I'm a Graduate!

Monday night was the final session of the night class I've been taking at Playhouse in the Park. I persuaded the instructor to pose with me as we were ready to leave the rehearsal hall downstairs at the Playhouse. He is Dewey Hawthorne, with experience in every aspect of show business, from managing talent to performing commercials to doing voiceover work to being a hand model for Procter and Gamble! He also teaches at NKU. The focus of the class was on TV commercials, which I don't see myself doing. (Several readers said, "Keep your day job" after I previewed one of my attempts.) But we did spend some time on voiceover work, and all in all it was a fun and worthwhile experience. It seems certain that Dewey knows what he's talking about.
I'm getting some more input on voiceover work from an experienced professional later this spring. We'll see what happens.

Voters and a Video

Well, if you have a commitment to post daily, now and then you might as well try something new. I doubt I'll be getting any calls for news anchor jobs, but some faithful readers might enjoy watching instead of reading, at least every now and then.

Just a Taste of Winter

We awoke this morning to news of black ice, overturned semi-trailers, and closed highways. Yesterday had been decorated with snow flurries, but we weren't expecting this! Evidently the highway departments weren't, either, because the early morning rush hour wasn't rushing. Evelyn looked at the pictures from the Artemis cameras online, and the highways looked pretty clear. So she decided to rethink her first decision to go in late. She got there fine, after sliding at one intersection close to home. I left after her (I always do), and followed a salt truck all the way down Hamilton-Mason Road and had no issues.
They're predicting 57 degrees tomorrow. Spring IS on the way!

The birds were hunting for seeds under our feeder
before I went to work.

We had arranged for a man to pick up our
mower for servicing, so I left it in the driveway,
as promised. It's almost time to cut
that grass buried in this morning's snow!

For the record, here's what I paid
for gas this morning, with a 10-cents
discount using my Kroger's card!

How Beautiful

All day I've been thinking about Twila Paris's song "How Beautiful"  since hearing a gradeschool choir sing it at church this morning.
Evelyn and I went to the 11:00 Classic Praise service today, partly to hear this choir sing but mainly because it fit our schedule for the rest of the day. We got up at the normal time and sat at the dining room table doing the desk work early in the morning that we typically do in the afternoon on Sundays. Right after this late service, we rode with Dave Lautzenheiser to grab lunch and then drive to Springfield, Ohio to go to the afternoon visitation for Cindi Cooper's dad who died earlier this week. Evelyn car pools with Cindi, and we go to church with her and Dan. We're grateful for their friendship.
We found several friends from church there. "You should have driven the church bus up," one of them quipped.
Twila Paris's haunting anthem prompted me to think about how grateful I am for the church and all the connections and examples and forgiveness and help I've received because I've stuck with the church all my life.

How beautiful when humble hearts give
the fruit of pure lives
so that others may live.


I thought about our friend Verna and her dear mother, Mildred Holmes, who has lived for the Lord for all her 95 years, serving him and encouraging others to live for him. Verna is tending to her, frail and  in the hospital now. Verna and Bill, of course, have served in ministry as missionaries in South Africa and at several points in the U.S.  What an example these lifetimes of service are to us. They're beautiful!

How beautiful the feet that bring
the sound of good news
and the love of the King.

Then there are the men at our church seeking to find the right minister to lead us. Their commitment to Christ, their loyalty to the church, their example of purity and faithfulness are, well, they're beautiful.

None of these people is perfect, of course. I could mention weaknesses and quirks and mistakes—but no more than I could list about myself. But because I am united with them in the body of Christ, the blood of Christ heals our brokenness and compensates for our failures. It's beautiful!

How beautiful the heart that bled
that took all my sin
and bore it instead.
How beautiful the tender eyes
that chose to forgive
and never despise. . . .
How beautiful is the body of Christ.

How much of this can a 10-year-old grasp? As I think back upon the first time I heard a choir sing these words, maybe a decade ago, as I remember all the church members who have influenced me and lifted me up, as I enumerate all the ways my life has been enriched by the body of Christ, my answer is, "Very little."

But their unified voices joined with earnest expressions and perfect memory to touch something deep inside me this morning. It leads me to ponder a renewed commitment:

And as He laid down his life
we offer this sacrifice
that we will live just as he died:
willing to pay the price
willing to pay the price.


It's a high price. But it's not much in return for what I've already received, something remarkably and eternally beautiful.

Something else beautiful, but in a different way . . . the Littleton and Rue Funeral Home building where we
visited with Dan and Cindi Cooper and other members of the body of Christ this afternoon.

You Might Not Call It Interesting

Picked up some bananas from the bounty at Kroger's today . . .

