bierkergaard

For those who read this blog more than just mere snacking, you know that I work in a high school as a guidance counselor. My profession is typically viewed as a hero or goat. 4 out of 5 people say little good about their high school guidance counselor. About 1 in 5 do. My colleagues and I are working to change the odds in our little corner of the world. I think we are making a difference in the positive direction. It is a game of inches and not miles. Everyone wants to be freaking great...to be known on the TV, social media, or movies. Maybe the radio if you are a retro right-winger. EGO. No one wants to be great with the people they interact daily with, to have a high degree of respect accorded to oneself by others's based on one's attitude and behavior. Day in and day out, not just giving it up for a check but because it is just the right thing to do. Leave it on the field, bleed, sweat, and suffer. Don't dodge the pain but embrace it and ...

Isaiah 44:3 Sing, O ye heavens, for Jehovah hath done it; shout, ye lower parts of the earth; break forth into singing, ye mountains, O forest, and every tree therein: for Jehovah hath redeemed Jacob, and will glorify himself in Israel. Saturday night I had the joy of being brought into a musical experience that was transcendent. Transcendent in a couple of ways. There was a distinctive presence of the holy (vertical) as well cross-cultural (horizontal). The band Aradhna was in Lancaster. Their music is a fusion of Eastern and Western. Most of us in the West, if we have an awareness of South Asian music (India, Nepal), it is typically through George Harrison and the Beatles, but it is only a smattering. We might overhear sitar songs while at the nearby Indian restaurant. To get myself in the mood, I dined at Tulsi, and Indian food establishment, up the road from the venue and got stoked on some Chicken Marsala. The place seems to be getting better, which is great. ...

I had a very fascinating dream last Friday. There was a Lion in a room trying to escape. The Lion was more dangerous if he got out rather than staying in the room with me and others. I spent most of the dream trying to close off places where he could get out. We were in a tent of sorts but in the shape of a room. The imagination is much like a lion. It needs to roam at night in our dreams. A caged lion is a broken lion.  I drank a cup of coffee earlier that evening and I think this created the control vibe rather than letting the Lion go free. You'd think that I would be more scared of a Lion in a room with me rather than one escaped. I have not quite figured out what was going on.  Like Aslan the Lion, our dreams may not be safe but in God they are good. God does nothing and creates nothing without a purpose. Our dreams serve some greater goal. C.S. Lewis writes in the Chronicles of Narnia about Aslan: He'll be coming and going" he had said. "O...

"The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it. What is more harmful than any vice?—Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak—Christianity... A man loses power when he pities. Through pity that drain upon strength which suffering works is multiplied a thousandfold. Suffering is made contagious by pity; under certain circumstances it may lead to a total sacrifice of life and living energy—a loss out of all proportion to the magnitude of the cause (—the case of the death of the Nazarene)." Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ Who surmised that this day would come...the 666th blog posting of bierkergaard. 6 is the number for man in the Bible...a created being, sinful too, never a whole 7 on his own. Perpetually incomplete. Working, working...trying to add that 1 for Deity which can only come from the Lord Himself. Our adding is subtracting, if one thinks about it sum/some. Works righteousness is so soul subtr...

   James 4:14   Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.    My brother and I went to see Bob Dylan last night in Hershey. It was a lovely evening. Fall was in the air...it was cool and refreshing. Also in the air was reefer smoke. A guy who I initially thought was a girl because of long hair, until I saw his beard, offered me the remains of his joint. He saddled up to me sideways and it was loud. And, it was dark. He soons found someone else for his pot philanthropy. I passed.   No desire to puff. None, nada, and it has nothing to do with legal or not, really. I just don't want to be a dopey pothead, even for a couple of hours. I wouldn't even smoke pot even if was legal like some strange land (i.e. California). Boy, that is something California needs. More unproductive people high on Dope. The CaliChronic. ...

Genesis 8:22 "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease." Each late summer, I get a horrible itch, literally. When getting out of the shower or even after just working out and sweating, my upper body goes into an itching spasm. It is quite painful and frustrating. As much as I have been able to deduce, the cumulative summer heat and humidity, the combination of water/sweat, maybe the scouring chlorine from the shower, and perhaps my skin not getting enough hydration and/or body oil, makes me dread August and early September. The past couple of years, I have been much more mindful about drinking copious amounts of water, taking shorter and colder showers, and this year, even ingesting a couple of tablespoons of olive oil daily. It has made the itching less worse than in years past. I used to suffer each day for at least thirty minutes, feeling as if insects were te...

Luke 17:21 "Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." I watched a good deal of both the Republican and Democratic Conventions. Citizenship requires an informed and educated populace and I feel as if I should do my part to hear out the respective platforms and speakers. I sense Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are both men who care about their country and are serving for the right reasons, whether I agree with their positions or not. Yet, I do think we are breaking the political system by putting far too much hope in it. We expend a great deal of resources pulling causes one way or another and I have to wonder if all of this political rope pulling, like a Tug-Of-War, leads to exhaustion and stalemates. Or worse yet, a frayed society and even the snapped rope of cynicism. The genius of America was voluntary civic associations and charities, not government as god. Government has a char...