Try Outs (foursquare vs. Gowalla)

The past few days I have begun experimenting with my next avenue of social media. Location based social media. I understand I am way behind the curve here, but gimme a break. I'm a boomer and I am trying. The two I have chosen to play with are foursquare and Gowalla. I have been on foursquare a few days longer so I am more familiar, but after experiencing a bout of overcapacity issues this evening (can you say fail whale?), I decided to test in tandem.

So far, Gowalla seems to have the better graphics; Gowalla artwork on the pins and stamps is much better than the badges of foursquare. But foursquare just has badges (at least I think that is all); Gowalla has pins and stamps and items (which can be swapped some how). Gowalla seems a bit more confusing, but that could be my basic unfamiliarity with Gowalla as of yet.

Time will tell. I cannot see myself staying on both for very long, one has to win out over the other. I do not know which way it will go, but I will try to make it a long enough tryout to make a reasoned determination.

Any thoughts? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Technorati Tags: foursquare, Gowalla, social media

Settle for Less

It occurred to me recently that we are quick to accept society's standards for what is acceptable to watch, listen to or read. Well, maybe not quick, but we are easily influenced and often do not even realize it. The message of our culture is so pervasive, so invasive, bombarding us during almost all of our waking hours, we become unaware that it is happening. Never immune to it, but clearly unaware.

I think that is why quite time before the Lord is so crucial, why daily reading of the Word is so necessary. Because without it, we show we are so ready to settle for less. Ready to settle for man-made values and not God-ordained ones. To settle for the less challenging (and following Jesus is a challenge to a sinner) for the more comfortable (living as a sinful being in a fallen world is clearly a situation that would put us in a false, and temporary, peace of mind).

Settle for less. The fleeting, the temporary, the here and now. Ignoring the better part, the eternal, the lasting, the forever. It is offered freely, it is offered as a gift. It is offered to you and I. Have you accepted it? Do you grasp it in your hand? If so, are you trying to make sure you do not settle for less while you are waiting for more than you can ever imagine?

I think I need to try harder not to settle for less in my life. I think I have been listening more closely to the world lately, and as a result have deafened myself to the soft sure voice that will point me to the everlasting joy that awaits me.

I need to look more closely at my path down The Narrow Road.

Soothing Sound

I sit in my backyard listening to the sound of the spa in the pool, a little waterfall sending off it's water-music.

What is it about the sound of gently moving water that we find so soothing? True, the sound I listen to now is artificially made, not the natural course of water flow. But it soothes nonetheless.

There must be something of the voice of the divine Creator in a gentle moving body of water, something that calls us to listen. Something that quiets us, calms our heart, rests our soul.

Or at least it does mine.

Do yourself a big favor today before the Sun goes down.

Listen intently to some gently moving water.

Life Marches On

After a most welcome period of several days of rain, after weeks of 100+ weather, it has been sunny again for a couple of days and is in the 60's this morning. I am out back enjoying our new patio, looking at what all has been going on in the backyard. (And mobile blogging, all this over my cellphone). This is what I saw, which was not there a few days ago. Mushrooms, or toadstools, whatever (not really sure what is the difference, if you know, please let me know), growing up in a few days of sunshine. Not sure if they are magic mushrooms, I'll have to watch and see if our 14 year old dog starts chasing squirrels again.

Amazing growth, life marches on. It will not be stopped by the likes of man, because it is at the behest of our Creator.

The Rut

Have you ever felt like you were in a rut? You probably have. I feel that way from time to time, stuck in a mental rut, cycling through the same thoughts, feelings and emotions. Running them in my mind, picturing them, chewing on them. I think about the poem in my head that I wrote about yesterday, about it recessing back into my mind. Maybe it was sucked into the vortex of the spin cycle of the mental rut I am describing here. I guess that is possible.

And the frustrating thing is that while my mind is in this seemingly endless spin cycle; it also seems to be trying to figure out how to break free. I know there are new ideas that need to come out; breakthroughs in thought. (At least they are breakthroughs for me. You may hear them and say, that's it?)

