Three Beautiful Things 08/04/13: Pam's Sermon, Transplants Done, Sandwich and Beer

1.  In some ways our minds are on different things, but it's the same principle:  Pam Birrell preached this morning about how we are conditioned to live as if the material reality around us is the primary reality and how we are conditioned to hold certain values about that reality.  I've been on board with rejecting this conditioning for many many years, all the way back to the Holy Spirit/human/creative spirit study group we tried to get going at Whitworth back in 1977 and all the way back to Prof. Dale Bruner's lectures/sermons around the same time about living kingdomly (although I can't seem to shake my anxiety about money).  The conditioning I am currently trying to shed (and this relates to Pam's comments about the Enlightenment) involves academic training and the primacy of critical thinking.  Questioning and shedding this conditioning and these ways of thinking is one of the primary goals of my retirement.  I see the value of critical thinking (I won't ever totally reject it), but I also think critical thinking and the reliance on reason, not only narrows my spiritual experience, but has, at times, limited my response to beauty, especially in my experience with photography, Shakespeare, movies, in other art forms, and in my response to writing, both student writing and published writing.  Back in graduate school, some of my fellow graduate students referred to this immediate response as a pre-critical response.  No thanks.  It's an instant response, often a personal response, connected with my experience and memories and what I hold dear inside, and it gives me more pleasure than the "critical response" which I've been trained to see as superior.  I don't see the critical response as superior these days.  Important?  Sure.  Superior?  No.

2.  Before church, I wrapped up my fertilizing and transplating project and I think now I'm content to leave the yard and garden as it is (no new plants) and continue to fertilize when needed, and, as always, weed, water, and mow.

3.  Three new and delicious experiences at the Falling Sky Pour House and Delicatessen:  corned beef rubin (their spelling), New York potato salad, and Ember Lager beer.  A nice dinner out.