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Jeff Berryman's Blog
Updated: 4/5/05; 10:31:14 AM.

  Leaving Ruin

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Tuesday, March 15, 2005


    Speaking of Weather...

    My daughter and I were sitting on the couch looking out the window this morning, her with her tea, me with my hang-dog look on my face (sounds idyllic--it wasn't), and she looked out at the gray and said, "Now this is what it's supposed to look like."

    The weather in Seattle, if you haven't heard, has been nothing short of spectacular. The snows skipped the mountains around here this year, playing havoc with ski seasons. (I've heard lots of stories about unhappy folks buying all-winter passes, condo's and the like.) A drought condition has been declared (I think) to get us to all start conserving water, and the tulips in the Skagit Valley are way ahead of schedule. (Will there be any for the April-May festival?)

    I was hoping to get a spiritual application out of this, but the best I can do is to say that in life's cycles, all too predictable, there are deeper unpredictabilities built in. "Perturbations" is what my good friend Jeffrey would call them. He spends his time trying to figure out how to predict changes in what he calls "laminar flow" (read "smooth"). How do we predict the odd, even when its expected?

    The laminar flow of the seasons has been perturbed.

    8:00:39 AM    comment []  


    Allergies and Spirit

    In the ongoing war of things unseen, allergens are particular demons, preferring nasal passages and tear ducts to more subtle temptations of mind. There is something about the constant tickle, the swollen eyes, the gargantuan sneezes, and the sniffing (that drives my wife crazy) that has the capability of driving me right to the edges of sanity. If I were towering over the Evil One in victory having just completed a 400 day fast during which I had shared the gospel with 100 people a day, he would no doubt hammer me with the simplicity of a week's worth of allergies at which point I would keel over in shame, cursing all the pollen that ever was, and worse.

    To be fair, I've had several good seasons in recent years, bringing an irrational hope that I'd outgrown it all. Nasonex plus air filters plus decent weather seemed to add up to hope, but it was not to be.

    All of which is to say that no matter how you batten down your spiritual hatches, there will be leaks coming from unknown sources. Temptation is, I suppose, like the weather (though I'm comparing lots of things to the weather these days) in that it's always there, pervasive, changing its temperature and its particular gnarliness, but beat one bit of evil and here comes another.

    Paul says pray constantly. Probably a good idea...

    ...depending on what you think prayer is.

    7:44:51 AM    comment []  


© Copyright 2005 Jeff Berryman .



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