A Parable for Lent

I’ve been having computer troubles. Don’t we all at some time? My computer troubles are never small fixes. They are major, expensive time-consuming workarounds.

My journey this time has taken approximately 14 weeks. From changing a broken, dead HP mainframe tower to an Apple OS/X with a duo platform in Windows. I did my due diligence in storing my files. I even had a high falootin’ mirror that imaged and stored things as I created them so I didn’t have to do a thing to make sure my files were safe.

Despite my efforts, my new Windows 7 operating system would absolutely not read my files. I’ve been slowly and painstakingly connecting my big external mirror storage drive to an old laptop and with a little thumb drive, copying and moving information. It has not been fun. It’s a slow task. Maddening, thrashing, boring, angering, and other endless adjectives depicting the most frustrating straits has been my demeanor through this process.

I also spent 9 hours on Friday slowly restoring data contact files that had been corrupted. I have another storage system that involves cyber storage and links my computer to my phone. Last week, my phone died. I had to restore all the information. During this process, all the contacts began multiplying; yes multiplying!. I had duplicate contacts for some people, triple for others, and even as many as six identical files for one contact. Yikes! It was like the Star Trek episode, “The Trouble with Trebles” where these little furry creatures just kept multiplying and multiplying.

Last night at 5:15 pm, I think I have completed this journey; my small triumph. Finishing this computer nightmare also made me think about my back yard. It was in shambles from the extended freeze suffered in January throughout the Deep South. I finally took the time this past weekend to tear out all those broken branches and prune the dead rotting palm fronds, slimy and mushy, lying in their deadness around burdened trunks. It was a nasty, dirty job. But in the pruning this past Monday morning, at the bottom of one bush was the tiny, delicate, new light green leaf of new growth.

It occurred to me all this cleaning and purging was like this Lenten season. This is the time of introspection and ponder; the time of working through process to prepare for the Resurrection and Joy. Are we not supposed to suffer during Lent? Or at least struggle and wrestle with ourselves? Isn’t that what giving something up is about? Or doing study or meditation practices? Are we not striving to achieve something?

If we cannot clean out, tear out, break down, and sometimes painstaking walk the heavy laden struggles of rendering clean the old broken, stinky, musty time-consuming, wrenching files and leaves that clutter of our minds and lives, the new cannot grow. We must, no matter how reluctant, clean out and prepare for the fresh growth and new sprouts to come or we stagnant.

And there my friends, is my parable: purging the old to ready the way for the new, the spring, and the joy that I can move forward in my work. May you find the way to remove your obstacles for the new to grow in your life.

Peace.

Out of Time

Time has slipped away too quickly since the last Groote's Gaggle. Don't you feel you often just run out of time?

This week's TIME magazine ran a one-sentence statement:



1.26 MICROSECONDS: "Time that each day has been shortened as a result of Chili's earthquake, which shifted the earth's axis about 3 inches".

Where do they learn this? How did they determined this? And who is they?! I find information such as this little sentence fascinating. Where do these pearls come from? Time didn't make a reference. The statement appeared in a little horizontal bullet on page 13; just a little kernel to be plucked like a seasoned pearl from an oyster.

My word of wisdom is to definitely count your blessings and kiss your kids because you string many more of those microseconds together and you'll not have time to turn around.

peace.

Choosing Lent

Lent began yesterday with Ash Wednesday. Many follows choose to give something up during this time before Easter. Several attended Lenten services that were held last night and received the ashed-cross on their forehead. Some will continue to meet every Wednesday until Easter. For me, Ash Wednesday, and the Lenten season is a practice of the Christian calendar I’m still trying to embrace. For my personal reasons, strange as they may be, I struggle with Lent and the rituals surrounding it.

A Facebook friend shared a devotional link yesterday I am going to try and follow these next few weeks. I think I might be able to accomplish this devotional because, there’s not a lot to read. It’s online and the background music is rather soothing to me. Yeah, it’s embarrassing to admit how being faithful must sometimes be in small does and little steps. But here’s a moment of honesty slipping out.

