a different meaning since you've been gone...

huh-boy

here we go...

On the one hand: "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear: because fear has torment. He that fears is not made perfect in love."

Ah, Perfect Love. What a Babe. What a Dreamboat. Who hasn't wanted to board that relation-ship and just cruise on through the rest of one's life powered by Unconditional Love...

And all the brave or bewildered souls who've dared to come aboard - only to find their fears not only weren't cast out as hoped, as they expected, but were in fact made even more apparent and exquisite. As it happens, they chased after them like gulls out into the deep, and then eventually came home - en masse - to roost and to breed in the masts, on the anchor, on the rails, in our hair, or hung around our necks like stinky albatrosses.

It's a high wierdness for sure, but here's the deal - the more you love and are loved, the more vulnerable you notice you become, the more it seems you fear - losing - losing your beloved/losing yourself/losing control/losing... the love. Or worst of all, the fear of finding out you've been decieved. You bought it. And it's not so perfect as you first thought.

At the point in the journey together that that fear first alights on one of the shipmates, all hell breaks loose. All the eggs that incrementally and exponentially hatch from then on, and all the resultant slippery poop all over the deck, eventually - inevitably - (unless you get a handle on it, which you can't - trying to get a handle on it is the worse thing you could do, but you try anyway) it all gets so out of hand that it puts a serious kabosh on so many high hopes you started out with. The hope turns out to be a cosmic tease.

And the love - it waxes cold. It's not the Loveboat after all. It's not even a Battleship. It's a dinky little dinghy. A ragtop rowboat with two oars. That inconveniently double as all too convenient shields or whack-a-mole mallets depending on which side of the whack you're on. All those wacky whackers and the wickets they whack with. Sooner or later you find yourself dead in the water and far out to sea, hungry as a bum and thirsty as hell. And tired. Bone weary. Exhausted. The wind is out of your sail. That's when you start hearing voices in the still air - of mermaids calling you out - and they're singing the Same. Danged. Song. The one with your name in it. The Song with the Heavenly Strains and the haunting refrain that enticed you go overboard in the first place - Perfect Love. Perfect Love. Just believe... take a chance...

Arise and come, and come to me.
The moon is soft upon the sea.
Oh come and lose yourself in me
And I will be the air you breathe.

A cloak of green, a crown of foam
If you will call the ocean home.
A salt perfume, a throne of pearl
If you will sail beyond the world.

Arise and come...
Come to me...

And by Jove, you're drawn to it! And for some ungodly (or is it?) reason you want to jump ship. Again!

Despite it all, The Dream Remains The Same! Go figure! What's up with that?

Well, that's how my travelogue reads so far. I'd like to read one that hasn't. One that isn't boring, that won't put me to sleep. I don't want to go to sleep. I want to wake up. And smell the roses. Or the stinky albatrosses. Either way, I want Real. I know how to deal with real. I think. I know I don't know how to deal with lies and pretense. Even and maybe especially pretty little lies - all the hope-sos and wishful, magical thinking. My own, especially. They're what makes me truly crazy. They skirt around the danger zone, and we don't talk about it later. They don't face the fears. So they disconnect even more. And so make me even more afraid. More crazy. That undying and incorruptible Hope makes me crazy, too, for sure - but not like that. So far, anyway. It kills me, as perfect love is wont to do, but softly. With His Song. But the lies and the ghosts - they just wreck it.

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

Trouble is, sometimes, when I'm especially hungry or thirsty, disconnected, afraid I'm going crazy, or just plain afraid, those damned pretty lies sound so hopeful, so hope inspiring... That's when I need extra eyes, others' eyes, for perspective, and proportion, for discernment. And even still the Draw, the Main Attraction which all attractions suggest and intimate, that Big Draw that draws everything and everyone upward and unto Itself as we dance along the event horizon of His Eye (hey, sounds more spicey than shuffle along this mortal coil!), continues apace. And me, I'm sucked into the undertoad for yet another go-round. I'm afraid so. Woe is me. Woe. I am undone. Or done in. Or just plain done.

But no. Like the Missionary to the Headhunters said while waist deep in the big soup pot plaintively asserted, "I'm not done yet!" When the pot gets hot enough, the Missionary will recognize he's a cannibal, too - a Maneater. His first communion.

Anyway, be that as it may - all that to say this: Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because *as he is, so are we in this world*.

Which is to say - absurdly, astonishingly - it's all good. And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

So I'm thinkin', maybe let's have another look at these nifty little oar dealies. And maybe take a another good long look at our shipmates, sans oar-in-the-moley-faces. And a good long listen. And definitely another look at the Mercy. A good, long gaze at that strange yet familiar Face. Maybe then we could start rowing in Eden a bit more in sync? Perhaps even tack ourselves into a sweeter breeze (or is it a whirlpool, the swirling eddies created by all the cross-currents?) that might give us dumsnut wannabe Ancient Mariners (with our handy-dandy but stoopid-ijit cross-bows) a chance of blowing this crazy pop-stand and getting out of Dodge? Maybe even remembering our First Love. Maybe. Have to hope for a second wind. What else can a Body do in such a straight?

