Cumbria, EnglandClick on any image to enlarge it, to read caption, or to start slide show.
Over the cliff in 2026?Feel free to be snarky, or metaphorical, like some of these writers:
“When a man is standing at the top of a cliff, it isn’t fear of falling that keeps him rooted to the edge — it’s the fear of not being able to resist the desire to jump, just to see what falling feels like.” ~Cristelle Comby
“She felt as if she were standing on the edge of a precipice… There must be another life, here and now, she thought. This is too short, too broken. We know nothing, even about ourselves.” ~Virginia Woolf
“You’ve got to jump off cliffs and build your wings on the way down.” ~Ray Bradbury
“And so he leaped to a different kind of death than the one he’d planned: ‘God, I don’t know what you’re doing,” he’d said, ‘I never did. But whatever it is, I’m in.” ~Healing River
“It wasn’t just a leap of faith, it was a leap of life, a leap away from the death that lay behind, and forward toward the life of hope, purpose, and love that lay ahead.” ~The Biggest Leap of My Life
“The bridge makes life easier; but the cliff makes you stronger!”
~Mehmet Murat ildan
Dear pastors, teachers, and church drama groups: When I first set foot inside a church, I wasn’t sure what I believed, or how to behave. Would I have the wrong views? The wrong version of the Bible? Would I use the wrong lingo? In other words, I was dragging a lot of “luggage” with me! So a few years back, I wrote a Saturday Night Live-style scene to put church visitors at ease, and encourage church members to bring their friends. Apparently it struck a chord, because it’s now regularly presented at churches all over North America! I also filmed a video version (below), and it too has been shown at churches everywhere!
You can preview or order Welcome to Church: No Luggage Required from my script publisher 231worship.com by clicking here!
Or you can order the video from my church film distributor Sermon Central by clicking here!
P.S. Visit The Story Shop (above) to see my whole catalogue of movies, scripts, books, and teaching resources!
I’m not a died-in-the-fur “cat person.” That implies a species-specific specialization (say that five times fast and you win a kitten); I’m an all-round animal lover. I love otters (who doesn’t?), sparrows, mice, marmosets, and mongooses (mongeese?), even critters of the slithery persuasion (apart from the one who deceived Eve). But among the animals I’ve called family…most have been cats.
It began when I captured a couple of feral kittens. Being more pantherae than felis cati, they soon escaped into the suburban grasslands. But the rest of our cats captured us.
Right after we’d moved to our semi-planned community, I rescued Zipper from a truly evil man. He was my bestie, and I was his hero.
A short time later, Mom acquired a bestie as well. She’d found him curled up against the milk bottles outside our kitchen door. Unlike short-haired Zipper, he was a lush little bundle who loved to nibble buttons. And so, along with Zipper, we now had another garment closure-themed cat named “Buttons.”
Whose name quickly became a misnomer.
The Field across the street from our house was a vast, untamed veldt. So Buttons began hunting, and hunting, and hunting. Consequently, he morphed into the largest, catliest cat anyone had ever seen. Being at least part Maine Coon (or possibly lion), Buttons soon became “Mr. B,” a feline Sean Connery who liked his mice shaken, not stirred. He was feared by every tom, and adored by every molly. And the scars he acquired (“you should have seen the other cat”) only made him more magnificent!
Mr. B feared nothing, including the notorious Vacuum Cleaner. He hit it, bit it, clawed it, and stood his ground. Mom found this endlessly amusing, and taunted him with it, mercilessly. After which, he would come and find me, wherever I was, and bite me in retaliation–but never Mom. Mr. B’s sun rose and set on her. If he could, he would have had a heart with “Mom” tattooed on his bicep (catcep?).
Zipper, on the other hand, was a lover, not a fighter. And among those he loved was flirty little Missy next door. In the heat of passion, Zipper and Missy failed to use protection, and voila: two tiny Missys and one mini-Zipper arrived. Missy’s human mom Julie (who soon became my mom’s best friend) insisted we “do the right thing” and adopt Zipper Jr.
Zipper Jr. officially became “Ginchy,” the beatnik term for a “cool cat” (popularized by Edd “Kookie” Byrnes on Mom’s favorite TV series, 77 Sunset Strip). Ginchy’s full name on his veterinarian’s office birth certificate was Ginchell Russell Teemley (Mom’s play on my name, Mitchell Russell Teemley), indicating that we were brothers.
He was aptly named. You didn’t tease Ginchy. He teased you. He was the shrewdest cat I’ve ever known. When we played hide-and-seek, he’d almost immediately figure out where I was. But when he hid, I was completely mystified. If he was a chess player, he’d have beaten Bobby Fischer. I always felt he was smarter than me. But I didn’t mind because, well, we grew up together and…
He was my brother.
Photo by GAIMARD“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” ~Romans 12:2
A high percentage of abusers were themselves abused as children–physically, verbally, sexually. Other people may have more subtly broken models of adulthood, yet they too pass on their brokenness.
No one is a perfect model.
We once had two sweet but morbidly obese neighbors, who asked us to housesit for them. Their home looked like them, unscrubbed and unkempt, with nothing but sugary snacks and fat-laden junk foods in its cupboards, not a hint of protein or fresh produce in sight. They were likable people, and yet, at the same time, we feared for their son. He was wiry and active at age five. But within just a few short years, he’d grown lethargic and grossly overweight. Just like his parents. They loved their son, yes, and would never have dreamed of abusing him.
And yet they did.
How? By abusing themselves, and by modeling that abuse to their child. We all inherit legacies of brokenness, even those of us who are from “the best of families.”