I guess that is what keeps my mind from giving in to the vortex and giving up. New thoughts, new directions, progress. I want to believe, I have to believe that the greatest progress comes out of the spinning churn of recycled thoughts, because it takes that little extra mental push to hatch the new ideas and have them establish their own path of flight.

So I can be encouraged. I can treat the spin cycle as a rut, or choose to think of it as the crucible in which new ideas will be born and set free. I can think of the spin cycle as a trap, a mental gravity trap of some sort; or I can treat it as the launching point of the next series of steps I take in a new direction of progress.

I think this is where my faith comes in. I cannot be stuck in a rut with Christ by my side, for He is moving me ever forward towards Him. The times I feel in a rut is probably due to loss of focus on Him. If I take my eyes off of Him, I lose my balance and enter the spin cycle.

That being said, I need wait for His timing. I can open my eyes to the world and see it spinning around and around. Or I can close my eyes in prayer and see Him.

There is no rut if I choose correctly. That is my hope each day.

Technorati Tags: Jesus, God, thoughts, ideas

Recession

To put your minds at ease, this is not a post about the economy. I am talking about the recession of thoughts back into the deep recesses of my mind. (Where else would things recess into but recesses?)

I am speaking of a poem that was lingering about in my mind just not ready to come out, no, just not yet. I had mentioned not long ago that I felt it coming on.

And now it is gone. Into hiding. It lays buried deep in my mind if it exists at all anymore. If it ever existed in the first place.

For those of you who would think it strange that I would even write something I would try to pass off as a poem. I have done it before. Here. Here. And here. Not to mention here and here. I think there is one other somewhere else, I just cannot find it right now. Wait a minute, here it is, I found it.

Not very good, but there they are. What troubles me is not the loss of the poem (OK, a little), but the fact that I can lose a grasp on a thought, one I was sure was there but now is lost. (For once I saw, but now I am blind? Does not make a good hymn lyric.)

It is gone for now. So be it. I wonder if it will come back, but if it does, will I even recognize as the thoughts I had from before? Or will it all seem so new to me? I guess I have to be glad my faith is not like the rest of my thought process. It is there and is not going anywhere.

It occurs to me that the reason for that is simple: my thought process is man-made. My faith was wrought by God, and woven into my very fabric. The man-made is fleeting, temporal, passing. The God wrought is eternal, spiritual, lasting. The two are not comparable, because God is incomparable. The reason for it is not understandable because a divine being is incomprehensible to a finite mind. We cannot understand Him fully, maybe we are just better off writing poems about Him instead. In addition to praying to Him and worshiping Him that is.

I may just have to write a poem about all that one day.

Moving Forward Or Falling Back

This past weekend I experimented with mobile blogging, just two quick posts. I must admit, it leaves a lot to be desired, but I guess it may have some applicability to my blog if I am overly mobile and need to blog on the run, in which case it is probably good that the blog posts have to be short. In my condition, I would not be able to run all that far before the process of breathing would take up so much of my attention and strength to make the possibility of continued blogging a far fetched concept.

But I thought I would try it (jury is out, but the early reviews are not enthusiastic. Which is ironic since I like short blog posts. But I guess maybe not that short). At least the capability is enabled and available to me. And isn't that important today, to have things available to us, whether we want them or not; whether we use them or not. It seems that's when we get most agitated, when we lose access to something available, whether we really need it or not. We are beyond wanting things we need, beyond wanting things we want; we are at the point of wanting things we want to want.

As I reflect on this, it seems like I have to move forward or I begin to lose precious ground, at least as far as the world is concerned (at least as far as the world is concerned when it isn't concerned about wanting the things it wants to want).

Progress, per se, is not bad. Progress for the wrong reason is. If I can use this to communicate better on this blog, so much the better. If it is just another bell and whistle available to my whim and fancy, it is not all that good. Not at all. I do not like change for change's sake (no more than I like want for the sake of wanting to want).

So where do I look for progress first and foremost? In my faith:

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 1:6 (New American Standard Bible)

If He stops my forward progress, I have big problems. Because His is progress for the good, not change for change's sake. So it is change that I want, and more importantly, change that I need.

Technorati Tags: God, Jesus, progress, change, blogging