Weekly Meanderings, 13 July 2013

Last updated on: July 13, 2013 at 12:36 am by Scot McKnight

Weekly Meanderings, 13 July 2013 2013-07-11T18:31:43-05:00 Scot McKnight

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Nine traits of intelligent leadership. “The model is based on an enneagram, a nine-pointed diagram within a circle that dates to 2500 BC in Babylon. These days, it is used for charting personalities, with each element corresponding to a distinct way of thinking, feeling, and behaving. It correlates with other well-known personality and behavioural systems, but Mr. Mattone believes it provides more granular details about leadership development. The circle divides evenly into three groups of leaders: Heart leaders, head leaders, and gut leaders. If you stalled on trying to place yourself in that schema, there’s a reason: Everyone is guided by their heart, head and gut. At the same time, everyone has a tendency to predominantly rely on one of those aspects of their being in their leadership. In turn, each of those three forms of leadership breaks down into three possibilities. Heart leaders tend to be helpers, entertainers, or artists. Head leaders tend to be activists, disciples or thinkers. Gut leaders tend to be drivers, arbitrators, or perfectionists. In the end, one of those nine traits is your predominant behaviour, but the other eight are still part of your composition. As you mature, you evolve between traits.”

Shauna Niequist’s very honest lessons on dealing with criticism.

Speaking of criticism, read this post by Kathy Escobar, which is a testimony to the fortitude of women in ministry:

We have to stand up every time we get knocked down.
We have to stand up when we feel like maybe we were meant to crawl.
We have to stand up when shame flushes our face.
We have to stand up when we hear a voice in our head that tells us we are supposed to sit.
We have to stand up even when our legs are so very tired.

Because there are far more pressing issues for women in this world than whether or not we can preach from the front of North American churches, and we need an army of women who will get off their knees and stand up for dignity, equality and restoration in this broken world.

Brain exercises: “To keep their bodies running at peak performance, people often hit the gym, pounding away at the treadmill to strengthen muscles and build endurance. This dedication has enormous benefits**—**being in shape now means warding off a host of diseases when you get older. But does the brain work in the same way? That is, can doing mental exercises help your mind stay just as sharp in old age? Experts say it’s possible. As a corollary to working out, people have begun joining brain gyms to flex their mental muscles. For a monthly fee of around $15, websites like Lumosity.com and MyBrainTrainer.com promise to enhance memory, attention and other mental processes through a series of games and brain teasers. Such ready-made mind exercises are an alluring route for people who worry about their ticking clock. But there’s no need to slap down the money right away—new research suggests the secret to preserving mental agility may lie in simply cracking open a book. The findings, published online today in Neurology, suggest that reading books, writing and engaging in other similar brain-stimulating activities slows down cognitive decline in old age, independent of common age-related neurodegenerative diseases. In particular, people who participated in mentally stimulating activities over their lifetimes, both in young, middle and old age, had a slower rate of decline in memory and other mental capacities than those who did not.”

Mary Bowser, the internet, and careful research: “The story of the mistaken Mary Bowser reveals how an interest in history, especially women’s history and black history, can blind us to how much about the past remains unknowable. The paradox of the information age is that our unprecedented access to information feeds an expectation that every search will yield plentiful — and accurate — results. But the type of evidence that our 21st-century sensibilities most desire may be the least likely to exist. Uncovering the past is arduous work: Compare the ease with which an Internet search turns up the falsely labeled, cropped image of Mary Bowser with the number of sources I persistently contacted over a period of several years before locating the original cabinet card. Alas, in the age of the Internet, it may prove nearly impossible to curtail the use of that image as an avatar for the elusive slave-turned-spy, despite the definitive proof that it isn’t her.” (HT: CB)

The real money is in teaching: “Software programming? Yeah it’s an okay way to make a living. But the real money is in teaching. Or at least that’s the recent experience of Scott Allen, a programmer and teacher the tech-y online education platform Pluralsight.com. Allen has earned more than $1.8 million through fees and royalties from Pluralsight over the last five years. He says each monthly royalty check has increased in size over that period — the smallest increase being 10 percent month-over-month. That far outdid his expectations when he started making educational videos for Pluralsight. “It’s amazing,” he says.”

Harper Lee — a report: “Who would have predicted that, in her late 80s, Harper Lee would have to file suit to get the control of “To Kill a Mockingbird” returned to her? According to a lawsuit filed in May, Lee, in failing health, had been “duped” into assigning the copyright of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to her literary agent, a lawyer. That’s no small thing: A half century after its publication, “To Kill a Mockingbird” still sells more than 750,000 copies a year. In one typical six-month period in 2009, its royalties amounted to more than $1.6 million.”

The burrito pillow.