In writing this to you, I learned this devotion is directed toward students. Well aren’t we all students? In life at least? So far yesterday & today’s devotion have not been more than 5 or 6 lines. That holds my wandering attention. It’s plainly written without long theological contemplative passages. So, if you’re a short attention spanner or struggle like me, maybe you’d like to choose to try and walk this journey with me ……

Here’s the link: http://www.d365.org/journeytothecross/

peace. (p.s. today’s devotion: the ability – and responsibility – to choose)

Tidbits to Chew On

This past week I’ve had the good future to have two very interesting conversations with a couple of my clients that I would like to share with you. I think both sets of information are important notes to pass along.

Of course, this is news parallels the good news bad news joke. One item is good information and the other is a warning-which could be taken as good information if you choose to be proactive about it. I’ll share the good first:

An online church donation link by All Saints Episcopal in Salt Lake City, UT (http://www.allsaintsslc.org) last fall has brought in an estimated 12% increase in donations. Rev. Michael Mayor also reported the link was very helpful when someone wished to make a memorial donation. Their check did not have to be sent in the mail. The giver merely went to the church website and made the donation online. BTW, reports are people use debit cards quite often in online donations so the giving on credit debate needs to be aware of this facet.

Many of you know my computer crashed after I moved to Baton Rouge. I LOVE my new Apple computer with dual Windows operating system but recovering old files and reestablishing them is never a fun task. One note I hadn’t shared about the details of my computer mishaps was I had just finished downloading a Windows update when the crash occurred. Talking with Rev. Dick Selby this week, I learned he and his wife experienced the exact same thing on each of their computers. This is quite alarming news as most viruses of this nature make it to the forefront of the news.

Maybe this was a coincidence. I tend to think it most likely wasn’t. I’m not aware of any safeguards but I will plead--- PLEASE, please back –up your documents, emails, contacts, etc. Keep a good back-up of information on a regular basis. I’ve been doing this for years and while I have some challenges with older software versus new software, I am going to be able to retrieve almost all of my data.

I’m heading off to send a note to Microsoft. Play safe out there in cyberland… peace.

Be Very, Very, Careful

Remember Elmer Fudd, the cartoon character. His double-barreled shotgun in hand and he turns to the screen and says, “Shhh. Be ve-wee ve-wee, care-vul, ‘cause we are hunting wabbits!”

Be very, very careful, because you may not be hunting rabbits, but they are hunting you. I’ve spent the last few blogs ranting about the predatory Internet. I apologize for doing the same this week, but I feel this is ve-wee,ve-wee Important!

A few of my clients have received letters from a business named Domain Registry of America. This letter urges them to renew their domain names as soon as possible to avoid risking their control of their name. Losing your domain name is not something anyone wants. Domain Registry of America knows that and that’s why they look so official and scary when they tell you your domain is about to expire.

Many of my clients are registered through my company. If you are my client, and not registered through me, I still know your domain registry company. NONE of YOU are registered through this company. They are luring you. Read the document to notice the carefully placed nonchalant word “switch” or “when you switch”. This word and sets of words is telling you that if you send them money, they become the registry. Every web domain name is registered to some company out there. Some are fairer than others. I don’t know how fair Domain Registry of America is or isn’t, but given the fact they are somewhat innocently sending you this information, I would treat them as the wolf in Gramma’s gown in the Red Riding Hood story and run away quickly!

Whenever you encounter any offer on the Internet or about the Internet, look over it with a fine tooth comb. If it seems too good to be true, IT IS! And as a reminder, keep a picture of Elmer next to your screen so you’ll always remember to be very, very careful.

Cyber Sticks and Stones are Hurtful

“Sticks and Stone may break my bones, but names can never hurt me”. My mother used to make me recite that over and over whenever I came home from school with hurt feelings from some quip by a verbal sword-smith. I did it, but being the person I was and probably still am, the words lingered around my legs like a low lying fog ready to trip me up a any second.

Recently, another child has taken their life due to cyber bullying. This was a 15-year-old girl in Massachusetts (read the story: http://tinyurl.com/yeox9tk ).

