Never offend a person with style when you can offend them with substance

How cool is this?! Eye sticker for your eyelids that make it look like you're awake while you take a nap. OK, they look a little freaky, but if it works....
However, if I see these in church next Sunday somebody's gonna be in big trouble!
(Back in Michigan Jason is getting out his VISA card.)

Read the info at the top of this web page and then scroll down through the pics:
Towboat
I'm guessing there's a cap'n who went shopping for new shorts!

This Sunday we'll be working through the middle section of Genesis 17. The sermon will make use of the word "metonymy." Remember that from H.S. English? It applies to the use of the word circumcision in the Bible. And that usage has lots to say about key dynamics present in the church, both in NT times and now.

Do you ever flash back to an incident from your childhood or youth and relive it like it was yesterday? I sometimes do and can never figure out what brought it to mind. They're almost always traumatic experiences, probably because those are the ones that stick in our memory. Hey, who has vivid memories of eating a baloney sandwich in the cafeteria?
When I have one of those flashbacks I try to figure out what the event and/or the memory of it has to teach me now that I'm older.
It happened today.
(remember, nobody makes you read this stuff!)
I went to school before buses, sneakers and backpacks. They may have had buses out in the country but not in the middle of Seattle, so we all walked to school until we were old enough to drive. (that's a whole other topic!)
I walked first to Daniel Webster Elementary (K-6), then James Monroe Jr. High (7-9) and finally Ballard High School.
One day on my way to Jr. High I stepped in some dog poo. Unfortunately I didn't realize it until I got to home room. I sat in my desk and wondered why the place smelled like - well, you know - and then it dawned on me. Yep, there on the bottom of my right shoe, filling that area just in front of the heel, was a load of it.
You remember Jr. High well enough to understand that the LAST thing you want a class full of 8th graders to discover first thing in the morning is that you've stepped in it and brought it into school. The torment will last at least until your junior year in H.S. This is especially true if you're the class runt and play the cello.
There was only one solution; at least only one that I could think of.
These were the old desks with the flip-up top and the grid rack underneath for setting books on. So I proceeded to use the back rung of the rack of the desk in front of me to clean off my shoe. Home room lasted just long enough to get the job done. I went on to first period with a clean shoe and the smug knowledge that it was now someone else's problem! And with any luck, Paul Kenner would sit in my seat, put his feet up on that rack and get it all over his shoes. Yes!!
Again, I have no idea why I flashed back to that experience today. But it made me think about what it all had to teach me as an adult all these years later.
This is what I came up with:

1. We still do dumb and/or embarrassing things and do our best to cover them up so people don't know. Like the last time you couldn't remember where you parked your car and walked through the parking lot like you knew where you were going. Or, have you ever walked into the wrong restroom? The worst part is getting out.
2. So let's cut each other some slack. I'm going to try harder to remember that the person who just did that dumb thing isn't really a dumb person. They just got caught with some dog poo on their shoe.
   
3. It's tough being a Jr. Higher! Yes, they can be obnoxious, self-absorbed and shallow. But it's a wonder they aren't all hiding under the bed given the peer pressure they live with. Teenagers are cannibalistic and feed most often on their own kind. No way in the WORLD I'd go back to that stage of my life, even if I wasn't going to play the cello.
   

Any experience you want to share?

New Mexico: Lizards make great pets.