Farewell Moleskine Planner

Laura singing in the choir.

For the last six or seven years I have enjoyed the sleek and sexy Moleskine planners. Their history and quality make note taking a joy. I plan to keep using them when I am at conferences or note taking events, but my to do lists and monthly planner are now a part of my Xoom Android Tablet. It's just too convenient and nifty not to use.

My kids who are apple people continue to find ways to join their lives for convenience and efficiency. They started using a product that allows them to have have to do list that updates itself on the Iphones so they only have one list, and if an item is procured they both know it. Pretty helpful.

Only In Sun Lakes

We are a senior active community, people play tennis, and work out at the gym and play golf and swim and walk and bike. People love to bring the flavor of their home states to the desert, but this Wyoming fellow took the cake for combining his past and present.

Yep, golf cleats on Tony Lama's.

Finished our series on Aging with the help of Billy Graham's book Finishing Well.
Quoted Billy in the 80s wrestling with God's love for all and a willingness to confess the mystery of scripture and the fact that good people differ.

PSP

When you travel in and out of hospitals for forty years, you appreciate our nurses, doctors, and the support teams that make up modern medicine.

You also learn alot about disease, and diagnosis by listening along with family during treatment.

Occasionally a new disease crosses my radar. I am today leading a memorial celebration for a man who suffered from Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, which affects a small group of older men and women, with the loss of balance, weakness, loss of the muscles which control eye movement. No cure known.

I have the utmost of compassion for the family and the loves of one who needs years of caregiving. The patience of their love and providing quality of life are worthy of great praise.

Up and Down on the Round

Is it really possible to make 10 pars and still not break 90? Yep. Did it today.
19 over par on 8 holes, that more than double bogey on the bad holes.

It's still all good because I enjoyed the warmth, the partly cloudy day, and good friends.

Broken World Day

Love the BOKEH in this picture, the blurriness in the background highlights the subject of the flower, but today, the sharp rough background of life was all to visible and vivid.

It started in the home of a grieving wife and daughter, facing an empty house and planning a memorial, then the inside of an incredibly busy emergency room, full of controlled chaos and at least 60 people hurting badly from injuries, organ failures, including a cute boy strapped to a gurney with a spine and neck injury. Hard.

Then to the part of Mesa that is old, and run down and poor, where most of the people ride the bus and poverty is visible everywhere, into an intermediate care facility with the aged and infirm, many men staring blankly, who have no life interest and no family, just sitting.

Home for a hair cut, only to find that I had dropped both my drivers license and my debit card somewhere between here and there. An hour of retracing my steps, locking my card access, praying, only to find that a young kid had turned in my cards to a business nearby. Thankful.

Strange tug in my heart....I am called to go into this world, and relieved to leave it for my gated community.

Old and New Ideas

/Remarkable identical adult twins visited church on Sunday.

I believe that God's ultimate purpose is the restoration of all things. Lots of debate about what that means, but in order for it to mean things in heaven and things on earth, then the idea of resurrection and immortality must define our ideas of heaven instead of the other way around. Our ideas of heaven and hell are unworthy of the greatness of God's plan.

It's a hard sell, but worth an effort.

Afternoon delight

One of the duties of ministry is hospital visitation. I am not expected to sit in my office from 8 till 5. So, the afternoons and early evening are the time when I pack the miles on my car. Here is how it went yesterday.

Noon-lunch with the folks volunteering in Mesa at Amor Ministry.

Stop at Best-buy to get software for Office Computer-total fail.

Drive to Gilbert Mercy Hospital to visit a friend who just emerged from a five day
induced coma to deal with pneumonia- one grateful man.

Home for a quick cup of Joe with Laura. Laura had good news about some medical retesting this week, and was emotionally worn out.

An Office wedding, a delight.

Dinner- half rib-eye, half baked potato, salad.

Chandler Regional to see another pneumonia sufferer.

Thankful for the chance to be alive and be used to bring comfort.