DaddyRoBlog

Surprise and Delight

I had a lunch appointment in Reston today, so I stopped at the Great Harvest Bread Company in Herndon on the way back to church.   They list the flavors of the day on a bulletin board above the service counter, and I was pleased to see they had 9-grain, which is my favorite.

But then…

When, only a few moments later, my turn came to request the bread I wanted, I noticed 9-grain was NOT on the board.  Hmmm.   Maybe I hadn’t seen it up there after all?

I asked the people who were working, and they said they had just sold the last loaf.  Dang!

But then…

It turned out that one of the loaves designated for cutting (they give everyone in line a free slice so their customers can sample the different kinds of bread) was 9-grain.  They bagged it and gave it to me.  Free.  (OK, it did have one small slice missing.)

Surprise and delight—that’s the very heart of customer service, I think.  In fact, it’s at the very heart of service in general: going the extra mile, going above and beyond, doing what is required “and then some”.     And when a church understands that as well as a business—ahhh, then we’re preaching Gospel!

Royalty Returns

I came up one a lady today who had been around the block a few times and was clearly worse for the wear.  It was just as clear that she was once stunningly beautiful, but now her color was so bad that it was almost translucent, like you could almost see right through her.  At points, in fact, I think you could.

She was well traveled, and yes, beat up to the point of being tattered around the edges.  But whatever violence she had seen, and  whatever forms of violence she had experienced, it didn't keep her from looking to the future and ensuring a place for the next generation in it.

Gently she touched her abdomen to the undersides of a milkweed leaf, depositing a tiny white egg.   Then it was up again into the air, not as high as she once flew, only high enough now to make it to the next milkweed plant  where she repeated the action again and again.

It was good to welcome another old friend back to the garden today, a well seasoned Monarch whose long journey is coming to its end.   And it will be good to welcome her children, and watch them grow and transform until one day they take to the sky and take up their journey where hers left off.

Public Service Announcement

Tomorrow, May 13, you can get a free scoop of Häagen-Dazs Vanilla Honey Bee ice cream between 4 and 8PM at participating stores  (which in our areas is the  Häagen-Dazs Shop at the Lansdowne Town Center ).  Enjoy!

Happy Mother's Day

A snapshot of motherhood in what I believe is the summer of 1959.

Praying with the Synagogue

Today we went to a Bat Mitzvah.  It made me think about a lot of different things.

One of the things that always strikes me is how similar the prayers are (well, except that ours are in English!) And that is, of course, by design.   These are the prayers Jesus prayed.  These are the prayers that he would’ve said with his disciples at the Synagogue.   

And just like the disciples continued to read the Old Testament in their new community which would come to be called the church, they continued to say many of the same prayers.  Again, as with Holy Scripture, they understood the references differently, but they said the prayers just the same.  They would be modified over time, as the Holy Scriptures would also come to include the New Testament, but many of the phrases and much of the wording would continue on unchanged.

I appreciated, therefore, the sense of continuity I felt with what God has been doing down through the ages, and the profound connection with his people across the years.

New Book Rating System

I'd like to recommend a new scale for evaluating books—a cardiovascular scale.

At almost 50 years old, if there is one muscle I should keep in shape it’s my heart.  So I finally broke down started including cardio in my workout routine.

The only problem is that I hate doing cardio.  It’s boring.  What to do?

I decided to read while using the stationary bike or elliptical trainer.   Mostly I read fiction in the form of novels.   The thing about a really good novel is that for me, at least, it really does take me out of the moment and transport me into the story.   A half hour goes by and I never even notice.

That’s how The Cure for Modern Life  was for me.  I’d become so engrossed in the story I’d forget all about what I was doing and all of a sudden my workout was done.  Sweet!    Even better was that as I got caught up in the plot, I actually found the pace of my work out increasing as well.  Finally, I only let myself read the book while I’m doing cardio.  Because I really liked a couple of the characters in this book, I couldn’t wait to find out what happened to them.  And that meant I couldn’t wait to get back in the gym. 

So I think I would give The Cure for Modern Life a five heart rating.  (I’m thinking that for obvious reasons a heart would make a good symbol for this system, with one heart being poor and five hearts being a most excellent book).

On the other hand, I’ve been reading Jonathan Kellerman's Compulsion   for two weeks now.  It doesn’t transport me, and I don’t much care about the story so far even though I’m about ¾ of the way through.  I often find myself putting the book down and watching a TV or even just the monitors on the machine before.  I think I might only give this book one heart.  It hasn’t helped much!

Simple Gifts

I met a young lady recently whose name is Joy.  I asked her if that was a family name or if there was a particular reason her parents chose that name for her.

She replied, “My parent’s told me there were three reasons they gave me this name:

1.       They hoped I would know the joy of the Lord

2.       They hoped I would be a joy to the Lord

3.       They hoped I would bring joy to others.”

And the interesting thing?  She really did seem to be a joyful person with a ready smile and an easy laugh.

In giving her the gift of this name, her parents had given her a simple but effective way of framing the world and her place in it in a positive light.

Beyond Boredom

"[Children] always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we."

--G.K.  Chesterton

On Caring

"[There is a] kind of all-embracing universality evident in Mother Teresa’s prayer: “May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in.” Not just fellow nuns, Catholics, Calcuttans, Indians. The whole world... [My] sense of the world as a gift, my sense of a grace operative in this world despite its terrors, propels me to allow the world to open my heart still wider, even if the openness comes by breaking—for I have seen the whole world fall into a few hearts, and nothing has ever struck me as more beautiful."

— David James Duncan, the author of what may well be my favorite novel ever, The River Why

Gardening for Emotional Intelligence

One of the better books I have read over the years is Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence.  The whole concept of “emotional intelligence” is one I’ve found quite helpful.  In our family we talk about being “heart smart”; that is, it is as important to develop our heart as our mind (or our body), to care as it is to think.

One of the core competencies in emotional intelligence is the ability to manage our moods (I can’t care consistently for anybody else if I’m at the mercy of my moods).  There are definite skills that can be learned in this regard, and they can make a big difference.

For me, gardening is a “mood manager.”  It builds having something to look forward to into the very fabric of my life.  You might say that every day it gives my life a “positive charge.”

There are so many things to look forward to in gardening.  The arrival of seed catalogs in winter.  Planting seeds in spring.  Waiting to see what will come up and when.  Anticipating blooms and fruits and vegetables in summer.  Harvesting and eating and enjoying in fall.  And then, as fall begins to give way to winter once again, looking forward to getting a break from all the work a garden entails!

We garden not only for plants, but for animals.  Most of our plants are chosen to bring in birds or butterflies or create habitats that welcome turtles and toads.   So I also look forward to seeing when various animals will show up in the garden, and then when we’ll see them again.  Currently, for instance, I’m wondering when our box turtles will make their first appearance.

Of course, there are many days I don’t get to spend much time in the garden.  Like now.  These last two days have been far too busy to yield any garden time.  The next three days will be more of the same.  But on Friday—Lord willing—I should have plenty of time to plant at least some of the packets of seeds that recently arrived in the mail.  So even when I don’t get out in the garden, I still have something to look forward to—the day when I will!

As much as I look forward to these things, what I’m really looking forward to at the moment is going to sleep.  Come to think of it, that’s a pretty important mood manager too, isn’t it?!