8/27/2016
#199 SWEERS' LAW
GOAFS II: #199
SWEERS’ LAW
AUGUST 28, 2016
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e were
married sixty two years ago last month. Joan had finished two years at Wheaton
with very good grades and I was starting my Junior year as class president.
Joan was at Wheaton for two main reasons—love and money.
Both Joan and
her parents knew she wanted to become a wife and mother and her parents had not
only thoroughly prepared her for this career, they had convinced her that
Wheaton College was the very best place to find a man as wonderful as me. I was
far from perfect but I did manage somehow to fill the bill.
The second
reason was that she, being a faculty child, could get an outstanding free Christian
education while living at home only 6 blocks from the college. Dr. Mixter was
one of the pillars of the science department but the family lived on a tight
budget—they did not even have a car until after we were married.
That summer, my
Childbride put away her books and assignments and went to work for Chicago
Title and Trust Company in Wheaton, where we could share one car and I could do
a lot of walking. We rented a third floor apartment in the home of a man I had
been working for and earning about 10 times the wages of any job the college
had to offer. Together we made enough to enjoy our first two years of marriage
and graduate from Wheaton totally debt free.
One of the
first things we did was a budget. It probably sounds old-fashioned today, but
we actually sat down and figured out how to live within our income.
The food
budget, from the beginning, was called “Grocery Store” because, even then, the
grocery store was carrying a lot more things than food. We had one credit card—we
paid it off every month. Until we left the navy in 1961, we never bought
anything on time. Buying a house then was a good investment so we assumed a
mortgage—but “cash as you go” continued to be the rule. As time went on we
found that buying a car on time was workable but we held the line on anything
else.
This is a
very long introduction to my point this week. I would like to talk a little
about this:
The summer we
got married was a very busy one and this never really let up until we reached
“threescore and ten,” and then only because we were physically slowing down. Up
until then I was a diligent student of “how to pick the fastest line or lane in
any waiting situation where there was more than one option. We didn’t have time
to waste, and it took me many years to come to the conclusion that the odds on beating
the system with reason were astronomical.
In spite of
what you might think looking at the irrational chaos of emotional confusion in
political polls, self-selected gender identity, college “safe-places” for
hyper-sensitive students, etc., etc., the human being is not just one big wad
of existential emotions, he is a rational creature. As a rational being I
stubbornly believed that approaching a line of checkout stations, or toll
booths, or frustrated D.M.V. supplicants, that offered more than one choice, it
might be possible to figure out the one that would move the fastest.
What I
learned in all those years is that there are certain laws or rules that you do
not invent, you just discover them by observing them in operation, there are
patterns that can be seen that eventually prove the law. And these laws seldom
can be successfully violated. I was wrong about figuring it out.
I have done
some research from time to time and believe I was the first person to formalize
a statement about this particular thing. It is something that is immediately
apparent when you see it written, something you have lived with in some sense
all your life, but once you see it, you know it.
When I first
saw it clearly, I fought it. The only thing this struggle produced, for me, was
some corollaries that are only helpful in emphasizing the reality that fighting
the law is fruitless and frustrating.
1.
Once you have committed to one line or lane,
any effort to improve your choice by changing lines or lanes, only makes things
worse. Your old spot always gets thru sooner than you do.
2.
If you try to improve your second choice, your
time in line extends exponentially. I have moved to a line with one little old
lady and a small batch of groceries whose bill was 20 dollars and change but
she only had two ones and dug around in her purse and came up with most of the
balance in pennies, nickels and a few dimes—still short she dived back into the
very large purse and found some coupons, mostly out of date, all requiring
lengthy negotiation and much repetition due to her dead hearing aid batteries.
Finally, down to 76 cents, I paid the balance. By then everyone in every other
line had gone through and was on their way.
3.
Theoretically, if you keep trying, you might
spend the rest of your life waiting in the line or lane.
So what to
do? What I do is what the undecided voters who tip the balance in every
election do—approaching the multiple choice option, I just take the first one I
come to with absolutely no thought or calculation. I believe this is a sorry
way to pick a man for high political office but I have found, in the long run,
it is the best way for me to go—the “point of purchase impulse option,” in the
end is the fastest way.
Jerry Sweers
GROWING OLD
AIN’T FOR SISSIES
Sailing directions for Pilgrims of the Heart.
