bierkergaard

Last night, I was at a performance of a buddy and his band in Lancaster city. Matt Wheeler and Vintage Heart.  It was a lovely evening. The concert was outside in the back open space behind a shop that sells glasswork. Art and Glassworks. The back space is an enchanting spot, what I call "Urban Zen." Plants, fountains, trees, and of course, glasswork. Including two cool looking wine bottle trees where the leaves were bottles. Thought that it could be fun with a BB gun to have target practice. Great art reduced to destructive amusement. Callous boy that I am.   Since the band was playing from 6:30-9:30, I needed to take off during the last hour to get some dinner. I headed to Molly's Pub to get a burger and a couple of beers. I sat at the bar and had a brief conversation with the bartender about his prefacing as to whether my starting salad was "OK?" He joked that he was manipulating my response by suggesting "OK." I replied that I was a psychol

Matthew 5:11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Today, no picture. Image free. Use your imagination. Intriguing how pictures might actually diminish our ability to perceive. Our minds can generate pictures internally, and often more creatively than a provided picture if we give it the opportunity. You have my permission to visionate. Images may not be royalty free, words still are. With both my readings of Calvin and St. Francis on the Sermon on the Mount, not foreseeing the parallelism ahead of time between the books, I have been pondering the Beatitudes. All of it runs counter to human nature and I suppose that is Jesus's point. His listeners must have been like "Whaaaa....?" Whereas the miracle bread and fishes were easy to eat, these teachings are a hard dish. What we see in His teachings are a radically new way to view human relationships. Far from being platit

It is tricky to crop a picture with Photoshop on YouTube...action photo of Mr. Rogers tapping his head while rapping "You can grow ideas in the garden of your mind." The power of wonder, a quality that the young have and the old discard as worn shoes. Not in Kansas anymore Cynicism, that is what it means to be an adult. Walk in it. This video went viral about 10:30 on Friday night. A buddy posted in on Facebook, and then temporary OCD took over for me and a bunch of others. Watch it here . I must have played it ten times on a continuous loop. What I was doing on Facebook at 10:30 on a Friday night is a sure indicator of my less than awesome life right now. This video was some serious encouragement. Why don't things go bacterial? At least some bacteria, like in your gut, is good. As far as I know, viruses are always bad.  Or maybe one virus is not as bad as another...kind of like bullies in the playground. There is the kid who steal lunches, and then there is the k

There has been some spiritual tag-teaming going on with my soul. I have been reading one of the books I received gratis for winning the essay contest Likewise sponsored (an imprint of IVP) The Cost of Community: Jesus, St. Francis and Life in the Kingdom by Jamie Arpin-Ricci. Winning free books? Words begetting more words, like Old Testament genealogy. It will never end. In the book, Ricci explores the life of St. Francis. I read through the chapter on "Blessed Are The Poor In Spirit." St. Francis and his fellows renounced worldly wealth and were mendicants (learned a new word in reading the book). That is, they were beggars.This morning, in my Calvin devotional, I read his thoughts on being Poor In Spirit. I assume when God pairs St. Francis out of the Catholic tradition with a leading Protestant Reformer, that the ecclesiastical spectrum is covered and He is getting my attention. Both St. Francis and John Calvin would concur that we are beggars before God for grace.