. . . and some green onions from the overflowing "organic" aisle.

I was talking with a friend about his blog, to which he posts sporadically. And I mentioned that I was committed to adding to my diary every day, whether I had anything substantive to say or not!
His reply, "Well, you have a more interesting life than I do."
I'm not sure the last couple of entries here would support that thesis. The reader can decide for himself if today qualifies as interesting.
This morning I attended a meeting with a group of leaders from my church. We met from 8:00 a.m. till almost noon, and it was 12:30 before I left. Can't say much more than that right now about that meeting, but it was important and memorable and a privilege to be a part of it.
After that I came home, and Evelyn fixed us fried egg sandwiches for lunch. (Very good on toast with peach salsa!) I skimmed through the Wall Street Journal and the new Time magazine, browsed around on Facebook, and paid bills. Evelyn took her walk and came home and made the grocery list. Then I embarked on one of my favorite activities of the weekend: grocery shopping! I treated myself to a decaf latte from the Starbucks kiosk at Krogers (this is something I virtually never do). By the time I got home, it was already 6:00 p.m.

I had decided to make supper, but Evelyn did about half of it. We made a recipe I had found on Pinterest: Tomato and Mozzarella Pasta Al Forno. A fancy name for a simple dish. Accompanied it with some wonderful fresh asparagus (Kroger had it on sale) and a salad of baby romaine leaves with a homemade vinaigrette Evelyn had in the refrigerator. A very nice dinner.
Soon we're going to watch a movie I found on the Redbox site and picked up while I was at Kroger's. The Way. Haven't heard of it. I'll report tomorrow what I think and whether we'd recommend. The trailer looked interesting, so we decided to give it a whirl
Interesting? Maybe not. But a good Saturday for us, nevertheless.
Today our friend Verna Weber aborted her trip with her husband Bill to see their family in New Zealand, because she got word in Los Angeles that her mother, Mildred Holmes, had gone back to the hospital.
 She was due to get into CVG this afternoon, after her 8 a.m. flight from Chicago had been cancelled. (We're assuming she took the red eye from LA to Chicago overnight last night.) Very disappointing for her, I know, and we're so sorry for her.
Sometimes "everyday" and "mundane" are good!

Weather Story

Evelyn and I are watching the 10:00 news, full of pictures showing tornado damage all around us today. We're very thankful the storms missed us. She was texting Jennifer off and on as the same system that reached up into Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio swept through Tennessee too. Thankfully, there was no damage close to her either.
At work all day we were watching the sky. It was darker than dusk late in the afternoon. Folks were leaving work early "to get home before the storm comes through." But by the time I left work around 5:30, the sky was clearing and the sun was peeking through the banks of huge, puffy clouds. We had rain, but that's about all. It's still windy tonight, but dry.

As I left work, this was the view from my 

rain-covered driver's window.

Evelyn went with our friend Shirley Wuske to look at wedding dresses this evening while I went to a meeting with some men from church. She doesn't have a dress yet, and there's no news from that meeting I attended that I can share yet, either. But one of these days I'll probably be posting here about both.

After a black, windy, rainy afternoon, the clouds parted for a beautiful sunset.

Had a wonderful dinner at this historic inn.

The Meetings of Mine

The chronicle of my day can be reported in all the meetings I attended:

6:00—Thursday-morning men's Bible study at the church. We studied Romans 13 and grappled with how a Christian responds to a government that may require immoral or unbiblical actions, and what it means to be "clothed with Jesus."

8:30—Meeting with several decision makers to consider options for digital versions of Christian Standard. We're getting close to some exciting options.

10:00—Conference call with Robert Welsh and Doug Foster to discuss the meetings of the Stone-Campbell Dialogue group in Dallas this November.

11:45—Quick lunch and a run to  Staples with Robb Faust.

2:00—Performance Management Training, led by our VP of Human Resources, Tina Macon. (She posed for a picture before the workshop started, and let me get away without her signing a release!)

3:30—Weekly one-on-one meeting with my boss, Matt Lockhart, VP of Product Development at Standard Publishing.

In between all this I arranged for meals at the NEXT conference for young leaders that's happening in Irvine later in March, handled some correspondence, and sorted copy and pictures from Kent Fillinger  for three issues in May: Megachurches, Large Churches, Medium-Sized Churches.

Then I headed home after 5:00. Decided on a whim to snap the view from my car of the crowded intersections just outside our office building. I live only 12+ miles from work, but most evenings it takes me a good 35 minutes to get home.

 Tomorrow I have only one meeting scheduled so far. Actually, I don't do well with a whole day at my desk by myself. But a whole day with meetings can make it a little difficult to get anything else done. We'll see how tomorrow goes.