Our Shrinking - Expanding Globe

Growing up in Texas, my memories of family vacations usually centered around going to Lake Buchannon in the middle of the state for fishing, playing, and eating. Once we took a family trip to see some relatives in Kentucky. After being in Texas with short trips dominating my life, Kentucky seemed like it was either 100 miles or a million miles away.

Today, I heard on the news that a Belgium beer company is trying to buy the U. S. beer company that makes Budweiser. I am not a beer drinker. There are only two things that even interest this Texas boy in this business news at all. One interest point is that a corporation in another country located on another continent is knowledgeable and agressive is seeking to buy a U. S. corporation. When I was growing up, that would have been a great rariety. Today it is commonplace. We definitely live with a world economy in which globalization effects every part of life. Our globe has shrunk.

The second reason I have an interest in this particular possible business transaction is that our daughter, her Air Force husband, and their two children (two of our four grandchildren) will leave the United States in a week and a half to live in Belgium for three years where our son-in-law will be stationed with NATO. This is their fifth assignment with the Air Force - four different states and now a different country on a different continent. My parents never considered living anywhere more than 20 miles from where they grew up. While I have visited some other countries and have considered living in other states on occasion, I have just moved around in Texas for sixty-one years. But our children and grandchildren live with far more choices. Our globe is expanding.

Interestingly enough, my wife and I can drive about 20 miles to the DFW Airport; board a plane; make one stop in the U.S. and change planes; and arrive in Belgium far quicker than my family made a drive from Temple, Texas, to Mayfield, Kentucky, in 1957 (and that car had no air conditioning, of course, neither did our house). Our globe is shrinking.

Our grandchildren will be bussed from Belgium to The Netherlands to attend an international school. They will have the opportunity to study different languages each year they are there. They should come back to the U. S. with a fairly conversant ability in French and Flemish based on the village (small European town) where they will live. I doubt that their parents will pick up the languages so quickly. So the roles will be reversed. Our grandchildren will be able to speak to each other in languages their parents don't understand and they won't even have to spell out the words. Our globe is expanding.

As parents, we are both excited and anxious for them. What an opportunity that awaits them in new friends and neighbors, new customs, new languages, and Belgian chocolate! But they will be so far away! Of course, we both have our passports and I check for ticket bargains almost daily. Our globe is shrinking and expanding.

Putting on my professional hat for a moment, I wonder if the followers of Christ in the U. S. and the churches they attend have taken time to notice what is happening to our globe. I know that some have because I see their international involvements while at the same time ministering to the internationals who just moved in next door to the church property. Will everyone take notice of our changing world? Of course not! Everyone never does the same thing. But, maybe more will take notice as their lives are personally touched by a globe that has the current characteristic of shrinking and expanding both at the same time.

It is time to close this entry - I need to go and check to see if any airlines are running a special on Belgium any time soon.

The Wonder of Technology

Technology - computers, wireless connections, IPhones, IPods, flat screens, and HD - how could we possible exist or accomplish anything without all of these wonderful, timesaving, problem solving devices. Normally, I am a loyal fan and supporter. But there are days . . .

When something inside a compute decides to reject the current password or when we owners decide to switch providers or hosts or change email addresses or when someone buries a chicken under the rock by the dead tree at midnight under a full moon while drinking an RC Cola, the world of technology can become far less than wonderful. Oh, don't misunderstand. I am neither angry or upset - frustrated, that is a possibility. Someday I will learn to leave well enough alone. Until then, I will continue to be lured into techno change because a new product was faster, brighter, smarter, or came with a free gift.

There really is no point to be made or moral to be conveyed in this entry - just needed a nice, safe place to come and calmly express some feelings before SCREAMING!!!

A Change in the Routines

Routines are a way of life for most of us. Life can get very confusing and complicated when we step out of some of our routines. A few days ago my morning was anything but routine. The reasons are insignificant at this point but my regular pattern was altered. The result: because I cleaned my body in the shower before shampooing my hair - I forgot to rinse the shampoo out of my hair and had to enter the shower a second time; because I finished getting dressed before brushing my teeth, I forgot to brush my teeth; and because I left my watch in the kitchen the night before (of course, I had left it there while doing the dishes - my normal routine, but don't tell my wife that I wrote that), I forgot to put on my watch and so I spent the day with unbrushed teeth while looking at my naked wrist every 15 minutes or so.

Well, our home routines are about to make an even bigger change than the order of personal hygiene habits. Tomorrow is my wife's last day as an employed public school teacher. After 31 years of loving and molding and shaping the lives of 6 and 7 seven year olds and mentoring and encouraging fellow teachers, she is retiring. She is still very young (you can tell her that I wrote that). But she is ready for a change. That change may involve staying home some and taking it easy. It may involve some volunteering in the areas that she cares about deeply. And it may involve a part-time job in the future that doesn't require taking things home at night to have finished by the next morning.

I do know what changes are certain - (1) she will not be getting up at 5:00 AM; (2) she will not pity me as I leave for work and she stays home; (3) she will enjoy her new found personal time; and (4) she will miss seeing the bright eyes of children as they catch the excitement of learning to read (her special area for the last 16 years has been working with first graders who lacked reading skills and helping them "get it.").

But that is the way it is when we change our routines and begin a new direction. Some things end and other things begin. That is really the way life is in all of its aspects. Individuals, families, corporations, and churches - they all experience change in that way. To begin a new direction requires that an old path be abandoned in order to follow the new path. One of my favorite poems is Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken." In that poem the author comes to a place where the road he has been walking divides. He must choose which of the two paths now to follow. He knows he can only choose one. While he thinks he can always come back some day and try the other path, he knows that it will never happen. He finally chooses the path that seems less traveled and states that that choice has made all the difference.

Our family has a change in the routine because a choice has been made to travel a different path. It will make all the difference. Just wondering if you have any routines to alter, new directions to go, and choices to make!