bierkergaard

At 5:55 am each weekday morning, I pause for five minutes to reflect on God and be still. I wake up at 5:20, eat from 5:20 to 5:40, and from 5:40 to 5:55 read a devotional and pray. Then, I stop and sit on the couch in the Great Room for all of five minutes...300 precious seconds. That five minutes is divine space for God to speak to me. The verse where Jesus warns that His Word gets choked out by the cares of this world, not wicked and heinous sin, is a slow dying to life of the soul, where all of our doings undo us. Like a tractor trailer going down a steep mountain that can lose its brakes and needs to drive up one of those inclined side roads with a pile of sand at the end to stop the rig, I need that five minutes a day to be still, come to a stop, and do nothing. Because even nothing, in God's hands, is something.

I was just outside a moment ago after doing my run down to Grubb Lake and back. It is always nice to rest on the front porch after the jog to catch my breath and cool down. Since I tend to sweat quite a bit, sitting outside for a spell allows me dry like that cycle in the dishwasher. I was peering up into the beautiful blue sky and a saw a hawk in flight high above. While all of the smaller birds were furiously beating their wings to stay afloat below, the hawk had the wing span to soar and catch the draft and hardly had to flap its wings at all. And, in less than 15 seconds, it crossed the sky. Grace in flight... Like this verse in Job 29:36 By thine understanding flieth a hawk Shoot, if God helps a bird understand, surely He will help me...

On Saturday, during my Suzie Homemaker stint of laundry and cooking, I counterbalanced that effeminate-like behavior with homebrewing a Belgian-style Ale. So far, fermentation seems to proceeding well. Yet, only the taste will tell. With both the laundry and the homebrewing I had to use a measure of bleach to clean and sanitize. Chlorine bleach is harsh and caustic stuff. Get it on the wrong material and/or not rinse materials off with hot water, and the damage can be permanent. Not sure if non-chlorine bleach should be called bleach at all...the point is that chlorine will clean and whiten when nothing else works. Kind of like low fat cream cheese. There is a contradiction there in both products. I had a pair of white pants that had two stains that would not come off in previous washings...I did not resort to bleach to start with, it was a tool of last resort. So the pants and all-other clothes white, were washed. Now I feel like Mary's little lamb with my fleece as white as sn...

I like my coffee strong...that beverage equivalent of Pat Toomey's Republicanism. Lina automatically puts in about 20% milk to decrease the jitters and the gag reflex. My recipe is 6 or 7 teaspoons for 12 ounces. High-test, for certain. One time when we were driving to BWI, she had a bad trip on my coffee concoction. That happens to one degree or another if she does not lactify. For awhile, I have been caught in a trilemma of sorts. Can't drink too much caffeinated coffee in the morning before work. My job is stressful and already provides substantial natural adrenaline response. Can't drink coffee in the afternoon without staring at the ceiling at 1:00 a.m. I have done that too many times to plead innocence and ignorance. If I only drink caffeinated coffee on the weekends and then go decaf during the weekend I spend Monday and Tuesday going through a weekly withdrawal, headaches and all. Yippee! A weekly detox whupping. But drinking decaf all of the time seems sissified......

Well, today I did my laundry, made bread, cooked gumbo with the okra from our CSA (what else the heck is one supposed to do with okra?), baked oatmeal cookies, and brewed some beer. All but the last are decidedly of the fairer gender, guess I am just a girly man . I like cooking because it is tangible. I cook, we eat. Simple. My occupation by day is decidedly more open-ended. I'm a little worried about the beer...the first time out into the land of Homebrewing. If nothing else, brewing beer today keeps me from being called a total fairy. No, I did not sew curtains, though. God makes even the pragmatic (we have to cook, we have to eat) beautiful in that the aesthetics of creation such as color, taste and aroma are so much more than necessity.

A little while back my old computer, that I did most of my doctoral degree on, went from life support to brain dead. More recently, Matrix-like, it had been operating as the host for my printer...its sole job, connected to my laptop via Windows XP networking. I knew it was time. Time to put it down. I took it out back and smashed the hard drive to fragments. People talk of bittersweet. This was not that. It was pure joy. Soon followed by a trip to the city dump. The reality was that I should have destroyed and thrown out the old ragged computer years ago. Instead, I made do. When Jesus came, he spoke of putting new wine in new wineskins. He offered life but many preferred the old dying ways. Like me...with my computer.

Well, I was meeting my buddy for coffee at Higher Grounds coffee shop in Mt. Joy on Saturday. I was in one of those scenarios where I was coming back from another place further along the same route and to go home and back to Mt. Joy would have just burned gas and an additional 40 minutes spent driving when I instead could of been walking around on a beautiful Saturday. Mt. Joy is not exactly NYC, so I decided to walk up and down the main drag. On the walk, I encountered about the lamest two table Farmer's Market ever, and one of the dudes was selling candy. It is so easy when we drive to miss things because all is a blur. Walking is so much more informative and interesting. Further down, I came across this used book store which carries books about art, architecture, food, and wine. I bought Lina, the Foodie, a History of Food book by some French lady (translated into our base English). I bargained with the proprietor from $ 25 down to $ 20. Although I knew Lina would like the gif...