I'm thinking about the church, here, too. It's all connected. Despite how it looks at first glance. Even so, lash me to your Mast, Sailor Man. Trust the process. Trust the flow. Like I have a clue what that means. But I'll keep a wet finger aloft.

Happy Thanksgiving

Because I'd heard the rest of the Story, I couldn't be really happy and thankful on Thanksgiving Day. On the contrary, there was a part of me that became really sad and really angry every fourth Thursday in November, whenever I remembered the Story.

But today I'm happier and more thankful than I am other days, because I heard one particular person is happy and thankful today, even in the midst of many days of much sadness and much anger.

I thank her for that. And I'm thankful for her. And that she lived to tell her Story. May her tribe increase. And may her Story become part of ours and our childrens'. Because it is.

This song/prayer (that's become part of our Thanksgiving Day tradition as kind of a carol) seems fitting:

Counterclockwise Circle Dance (Ly-O-Lay Ale Loya)

Help her

Like Yossarian said, "I'm the bombardier, I'm all right."

Whenever I pay a little attention, I hear the voice of Dobbs:

Then help HER, help HER!

Heard it again this morning:

Save Nazanin

Mitakuye Oyasin

All My Relations

It's getting there

Hi folks.

Latest version of Text2GED is now here:

www.gedmagic.com/Text2GEDsetup.exe

It's not a zip file anymore, so no more clumsiness there. A big Thank You! to Jordon Russell and the good folks at Inno for his fancy little Setup Compliler.

Still getting reports that it's slow loading in XP. Is that true for you? Let me know if this latest version helps any. One of these days I'll break down and buy XP and see for myself. Need a couple customers first.

I'll be putting up a web site later this week at www.GEDmagic.com. As always, suggestions are most welcome! New news on my program(s) will be posted there from now on.

I'm thinking $18.99 is about right - and I won't be charging for upgrades. The shareware version will be fully functional except for one key feature - it won't create a GEDCOM file. You can save to a workfile, however, or multiple workfiles, but they aren't recogognizable to any Genealogy database program. Text2GED won't need to be reinstalled when its purchased, either. Entry of the correct Registration Key, which will be sent immediately upon receipt of a payment via paypal, is all that's required once it's installed. Pretty slick.

So have I missed anything? What's going on in the rest of the world? What's going on in yours?

Hey! Free Program!

Hi folks.



How's it going?



I've been sequestered away for the last couple months working on my genealogy program. Had a couple job interviews over the last couple weeks, but still the same old same-old - it's been five years, now! Unbelievable.



But I have high hopes - I think this program is going to fly. It's one I've been working on it for over three years now, and it's just gotten bigger and bigger - I keep thinking of cool new features to add to it. But last December I hit a wall - scope creep got to me - it was just too much. It had gotten up there to compete with the big guys - Family Tree Maker, Legacy, AFT, and PAF (hard to compete with a free program!). But I'm a one-guy shop - it just got to be too much. I was daunted. So to encourage this old shoe-maker to get back to his last, I promised myself I'd nip the scope creep in the bud and stop with the add-ons - after I add just one more really cool feature that just HAD to be in there (because absolutely NO one else had it) - namely, a glorified copy/paste function that would speed up data entry from genealogy websites by a factor of about 1000.



And it was about that time I heard Marilyn's voice saying, "Chunk it down, Ricky!"



And I thought, you know? This feature is just so cool it could stand alone all by itself. I can do that, and have it ready to go in a couple months. So let's! And then I thought, you know? I could even do that with the rest of the cool features. Instead of providing one great big program full of tools, I could make those tools available seperately - like snap-ons. And that was just the ticket. I've been running with that epiphany ever since, and now the first of the bunch is ready for Beta testing, with a couple more following shortly.



So. Have a free program!



Due to present budget constraints I can't offer much more than that at the moment, but next year, who knows. Hey, I'd hire you in a heartbeat!



You can download the zipped install program from here:



http://www.gentlespirit.com/Rick/Text2GED.zip



And the install instructions and mini-manual here:



http://www.gentlespirit.com/Rick/Text2GEDminiManual.doc



I'll be leaving for Florida tomorrow morning. My sister Karen and I will be there for a week, visiting our dad. Probably have a story to tell when I get back on the 28th.



See you around the word-world. Wish me luck?



~Ricky

Day Dreaming

Read this from Brian McLaren today and thought of you:



The dream of God.



I frequently try to put the prayer of the kingdom (what we often call “The Lord’s Prayer”) into my own words so that I don’t just recite it on autopilot. But I often struggle with how to paraphrase the clause “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Since the language of “will” can take us down a trail of control, domination, and coercion, and since I don’t believe those ideas are in Jesus’ mind, I have looked for other words.