Remembrances, reflections and rants
of an endangered species;
Curmudgensis Americanus
Bibliophilius
site: crmudgeon.blogspot.com
8/21/2016
# 198 CYBERGARDEN--LOVE IN THE MIST
GOAFS II: #198
CYBERGARDEN--LOVE IN THE MIST
AUGUST 21, 2016
LOVE IN THE MIST
When you have
loved someone for a very long time there are things that bring memories both
diffuse and powerful. This flower, and its name, is one of those things. We had
several of these plants for many years in our garden. There was something both
subtle and striking about them. For some reason they resonate, for me, with a phrase
from Solomon’s Song, “love is
stronger than death.” There is also a white variety even more soft-spoken but
equally powerful.
It has been
eleven months since my Childbride went to be with her Saviour. I thank God
every day for the “adoption of sons,” the gift of sonship that includes a
warranty without any expiration date--everlasting membership in the family of
the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
For some
almost unexplainable reason, just seeing these flowers and speaking their name brings
up a flood of memories of the gardener who tended them in our back yard and the
Creator who made them. These memories flicker and shimmer along the border
between this world and the next. They are like the Aurora Borealis, the product of electrons colliding with the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere
causing faint and diffuse colors,
usually not easily visible to the human eye. These auroras have a kind of
unearthly beauty that has touched the hearts and souls of watchers as long as
there have been people to watch. They seem like earth reaching up to heaven and heaven
reaching down to earth. From the day of our new birth, we have one foot in time
and one foot in eternity but we do not often think of life in those terms—until
we draw close to that point where we pick the “time foot” up and step into “Everlasting
Life.”
I haven’t
done a very good job of explaining myself. If you have had this kind of
experience, you will recognize it—the footprints of the Source and Creator of
all beauty shimmering in the night sky, or in the backyard garden—and sometimes
in both places at once.
Fragments of truth and beauty lie in every path;
they need only the seeing eye and the receptive spirit
to become the stuff of minor ecstasies. E.G. Vining
Jerry Sweers
GROWING OLD
AIN’T FOR SISSIES
Sailing directions for Pilgrims of the Heart.
Remembrances, reflections and rants
of an endangered species;
Curmudgensis Americanus
Bibliophilius
site: crmudgeon.blogspot.com
8/13/2016
#197 ETERNITY
#197
ETERNITY
Silence…
No one,
No place,
No thing.
I AM…
God, El, Elohim, El Elyon,
Theos,
One Substance, Power and Eternity,
Speaks;
Let us…
Us?...
Three Persons of
One Substance,
Power and Eternity:
Eternal concrete modes of existence;
The Holy Trinity,
Answer together.
Yes, Let Us…
And They did.
God the Father;
Of none, neither begotten
Nor proceeding,
God the Son;
Eternally begotten
Of the Father,
God the Spirit;
Eternally proceeding from
The Father and the Son,
Began to plan all that would
ever be.
Decided what, how,
Where, who, when…
And agreed together
That it should all
Infallibly come to pass
As it was planned.
With these Decrees,
Came a mystery;
Finite man,
Made in the image
And likeness of God,
Would have a free will,
make choices, decide…
Yet be fully accountable
To his Maker.
Then,
There was deep silence in
The fellowship of the Three-in-One
Until…
I AM spoke again…
He said,
Let there be…
And all we know today,
And all we don’t know,
But that also is,
Exploded into being and form
At the Living Word of The
Triune God.
All things;
The universe,
The creatures to inhabit it,
The laws to govern it,
The Divine Promises
To sustain it,
All that had been decreed,
Was spoken into existence—
By the Word of God.
A clock began ticking—
It continues ticking today.
God rested, though
He was not tired,
From all His work,
And declared it all
Good, Very Good.
AAA
Q. 7 What are the decrees of God?
A. The decrees
of God are, his eternal purpose, according to the counsel of his will, whereby,
for his own glory, he has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass. Westminster Shorter Catechism
The Beginning…
JS
#168
8.7.16
Jerry Sweers
GROWING OLD
AIN’T FOR SISSIES
Sailing directions for Pilgrims of the Heart.
Remembrances, reflections and rants
of an endangered species;
Curmudgensis Americanus
Bibliophilius
site: crmudgeon.blogspot.com
