Maturity is the balance between courage and consideration…..defined as “the ability to express ones own feelings and convictions balanced with consideration for the thoughts an feelings of others.
Professor Hrand Saxenian, Harvard Business School

This is one of my favorite hymns. I think of it as a prayer for marriage.

A holy air is breathing round,
A fragrance from above:
Be every thought from sense unbound,
Be every action love.

O God, unite us heart to heart,
In sympathy divine,
That we be never drawn apart,
To love not Thee nor Thine;

But by the life of Jesus taught,
And all his gracious word,
Be nearer to each other brought,
And nearer Thee, O Lord.¹

Bad news! EJS has been found by the search engines!

Yes, this is both good and bad news. The spambots have located us! How do we hide? By activating Alexander Grau’s Block-Spam-By-Math plugin.

Until spambots can calculate, we’re safe once again.

As Alexander’s software says, “Bye Bye, SPAMBOT!”

With the generous help of Strat Parrott of Juncture, I may just be back in the social media swing of things! Thanks go to The Concierge Level and the jelly! event for bringing us all together.

What a morning! I decided to investigate all the various methods to post my website blog to social media…or to post social media to my website blog. What’s pushing where? Do I want to post to Facebook (or Twitter, etc.) and populate my website? Or do I want to originate from my website and push out to all my social media connections? Yes, the latter…definitely.

So many options! So little time! Then I completely broke my website in the process. Ah, the learning curve. I retraced my steps and the website is back up. Not without a little panic, I admit. And the break did not occur where I’d originally suspected. It was completely internal to my website and not related to any plugins or social media! Turns out I’d tried to create an unacceptable permalink.

I will conquer permalinks! I will successfully post my website to social media… a step far beyond having links to social media.

The learning curve is frustrating at times, but so exhilarating. I’m off to find that CSS book. I thought I was learning Spanish this year, and I yet may, but first I need to bone up on HTML and get my head around CSS. I’m far too much of a perfectionist/control freak to settle for templates that lock me out of decisions. That, however, is another subject altogether.

Randomly searching the internet as a useful brainstorming activity? It worked for me!

I recently used a brainstorming technique called googlestorming. Here’s how it works:

1. State your problem.

2. Choose a random physical item. (I grabbed my Nalgene water bottle.)
3. Google the item name. (“nalgene water bottle”)
4. Read some of the first four (unique) sites in the list.
5. Write down your insights.

I did not expect this technique to yield results. I was wrong.

The next time you have a problem to solve, I hope you’ll consider googlestorming to find solutions!

You’re probably familiar with the “Serenity Prayer” by Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. It reads in part:

God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.

Last night when I was getting ready for bed I heard the air conditioner unit humming along outside the bedroom window. I was disturbed by this because the window was open – almost all the windows in the house were open. I complained to my husband about it, as I was certain it was he who left the A/C running all day. His response?

“That’s why it’s so comfortable in here!”

“But it ran all day!” (I just couldn’t let it go.)

“Most people’s do.”

“Yeah, but not with all the windows open!” (Usually it’s he who points out the obvious.)

“So it ran all day.”

He wasn’t being cavalier about the waste; he was accepting what he could not change. Yes, the A/C ran all day. Yes, the windows were open. Can we go back in time?

I moved on to silently (there is a God) contemplating processes that might prevent this error from occurring again. We have an easy-to-program heat and air system. This was simply a case of user error. The system was by-passed and the user forgot.

We can all learn from my husband and the serenity prayer. Just let go of what you can’t change. Accept. Move on.

“Think before you speak” is a tough maxim for me to follow. Or as my dad says, “engage your brain before your mouth.” That’s not the natural order for me. I’ve been working at improving my lack of verbal filter.

I’m trying to ask myself “is this going to be helpful?” before I open my mouth. Another helpful idea was shared with me last week. It’s the acronym “THINK.” Ask your self if your words are:

• Truthful
• Helpful
• Inspired
• Needful
• Kind

I spotted the following on a t-shirt:

God bless the whole world.
No exceptions.

I love it. It’s inclusionary. It reminds me of Tiny Tim’s “God bless us, every one!”

I’m okay with asking God to bless America. But what about all the other countries? Try it out:

God bless Iran.
God bless Pakistan.
God bless British Petroleum.

I threw that last one in there to see if you were paying attention. It also makes a point. If we’re going to be inclusionary, it stays.

What? Not every country (or business) is deserving of God’s blessing? I think otherwise. I think BP, in particular, needs our prayers now more than ever. And not in a cynical manner. Heartfelt, we-wish-you-God-speed prayers. We pray you are receptive to God’s wisdom. Same for each and every country and their leaders, America included.

None excluded.

Inclusionary prayer is not watered down prayer. Prayer that includes all of God’s creation is the most powerful prayer of all. Because we really are all one.

This embroidered piece hangs above my vanity. It was started – and almost completed – by one of my grandmothers or great-grandmothers. I finished it and Robbie framed it.