The Greek word that lies beneath our English word “will” can also be translated “wish.” But to say, “May your wish come true” sounds fairy tale-ish and creates other problems. But I have found the idea of “the dream of God for creation” does the job nicely. “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven” could thus be rendered, “May all your dreams for your creation come true.” This language suggests a more personal, less mechanistic relationship between God and our world. It would resonate, for example, with a mother who has great dreams for her child, or an artist who has great dreams for a novel or symphony he is creating.



The call to faith is the call to trust God and God’s dreams enough to realign our dreams with God’s, to dream our little dreams within God’s big dream. The call to receptivity is the call to continually receive God’s dreams—a process that seems to be a lifelong one. The call to baptism is the call to publicly identify with God’s dream and to disassociate with all competing isms or ideologies that claim to provide the ultimate dream (including nationalism, consumerism, hedonism, conservatism, liberalism, and so on). And the call to practice is the call to learn to live the way God dreams for us to live.



Rest of article...



Go ahead and dream big. And vicey-versey...

smells just like I'm hungry

Just a bunch of jumbled thoughts that I think do fit somehow, but I can't find any glue at the moment.

-----

"How is it that in a world where all that is real is a particular and individual thing, the human mind is able to distribute the manifold of reality into classes, in which particular things are contained?"

"Who gets to define gots the power."

kategoreo - English: to charge with; accuse. Latin: predicament

"What's in a name? Plenty!"

"By a name
I know not how to tell thee who I am:
My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,
Because it is an enemy to thee;
Had I it written, I would tear the word."

-----

What do we know when we know someone's name? Identity is one thing, but identification is another.

"Who do you say I am?"

"Say my name, say my name..."

"Smile when you say that, pardner!"

"And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field..."

My take on this naming business is that Adam gave each creature a name *individually* rather than according to kind or class. Adam gave them each their very own name, and their name was a gift as much as their relationship/connection with Adam was gift. The naming came out of Adam's priestly role of offering up each creature with love and delight. It was a different order of power. Each was named, *but not defined*. Not reduced to a word.

Not like we like to do with, say, clams. Poor clams. Not exactly an onomatopoetic identification. The ID "clam" hardly does clam-ness justice, does it. But we think we know clams. Seen one clam, seen them all. Poor clams, did I say? No, poor us. We seldom see actual individual clams. We have no names for individual clams. Even when we do the names miss the point. You know, like, "Let me introduce you to my pet clam, Clem! Say 'hi' to the folks, Clem!" His Clem-ness says, "Hi, dearies. I don'a gotsa no lira, so do'na put yur tax on'a me! Just enjoy me as I am in all'a my glory, thank a'you!"

I have to think back then the analogical correspondence between the word and the thing itself was a lot tighter; a lot more intimate. The name intimated so much more of the named. And the namer. Not like now.

Could we get that back? The whole creation groans for it, I think. I know I do. Don't you?

What's in a name? Plenty. A clam by any other name would still smell pretty fishy.

"And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch."

Who gave the disciples their new name, anyway? Did the disciples name themselves? Or did the Antiochian community get to name them? I think others named them, and it stuck. So we're stuck with it too?

What's identification for, anyway? Cognitive shorthand? What is the relationship/connection between what they were called and who they were? Which defined which? And what *was* the definition of Christian, then? Whose was it? What did that word/name "Christian" mean? Believer/follower of Christ? A Christ-one? Did the name do the subject justice? As a genus? As a specie? As an individual? As a family? Did anyone do the name justice? Has anyone?

So what does "Christian" mean now? A believer/follower of Jesus? What's the defining characteristic, now, that qualifies someone for that name/title these days? These post-Chalcedon, post-Dort, post-Trent, post-Chicago, post-modern days? Who gets to say? Who knows? And what difference does it make, anymore? And for whose sake?

A Christian by any other name would still not smell like a clam. Or a rose, for that matter. What *does* a Christian smell like, anyway? Teen Spirit?

Who I am is one thing. *Whose* I am is another. Whose *you* think I am is yet another. Who do you say that I am? Who do I smell like to you? Are you sure you got a good whiff? Here... come a little closer... wait, not too close. Yeah... come closer a little further away. Because it matters to me. Because you matter.

Say my name, say my name... You priest me. One way or the other. It's your calling. And I you. It's our mutual oblation, our heave offering on the one hand and our thank offering on the other, unto the Name that is above every name who calls us each by name, and gives us his own name (whatever that means), whose Name is as ointment poured forth. Like the rest of us. We all matter.

"To be, or not to be?"

To be? Or to do?

Do-be do-be do...

Just don't call me late for dinner. It smells very good. So do you.

Fe-fi-fo-fum...

Until the day when the Accuser is cast down...

Got glue?

Always, all ways yours,
~His Ricky-ness

Rain, Rain Go Away

I'm depressed.

Got any nachos?

Auld Lang Syne

Happy New Year, my dears!

:*

And ther's a hand, my trusty friend,
And gie's a hand o' thine;
We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.