Saturday, July 29, 2006

Effective Advertising

An old post from Chris Busch but you gotta love the honesty.

Sort of...

Friday, July 28, 2006

True success

Just heard this in listening to Jim Collin's audio version of Good to Great in a section thanking his wife:
"The ultimate definition of success in life is that your spouse likes and respects you ever more as the years go by. By that measure, more than any other, I hope to be as successful as she is."
And I hope to be as successful as Emily is.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Curry oatmeal anyone?

Yesterday, Caleb was so good at doctoring his oatmeal all by himself. He found the ground cinammon and the sugar in separate cupboards and stirred them into his bowl.

As he ate, he said, "Wow, this is 'spicey'."

So, as a good father, I went into an explanation of how valuable spices were, the spice trade, Christopher Columbus and discovering the Americas, etc. I used the world map in our kitchen and everything.

This morning, Caleb pulled out the spices to have the same breakfast. He'd used "Ground Cummin"! No wonder it tasted "spicey"! I pulled out the ground cinammon and showed him the difference and used that instead.

He just couldn't get over how much better his oatmeal tasted this morning. *grin*

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Four Stages of Development

David Schmelzer, of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship of Cambridge gave an terrific session last week at the Vineyard Eastern Regional Conference. One of the things that struck me, and continues to resonate, was about M. Scott Peck's 4 stages of development.

Here is the description found on Wikipedia.
The four stages Scott Peck postulates that there are four stages of human spiritual development:

Stage I is chaotic, disordered, and reckless. Very young children are in Stage I. They tend to defy and disobey, and are unwilling to accept a will greater than their own. Many criminals are people who have never grown out of Stage I.

Stage II is the stage at which a person has blind faith. Once children learn to obey their parents, they reach Stage II. Many so called religious people are essentially Stage II people, in the sense that they have blind faith in God, and do not question His existence. With blind faith comes humility and a willingness to obey and serve. The majority of good law abiding citizens never move out of Stage II.

Stage III is the stage of scientific skepticism and inquisitivity. A Stage III person does not accept things on faith but only accepts them if convinced logically. Many people working in scientific and technological research are in Stage III.

Stage IV is the stage where an individual starts enjoying the mystery and beauty of nature. While retaining skepticism, he starts perceiving grand patterns in nature. His religiousness and spirituality differ significantly from that of a Stage II person, in the sense that he does not accept things through blind faith but does so because of genuine belief. Stage IV people are labelled as mystics.

Scott Peck argues that while transitions from Stage I to Stage II are sharp, transitions from Stage III to Stage IV are gradual. Nonetheless, these changes are very noticeable and mark a significant difference in the personality of the individual.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Are you living an adventure?

This was yesterday's quote of the day on my Google Home page:
"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered."
G. K. Chesterton, English author & mystery novelist (1874 - 1936)
Cool perspective shift, isn't it?