About halfway through the film Broken English:

“What are you thinking?”

Nora is laying her head back on Julian’s chest. The bath suds cover their nakedness. His arms intertwine with hers and wrap around her torso. He waits for a response, but she simply stares into space from behind blank eyes.

“Hey.” He splashes some water on her.

They have just made passionate love, and they were happy. She was happy. And if her pattern holds, the happiness will soon reach its abrupt end.

The journey begins...

On Tuesday, I assigned the ISBN for the eBook edition of Walking in the Moment Between Tick and Tock": 978-0-9816925-6-2.

I told Bowker about it, so I’m committed now. I told them it was to be released on June 20, which happens to be my birthday.

I also put the book up on GoodReads.

All I have left is to finish up the formatting, then upload to Amazon, B&N, and Kobo. But I’m also giving away copies of the ebook with its launch, through Father’s Day and my Birthday and the beginning of Summer—the beginning of Party Season. So stay tuned.

The Truth about Bananas

Apropos of nothing, a couple of photos I happened across on Flickr:

This past weekend, Rabbi Rich Nichol made a particular point that struck me, in the context of family and parenting. He said, “Memorize in the morning.” That is, when their kids were young, he and his wife Sue made it a family tradition to spend a few minutes each morning memorizing passages from the Scriptures.

And I thought that was a cool idea. My kids are a little older, and I’m not sure whether they’re interested in memorizing bible stories. But I for one have been wrestling with memorization, of Hebrew vocabulary and grammar.

Note: This post is an extended version of the comments I made at church a couple weeks ago.

Many of us have heard of the “peace that transcends all understanding,” from one of the most famous snippets of the New Testament: “and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds…” (Philippians 4:7)

But I don’t know that we have a realistic conception of what that “peace” is. It’s not “peace and quiet,” as we often think in English. Not an inner calm, well not directly, anyhow. It can overlap with “peace and quiet,” because if you’re at peace, you’re not in turmoil. But most of the time in the Bible, when you read “peace,” it usually refers to something slightly different than “peace and quiet.”

The words of the chorus are based on an old Hebrew prayer: Establish peace, goodness, and blessing, grace and kindness and compassion, upon us and upon all Israel, your people.

He turned it into a song for peace for the world:

Today, for Wishcasting Wednesday, Jamie Ridler asks, “What do you wish to make room for?” Like most people, I have so much stuff, both physically and figuratively, it’s hard to make room for anything. But what I really want to make room for today is the following blog post, which I’ve wanted to write. But I haven’t had the space for it.

So today, I’m giving up my typical Wishcasting Wednesday post in order to talk about the Mourner’s Kaddish as a prayer for the depressed.