Every one of us is challenged, by sheer virtue of being born, to do better than our parents. To keep what’s good…and replace what’s broken. For our children and for our hurting world’s sake, we’re called to model better, not broken. So, don’t pass it on. Difficult? Oh, yes — perhaps the most difficult thing you’ll ever do.
But infinitely worth it.
I hear that statement a lot these days. First, let’s clear something up: the term “Christian” originally denoted* “Christ-like.” And so, in the truest sense, Jesus not only was a Christian, but was the first and only perfect Christian who ever lived.
However, the statement often connotes* the idea that Jesus was nothing like the people who call themselves Christians. And this is certainly true of the “many” whom Jesus predicted would use his name, but to whom he would one day say, “I never knew you.” Why? Because, as he explains two verses earlier, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 7:21-23) So anyone who is not sincerely striving to be Christ-like is literally not a “Christ-ian.”
My first prayer as a new believer was, “Jesus, I want to follow you. Just don’t make me a Christian.” And so, as an earnest but oh-so-green disciple, I chose instead to call myself a “Jesus-follower.” And I still do.
“Christian” is an honorable word, but there’s so much baggage attached to it. Let us strive, therefore, fellow-believers, to live in such a way that all of that baggage will eventually fall away, and we will be recognized not only as true Jesus-followers…
But as true Christians.
*Denote means the actual definition of a term. Connote refers to its secondary associations, things it has come to be thought of as meaning.
Source: giphy.comClick on any image to enlarge it, to read caption, or to begin slide show.
Image created at craiyon.comHappy Autumnal Equinox to all of my fellow Northern-Hemispherians! (And Happy Spring Equinox to all of my Southern-Hemispherian friends!)
Actually, untold thousands of other Stone Age kids did too. The idea was in the zit-geist, which is to say that acne-prone teens and their younger sibs all suddenly got the same idea in the summer of 1959. Since surfing was the coolest thing ever, we all decided to convert our skates into “sidewalk surfboards.” But how?
1) Pro skates with smooth “clay” wheels that you could rent at the local roll-a-rama. You’d glide around the rink, and Hokey Pokey to the center, hoping to “put your left foot in” just as that cute girl in the poodle skirt did.
2) Metal skates, the kind you’d steal from your buddy’s kid sister, strap onto your sneakers, and rumble noisily down “Death Hill” in, hoping nobody stretched a water hose across the sidewalk.
Metal skates were cheap and flimsy, and the only kind anybody I knew had. But, hey, they had wheels, and any kind of wheels were better than no wheels. Plus, we’d discovered you could pull the skates apart, nail the wheels to the bottom of a board, then stick a fruit crate on the front and, voilà, you had a crate-scooter! Of course, these tended to disintegrate, sending splintered wood and body parts everywhere.
…that surfers would sometimes build crate-less scooters and go “sidewalk surfin’!”
My buddies and I built one the next day!
Our homemade models were metal skate wheels nailed onto two-by-fours. They refused to turn, rumbled like coal cars, and stopped the instant they hit anything larger than an atom. Virtually every trip down Death Hill ended with hitting a rock or a speck of dust and becoming airborne. But, hey, we were sidewalk surfin’, and there was no going back!
We soon discovered that the sidewalks at our grammar school were smoother and featured virtually no cars backing out of driveways. Plus, they had tameable roller-coaster-like ridges and dips. So we surfed the hallways after school and every weekend.
…my dad brought home a commercially made “Chicago” skateboard with better metal wheels and a thinner board you could actually turn! Sort of.
Then, a short time later, a surf company started making “pro” skateboards. They had wooden stringers and clay wheels that turned like a dream—and they actually looked like surfboards!
I got one that Christmas. A friend even got a “longboard.” It was so big that three of us could ride it, trading off roles as Captain, Engine Room, and Rudder Operator.
Skateboarding would eventually become an Olympic-level sport, leaving us cave dwellers in the dust. Or more likely splayed across somebody’s driveway. Still, I’ll never forget…
The year I invented skateboarding!
To read My Real Memoir from the start, click here. To read the next episode, click here.
Source: The Van Gogh GalleryWhen you’re “a creative,” i.e., a person who creates original works of any type, you struggle continually to make something meaningful. Your art form—writing, music, photography, whatever—probably has some kind of “rules.” But following those rules, or breaking them for that matter, doesn’t guarantee a meaningful result. Does anything? Yes! And I can sum it up in a single word:
Nazz.
I’m guessing you want an explanation. When I was young, as a member of “the next Beatles,” I was constantly trying to figure out what made a song memorable. And then I stumbled on a singer-songwriter named Todd Rundgren who’d written and produced a string of infectious singles. Like me, Todd had sought to find that “something.” He found it, and went on to be one of the most influential music producers in history.
Analyzing what he found, I realized that, literally, all memorable songs ring three bells, as it were, and I dubbed this combination “nazz” in honor of Todd’s first band, The Nazz. Later, after spotting it in Van Gogh’s paintings and in a jazz ballet by Alvin Ailey, I realized nazz was the “something,” the bullseye for virtually all creative forms.
Creating nazz means creating something that, to your viewers, listeners, or readers:
And there it is. Easy to say, hard to accomplish. But hopefully now, as a creative, you’ll at least have a little better sense of what that bullseye looks like. It looks like, well…
Nazz.
 | seaangel4444 on Welcome to Church! |
| seaangel4444 on Caption This Photo |
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 | #hood on Who Makes Your Decisions? |
| seaangel4444 on Welcome to Church! |
| seaangel4444 on Caption This Photo |
| Jeff on It’s Ahhh!ctober! |
| seaangel4444 on It’s Ahhh!ctober! |
| #hood on Who Makes Your Decisions? |