Church of England’s Bishops meet to discuss the church in England over the next two decades. “Bishop Steven Croft told Synod members the Church of England needed a “more outward focus” that implied action as well as reflection. He welcomed the rise in the number of younger vocations to ordained ministry, to 113 candidates under 30 in 2011, the highest figure since 1992. However, he said there needed to be more diverse vocations and more from different ethnic backgrounds. The bishop admitted the area of growing the Church and of making disciples was the “most challenging” out of the three goals. “The Church all over the world is having a similar conversation about the challenge of passing on the Christian faith in a global secular culture,” he said. “We urgently need to deepen that conversation in our own Church.” He urged the Church to pursue serving the common good, transforming ministry, and making disciples “with passion, with hope, with resources, and with courage”. “We need to recover the simple, deep disciplines of learning and teaching the faith to make disciples in annual rhythms and patterns in every parish throughout the land.”

Last words of 38 presidents.

Edmund S. Morgan, one of America’s best Puritan scholars, dies. “As a historian of colonial and revolutionary America, he was one of the giants of his generation, and a writer who could well have commanded a larger nonacademic audience than I suspect he received,” said Pauline Maier, a professor of American history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “He characteristically took on big issues and had a knack for conveying complex, sophisticated truths in a way that made them seem, if not simple, at least easily understandable.” Professor Morgan’s book “The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop” (1958) was for decades one of the most widely assigned texts in survey courses on American history. His “Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea” (1963) showed his unmatched talent for mining primary sources to illuminate an important concept, in this case the change in understanding among New Englanders of what it meant to be the member of a church.”

History of bread: “By the beginning of the Middle Ages the preference was to eat white bread made from wheat – medieval physicians also recommended it as being the healthiest – but poorer peoples would bake darker breads with oats or rye. If one needed too, people could also add rice, peas, lentils, chestnuts, acorns or other foods into the mixture. In medieval France, most people would eat a type of bread known as meslin, which was made from a mixture of wheat and rye. Writing from Baghdad in the 10th century, Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq, gives his thoughts on the best kinds of bread to eat:

Wheat bread agrees with almost everybody, particular varieties made with a generous amount of yeast and salt and allowed to fully ferment and bake well. Such breads are lighter and digest faster. Jizmazaj (thin bread with tamarisk seeds) and ruqaq (very thin bread) are by comparison less nourishing and digest much faster. Bread baked in malla (pit with hot ashes and stones), tabaq (large flat pan) and any other similar varieties that do not ferment or bake well are hard to digest and cause stomach aches. Only people used to strenuous labor can eat them more often.

Terrence Scully notes “that bread was the basis of the medieval diet” and the amount that people ate throughout Europe was remarkably similar. He finds that records from England, France and Italy that workmen, soldiers and even patients in hospitals were supposed to get about two pounds of bread per day.”

How to talk like a founding father, and one way is to use this word: “mickle (n.): a large sum or amount, chiefly used in the proverbs “many a pickle makes a mickle” and “many a mickle makes a muckle.” In 1793, Washington referenced the Scottish adage that “Nothing in nature is more true … [than] many mickles make a muckle.” Predecessors of mickle include the Old Saxon mikil and Middle High German michel.”

Great article on Larry Doby. Speaking of baseball, John Rawls, eminent thinker about justice, totally understands it.

The Pine Tar Incident of George Brett now clarified.

Weekly Meanderings

Previous Post

July 12, 2013

Christianity is Falsifiable, which makes it distinctive among religions

Next Post

July 13, 2013 What Your Coffee Tells You about You

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Acts of the Apostles Adam Advent Anabaptism Angels Anglican Apologetics Atonement Baptism BCP Prayers Bible Biblical Studies Birds Blogging Bloglossary Bonhoeffer Books Calvinism Christianity Church Church History Coffee Colossians Commentary Recs Conversion Creation Creeds Culture Death Ecclesiastes Economics Education Embracing Grace Emergent Emerging Movement Eschatology Essays Ethics Eucharist Evangelicalism Family Fasting Fathers Fellowship of Differents Footsteps Tour Fun and Whimsical Gospel Grace Happiness Heaven Hell Holy Spirit Irenaeus James Jesus Jesus Creed Job Justification Kingdom of God Law Lectures Lent Liberalism Love and Marriage Mabanteneni Manhood Mary Miracles Missio Alliance MissioLife Missional Missional Jesus Movies and Film New Perspective Northern Seminary OneLife Origins Project Orthodox Parables Pastor's Spouse Pastoring and Leading Pastoring and Preaching Patristics Paul Paul-John Tour Pharisees Pietism Political Theology Prayer and Formation Preaching Problems for Faith Psalm 119 Psalms Public Issues Purgatory Religions Resurrection Revelation Romans Rule of JCreed Science and Faith Sermon on the Mount Sports Ten Commandments Theology Third Way Top Ten Lists Translations Uncategorized Universalism University Ministry Way Out Weekly Meanderings Wisdom Women and Ministry Work Worship Writing & Blogging Youth Ministry

Select a Month July 2021 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 0000

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What was primary method of debt resolution in Biblical times?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Public trial Fine payment Slavery Community service