Bullying, teasing, trash-talking is not a new sport for the teenage crowd. The new cyber frontier and cellular text land is a dangerous place for our kids these days. These taunts go beyond the name-calling of 30-plus years ago. They are so inappropriate in language and accusation that I can’t even type an example. And things on the Internet can live forever. That is why the devastation can result in such dramatic results as suicide. The unfortunate truth is much of the verbal slash and slang begins with hurt feelings and spins and warps into untruths that spiral and viral into outlandish lies.

(This is one reason why I discourage chat rooms on youth pages on a website. Unless you have a twenty-four hour cyber-monitor, your forum can turn into an unwanted unintentional problem. It can even go as far as to make your organization or church liable should violence ensue.)

Where your organization or church CAN make a difference is through working as a mediator when cyber/text conflict arises. I recently watched a PBS special on teen girl violence. Where boys may walk away after a fight, girls let it fester and this festering is the seed that can spiral out of control into physical or cyber-violence. The answer needed to calm girls from this destruction seemed to be the simple, earnest apology.

What has happened to us that we can’t say those words? We don’t seem to know how to apologize or how to admit a mistake. As I type this blog, I hear the voice of the television commentator recanting recent stories with the Tiger Woods saga. Here is a stellar example of where telling the truth, saying you’re sorry and admitting a mistake would have left a lot of air time open on our tv’s.

We need to teach our young people and apparently, ourselves, the powerful tools of apology and admittance of wrong. The more we run from these strong tenets of decorum, the more we degrade society and lean ever closer a land of chaff where wheat will not grow.

Trash Talk

You don’t have spend time in a gas station bathroom to read trash about people you don’t even know….

A new book disclosing campaign secrets and admissions by top politicians is flooding the news. Tiger has been exposed for his indiscretions; Mark McGwire has a mea culpa about his steroid usage. All these little tattle segments flooding our airways, newspapers, TVs, tweets reflect a couple of things:

1. The world is moving along okay. No big disasters or tragedies at present or
2. Our society’s brains have cycled to auto-pilot and the technical nonsensical input and output jargon of ‘garbage-in garbage-out’ has polluted our lives and lifestyles… and
3. Folks are making a tidy sum exposing gossip, missteps, and bad behavior.

It is difficult to create good results when given bad input. The term: garbage-in garbage-out. Defined by Wikipedia as a phrase in the field of computer science or information primarily used to call attention to the fact that computers will unquestioningly process the most nonsensical of input data (Garbage in) and produce nonsensical output (Garbage out). Wikipedia also highlights another term off of the garbage-in garbage-out phrase, “Garbage In, Gospel Out” based on the tendency to put excessive trust in “computerized” data. People have a tendency to believe what they read or see on their computer regardless the source. I don’t know if this is the source for all this plethora of gossip, but we are sure getting an abundant crop recently.

We seem to be producing a great deal of garbage-out MORE garbage-out. When did sharing or spewing gossip become such a past-time? It is sad but true that today our societal missteps are gathered up like precious gold nuggets to be profited on by complete strangers. That’s what happened to all those people we’re hearing and reading about. They did not set out to wind up as tabloid fodder. They didn’t intend for this information to become part of your life or my life. It happened.

There are 1, 610, 000 internet gossip sites. Many are focused on celebrities but there is a rise in sites targeting just about everything. GossipReport.com allows you to share dirt on co-workers. Sick of your neighbor? RottenNeighbor.com lets you publicly out that bad person on your block. You can dish or destroy just about anyone on any topic. College campuses and local schools are rampant with gossips posts and texts consuming the young brains of our country, unfortunately destroying many young egos and in some cases, lives.

Controlling this overwhelming trend begins with us, you and me. It starts with our personal censorship and self-control. It then moves to discussions among our family, especially our children; then our friends and co-workers, to groups we deem influential, like our church. The old adage “sticks and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt us” is not true anymore. The Internet is our new bathroom wall. It’s a nasty commentary of our lives and somebody needs to wash our mouths out with soap.