Today’s word is smile. In related news, Eileen came home today!! 🙂

Today’s word is care. Twice in the last 9 days I found myself deep into a conversation about caring (and I didn’t even know this word was coming up). Together with a few friends, we were reflecting on how much we don’t care, or do care, about different things, and how that changes as we age mature. There are things I thought were terribly important when I was younger, including things theological, moral, and philosophical, that I just really don’t care about any more. And other things I didn’t give a passing thought to in some earlier time, that I care greatly about now. And to be honest, there are some things that are super trivial that I care way too much about. (The word you are looking for here is “petty”.)

Amidst all that delightful complexity and conversation and friendship, there remains the simple valuable act of caring, lived out in simple ways and small acts. This evening, with both of our spouses away in foreign lands, Rod S and I cared for each other over a shared supper, and wonderful conversation.
When I instructed Rod that he needn’t pose, that he should just continue eating normally, this is the pose he struck!

Inspire is an awesome word for the day. You might expect some inspired photo to accompany it. But NOPE, apparently it’s antonym day. I went to a community association presentation by some City of Saskatoon staff, and the presentation was so uninspiring that they couldn’t even bring themselves to use the whole screen for their presentation. It’s like they are not even trying. Which is too bad, because the topic of the meeting and the plans are really cool. It was a perfect opportunity to inspire! But they presented it in a way that almost invited complaining. Uninspired!

One of the ways I like to create is with food, and creativity generally means taking some risks and making some errors. I tend to take bigger creative food risks when I’m cooking only for one, as I am this week.

So today’s experiment is simply pizza. And since I’m also borrowing a friend’s sous vide machine this week, that too has played into the experiment. Today’s pizza is on a standard home-made crust with an unsweetened black pepper sour cherry sauce, topped with rosemary chicken breast (this was the sous vide part), drizzled honey, brie and chateu de bourgogne soft cheeses, and finished with charred kale.
This time the experiment worked pretty well. Too bad Eileen’s not here to share it.

Today’s post is dedicated to my Aunt Anne Krueger, whose funeral is tomorrow. As a young boy I was oblivious to the importance of this, but while I was a growing up in the Menno-land of southern Manitoba in the 60’s and 70’s, she demonstrated that women could have a voice, an opinion, a sense of humour, and strength of character, much like her mom! The importance of such models cannot be overstated!

And what possibly could the picture below have to do with any of this? The last several weeks have had a surprisingly large number of funerals and deaths, so I’ve been thinking about things ethereal, even heavenly. And I’m pretty sure that any notion I have of what heaven is like is way off. So I like this photo, which reminds me that simple and obvious things may not be or appear as I expect them to be.

Today’s word is ‘envision’, which I found a little hard to wrap my head around. Sometimes people use it as a synonym, perhaps incorrectly, for ‘imagine’, as in “I can envision that”. So I’m going to run with that idea, and give you the tiniest peek into my imagination, by posting a collage of some of the photos I chose not to use over the last 12 days of calendar word pictures. I could envision each unused picture shown here as connected with one of the calendar words so far. 

Today’s calendar word is ‘plant’. I’m thinking it was meant as a verb. O well, nouns are words too!

It appears that today’s word ’empower’ might need 2 photos.

The sciency part of me thinks about the fact that the sun is the source of the vast majority of the energy we need and use – plants, animals, wind, solar, rain, hydroelectric, even petroleum can all trace their origin back to the sun’s energy. Hence the sun and tree silhouette shot.

And the humanities part of me ponders the power of a centered mind, a strong spirit, will and determination. Hence the well lit yoga mat.

What actually empowers us to live, and grow, and change?
Maybe the sun is the easier one to grok, and the mind and spirit are the surprising one…

“Never-the-less, she persisted!”

When I think of ‘praise’ in a religious context, it seems to be a about singing, worship, prayer, music, stuff like that, directed to God. But when I think about ‘praise’ otherwise, like praising a child, that seems to be about paying a compliment, celebrating an accomplishment, observing a gift, or offering some kind of encouragement to another, which hopefully lifts them up in some way. It is an act of friendship, support, and encouragement.

If I think about ‘praise’ in this second way, does that not better describe how God treats me than how I treat God?
So wait! Who is praising who?

And if that’s not enough to perplex you, this short church video should be plenty confusing if you recognize the tune!!
(And no, I didn’t record this video today, but it works for today’s theme. I make the rules here.)

Thus spake I.