what they say: "A cheerful heart is good medecine." Well, actually, King Solomon said that (correct me if I'm wrong!) in Proverbs 17, but more people should start saying it! I think the world would be a healthier place if we all laughed a little bit more. I'm not talking just laughing. I'm talking honest-to-goodness belly laughter like the people in the video. So great.

What is something that inevitably makes you feel like laughing?

Currently Digging...

...Apple juice. Buying groceries from Costco undoubtedly means that whatever you buy will come in large quantities. When it comes to apple juice, there could never be too much. There aren't many things that are as refreshing as a glass of apple juice.

...Yam fries. Yesterday i found myself sitting by the wood stove in our kitchen with my sketchbook (which, sadly, I've been neglecting of late,) a variety of pens and pencils, and a plate of yams. Contentment.

...Coffee dates. Hanging out at the local coffee shop. Whether it's randomly meeting someone there, or purposefully arranging time to hang out with people and getting to know them better, I find having a good, real, chat with people incredibly fulfilling.

 

What is your beverage of choice?

The answer is the question. (Or the other way around).

"There is proof of God in all this, but we've been looking in the wrong place. Before you can find God in the answers, you have to find God in the questions.

Maybe the answers come from us, so we come up with a million of them. But the questions...there's something mysterious about the questions.
We all ask them;
we all have them;
and no matter where we come from
or what time in history we haved lived,
the questions are always the same.
As important as the answers might be,
what's even more revealing is that we even have
questions: ?????????????????????
Why do we need to know?
What drives us to search for answers?
Where does the "ask" come from?
Every one of us is on a search for meaning.
We are all on a quest (ion).

The arrow that points the way looks not like this: --> but like this: ?

All of us, no matter what conclusions we've come to, are driven by the same thing - we have to make sense of life.
Everything we experience, everything we learn, every bit of information we process, is being integrated by our brains, and we will not have peace of mind until we create some kind of cohesion.

Whatever your view of the Bible may be, whether you believe it to be divinely inspired or the product of human effort, you would have to at least acknowledge that it, like all other religious texts, is a part of the grand story of humanity searching for meaning.

Every world religion, every philosophy, every belief system - from anthropology to astrology to sociology to psychology to mythology to science itself - is trying to propose a cohesive view of reality. They're all trying to make sense of life. We're all trying to figure out who we are, why we're here, what this whole thing is about.

If you're sophisticated, you can see the flaws and fallacies of so many different belief systems. You might even look down with condescension at those who believe what you would consider simplistic answers to complicated problems in the world. We once were convinced that the world was flat; that if we danced, the rain would come; that the stars determine our fate in life.

We have outgrown so many fairytales that we onced believed were reality. Maybe it's an inherent flaw in the human species, but we are all predisposed to believe. We'll believe in just about anything. While we may be able to systematically eliminate everything we believe that later we discover isn't real, we can't escape the very thing that is right in front of us. Every one of us, regardless of race or language or education or generation, regardless of all the variables possible to make us different, is still inclined to believe in something.

While we may disagree on what we believe in and we may argue violently about what is true, what we can't escape is that we are all on the same quest and our soul craving is to find something we can believe in.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BELIEVE IN? (icravechange.com)"

Excerpt from: "Soul Cravings - An exploration of the human spirit."
Written by: Erwin Raphael McManus