Thursday, October 31, 2013

Call them. Better yet, go visit.


It's very easy for an ol' self-pity junkie like meself, to read this verse and wonder, "yeah, where are my friends?"

But how many of them are wondering the same thing about me?

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Who has ever given to God that He should repay him?


The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Caught myself subliminally trying to "pray right" today.  Bribe God?  Yeah, good luck with that.  i think that might be why there are so many verses which implore us to "wait on the Lord."  Part of that implies a servant attitude but the main thrust is, no, really, shut up and sit tight and let God be God.  

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Is it hot in here?


You cannot stop up the Word of God.  Ask Jonah.  The more you know the Truth, the more the lies of this world are going to offend.  The more you know the sweet grace of the Father, the more odious the sin of this world will be.  The more you know the Peace of God, the more thin and ridiculous the peace that men speak of will be.  The more you know the next world, the less substantial this one seems.  Vapor, a vain chasing after the wind.  Only the good which God does through us is permanent.  Only that which glorifies God will last.  Monuments built to our own cleverness are sand castles and the tide is coming in.  The pyramids are the most lasting human endeavor ever built but they are crumbling, soon the desert will swallow them but that which is good, that which loves another in Jesus' name, the least kindness done for the least of these, a cup of cold water for your thirst enemy, a hug for a hurting stranger, to mourn with those who mourn and celebrate with those who celebrate, the planting of a seed of truth in a bed of lies...

Those are monuments which shall stand for eternity.

Monday, October 28, 2013

So yeah, why not?

About to return to the mothership.

Since i have forsaken Forkbook and i don't really want to clutter up my flikr account with post-its (then folk might miss the beautiful pictures of legos ;)  i guess this is the new home of the Post Office.  Maybe it'll keep me blogging too.  That'd be good.  Writer's gotta write.  So if you care about such things and feel so inclined, tell the good folk back home to stop by and check it out.  

And if you're new to the Post Office, lemme fill you in on the backstory.  Oh yes, there is a backstory!  

A long time ago, in a state far, far away...

There was a mother and a son.  There was another son and a dad too but this story isn't about them.  Oh and a dog.  But she doesn't factor in here either.  Now this mother worked... a lot.  Then she would come home and work on dinner and cleaning and laundry and sewing and whatever domestic things women used to work on back before it became fashionable to do almost nothing around the house but complain about how much you had to do around the house.  Heck, quite often she was doing the traditionally manly stuff around the house too cuz Dad was a sailor.  (Hey, Dad snuck into the story, there you go)  So this mother loved her sons (guess that other kid shows up in the story as a cameo too.  Still don't think the dog will though but let's watch and see) but she wasn't the most expressive mother and she didn't have a lot of time.  What she did however was make their lunch for them every day and on the plastic bag their sammich was packed in, she would write a note (at least, i assume she wrote on my brother's lunchbag too.  Gosh, if she didn't this is all gonna end real ugly when he reads this!).  We're not talking Shakespeare here, i don't remember a single one, i'm sure "I love you very much" came up a lot but it was the idea.  The impression it left was indelible.  It was a reminder that no matter how unloved and alone you may feel where you physically are at, someone in the universe thought about you and loved you.  As the great bards, Confederate Railroad have said, "Mama and Jesus always loved me.  (Coincidentally, or not, this is a great reason why you should carry a Bible and read it.)

Many years passed and the son (the one the story is about, not the brother in the cameo) had sons of his own who went to school and took lunches.  Being trapped in a mindless, creativity-less doldrum of a job, in a burst of frustrated energy, he started drawing pictures in his sons' lunches.  At first, with the mustard right inside the sandwich.  i doubt anyone knew about those until now.  Then on the plastic sammich bag and sometimes on the paper lunch bag.  These came to be his version of the Mom's notes.  Little, one frame stories about his sons or their lives or something going on inside his head.  And balance was struck in the universe....

Until one day!

Tragedy struck!  The youngest son, Rascal, decided to start taking his sammiches in a rubbermaid container.  Alas and alack!  Whatever was this young father to do?  Where would all his creative energy find release now?  How would he tell his son daily that he was thinking about him?  What would the lad chew on over lunch other than the inanity of his lunch table conversations?  Grabbing his trusty markers and a post-it pad, the father exploded into action.  Each day, Rascal would open his sammich box to find a picture on a post-it note stuck to the lid.  Each day, these slightly damp and stained little post-its got stuck to the fridge when he got home or in the morning when he remembered to empty his satchel.  Or days later when he finally brought the sammich boxes home from his locker.  After a month or so, the fridge was looking like a colorful shag-bark hickory tree.  And while none of these sketches were Rembrandt, some were good enough to show folk without too much blushing.  So the man began scanning them and posting them and because he liked clever names for things, what else would you call a daily posting of post-it pictures but ...

The Post Office!  

And that's pretty much it.  So, there you go, enjoy.  You've wasted five minutes of your life reading about one dysfunctional family's multi-generational communication system.  Enlightenment is everywhere.

Saturday, October 26, 2013

We are more than conquerors.

As the great philosopher Genghis Khan once noted, "There comes a time when a man has to dump his Facebook account and focus on what's really important."

What do you mean he didn't have a facebook account?  Were you there?  No?  Then shut up.

Ghenghy went on to conquer the known world and found the largest contiguous empire ever.  Not bad for an illiterate hillbilly horse farmer from a grassy backwood so small it didn't have a post office or a starbucks.  That's probably why he wanted an empire.  Someplace to buy coffee.  Too much yak milk.

Anyhow, with that as my inspiration and a host of negatives hot on my trail i finally cried, Uncle.  i'll miss parts of it, i'll miss the all-too-infrequent interaction but i'm not getting anywhere spinning my wheels except axle deep in the mire.  And as that other great philosopher, Matthew Quigley once said, "Don't know where we're goin' but there's no use in bein' late."


Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Seamus speaks


"i didn't notice the bridges burning until i woke up on an island."