From Howard Dean’s personal journal (1/20/04): “Remember in the future NOT — repeat NOT — to look like a maniac while making a very public speech. Even if emotional. Remember Dan Quayle looking like a high school cheerleader. And for lasting images, don’t forget Michael Dukakis in the tank.”
Archive for January, 2004
“WARNING: These Books May Be Hazardous to Your Spiritual Health.” That’s the title of an article in the Gospel Advocate–an article that warns about the 10 most dangerous books recently published by members of the Church of Christ.
I’m hereby endorsing all ten. (All right, if you pressed me, I’d only really endorse nine of the ten!) UNVEILING GLORY (by Fred Aquino and Jeff Childers), which they describe as “the most dangerous installment,” is particularly good. Grab a copy as soon as you can.
My biggest beef is that none of my books made the list. But then again, the Gospel Advocate was the publisher of the first three. 
Congrats to my buddy Phil Ware. He has agreed to be the new preacher at Southern Hills in Abilene. He’s been at Westover in Austin a LOOOONG time.
It was so wonderful to see people coming into church yesterday wet! It was a long, slow soaking rain, too.
A gem from Nicholas Wolterstorff: “God is not only the God of the sufferers but the God who suffers. the pain and fallenness of humanity have entered into his heart. Through the prism of my tears I have seen a suffering God. . . . Instead of explaining our suffering God shares it.”
A note of thanks to columnist Cal Thomas. He apparently has the gift of discerning which political figures are DEVOTED CHRISTIANS WHO JUST MAKE MISTAKES BUT REALLY, REALLY LOVE GOD and which ones are HYPOCRITES WHO JUST USE THEIR SHALLOW WORDS OF FAITH TO GET VOTES.
Whew! As a congregational leader, I know how hard it can be to make that distinction. Nice to have someone at a national level who is so sure.
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I guess I missed Brittany Spears’ marriage. Leave the country for a week and you miss a whole marriage. She’s married one day and divorced (annulled?) the next.
Explain again to me the part about why she is a role model for so many girls today.
Don’t miss the cover story in Time this week on new directions in marriage “therapy.”
For so often, too many therapists have focused on trauma: on what’s gone BAD in the past and on what’s gone SOUR in a relationship. Certainly, it can be helpful for someone to walk briefly through those tender points with a caring friend or therapist.
BUT . . . too many therapists have kept people sick or made them worse by helping them stay focused on life’s trauma. They keep patients coming month-after-month, year-after-year, as they continue walking back through the past.
A much more helpful model is to focus on dealing with life as it is. Some therapists focus on strengths. They teach couples better skills. They accentuate what’s healthy. They use HOPE as their trump card instead of trauma.
Some who have listened to me have thought I’m against all therapy. Not true. It is true that I think we need friends, shepherds, and guides more than therapists. But there certainly is a place for helpful, trained therapists.
What I’m against is trauma-based therapy: therapy that keeps pointing to the past, therapy that believes yesterday is more important than tomorrow, therapy that tries to help people “recover memories,” and therapy that spotlights what’s broken instead of what might work better.
Therapy that tries to work over a short time with people and then sends them out into their world of relationships–well, that can be a true blessing!
Guess what’s just been described as “one of the hottest movements on campuses all across the country.” It’s a cappella music. Check it out at cbsnews.
Looked like a good playoff season for me. We started with four teams I could root for: Dallas, St. Louis, KC, and Green Bay. Can you tell what these four teams now have in common? Oh well, I’ve gotten used to watching the SuperBowl for the commercials.
A thought for the day: A husband is someone who takes out the trash and gives the impression he just cleaned the whole house!