One down, four to go.

In finishing this meme from Rosezilla, I will err on the side of brevity.

Sunshine - It’s a scientific fact that light, traveling at a speed of 186,000 miles per second, takes a little over eight minutes to cover the 93,000,000 miles between the sun and the earth. After that fascinating tidbit of astronomical information, I can’t improve on John Denver: “Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy; sunshine in my eyes can make me cry; sunshine on the water looks so lovely; sunshine almost always makes me high.” But this morning was foggy, and that was nice too.

Admire - Back to the dictionary. One word never means another exactly, but to admire means to regard with wonder, pleasure, or approval; to take pleasure in; to like or desire; to esteem, revere, or venerate. When it comes to celebrities in sports and show business, people don’t admire them so much as envy them, and that’s a whole different emotion. I say don’t admire Derek Jeter or Peyton Manning or Britney Spears or Celine Dion or Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie or Elvis Presley or the latest crop of finalists on American Idol. If you do, you run the risk of degenerating into celebrity worship, which starts with envy and ends in, dare I say it, reverence and veneration. Admire the real heroes instead. Admire people in our armed forces who put their lives on the line every day in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to stop international terrorism in its tracks. Admire firemen who go into burning buildings to rescue other people. Admire policemen who stop those who prey on children, the weak, the elderly, the vulnerable. Admire nurses who work long hours at low pay to restore people to health. Admire teachers who pass up opportunities to make a lot more money in the corporate world and choose instead to influence the next generation in a positive way. Sure, there may be bad apples in every barrel, but those are the kinds of people I admire.

Pickles - My dad used to make them in a crock churn using the cucumbers from our garden. My favorites to this day are sweet gherkins, bread-and-butter pickles, and Kosher dills. I also especially like pickled watermelon rind, but perhaps I am getting off the subject. All together now: “My ma gave me a nickel to buy a pickle; I didn’t buy a pickle, I bought some chewin’ gum. Chew, chew, chew, chew, chew, chewin’ gum, how I love chewin’ gum,....” The first person who knows the rest of the lyrics to this song will receive immunity in next week’s challenge and cannot be eliminated.

Faith - This could be a bunch of platitudes, but I don’t want it to be. The question is, faith in what? The following is not original with me; I read it in a little devotional booklet a couple of days ago:

“As Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life” (John 3:14-15 NLT). What is that all about? This: Fiery serpents had bitten many of the people of Israel, and many had died. The survivors pleaded with Moses to ask God for mercy. “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent of bronze, and set it on a pole; and...everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live’” (Numbers 21:8 NKJV). The Israelites who had been bitten by snakes found healing by looking at the pole -- and sinners find salvation by looking to Christ. Look and live! The simplicity of it troubles us. We expect a more complicated cure. Moses and his followers might have expected more as well: manufacture an ointment, treat one another, or at least fight back. We say, “God helps those who help themselves.” But Jesus says, “Only believe.” You believe the chair will hold your weight, so you sit on it. You trust the work of the light switch, so you flip it. You regularly trust power you cannot see to do a work you cannot accomplish. Today, God asks you to do the same.” (from The Word For You Today, © 2009)

All of us can think of ways we would have done it differently. The lesson here, in my opinion, is that it is always right to ask God for His mercy, and it is always better to take advantage of the provision He has made than to try to create a way of our own that will not work.

End of sermon. End of meme.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled program, already in progress.

Fortitude, Sunshine, Admire, Pickles, Faith (part 2)

Okay, so as I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted, the way this meme works is I received the above five words from Rosezilla down in sunny Florida. Someone had given five words to her to write about (Moment, Finish, Sound, Carry, and Fact) and now I’m supposed to write about five more words she has given to me. Rosezilla changed the rules a little bit and I will follow her lead. Anyone who wants to can participate; I am not going to choose people. Let me know in a comment if you want to play and I will send you five words of your very own to write about. The point is to reveal something of oneself to others.

Here are my five little essays:

Fortitude - I hardly know where to begin. Buried deep in my gray matter is the phrase “Patience and fortitude!” but I cannot say where I first heard it or when or from whom. I think I was being told to hang in there, stay the course, finish the task, don’t give up the ship and all that. Some people say there are four Cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude) and three Theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity), making a total of seven. We’ll leave the other six for another time and concentrate on fortitude. Fortitude is not courage exactly, but what is it? One dictionary defines it as “mental and emotional strength in facing difficulty, adversity, danger, or temptation courageously” and another as “strength of mind that allows one to endure pain or adversity with courage.” The Latin root, fortis, means strong or brave. I think of a Bible verse, I Corinthians 16:13, where Paul tells the people of Corinth, “Watch, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.” I also think of the first nine verses of the first chapter of the Old Testament book of Joshua, where the same instruction is repeated several times, once in negative form:

“After the death of Moses the LORD’s servant, the LORD spoke to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ assistant. He said, “Now that my servant Moses is dead, you must lead my people across the Jordan River into the land I am giving them. I promise you what I promised Moses: ‘Everywhere you go, you will be on land I have given you--from the Negev Desert in the south to the Lebanon mountains in the north, from the Euphrates River on the east to the Mediterranean Sea on the west, and all the land of the Hittites.’ No one will be able to stand their ground against you as long as you live. For I will be with you as I was with Moses. I will not fail you or abandon you. Be strong and courageous, for you will lead my people to possess all the land I swore to give their ancestors. Be strong and very courageous. Obey all the laws Moses gave you. Do not turn away from them, and you will be successful in everything you do. Study this Book of the Law continually. Meditate on it day and night so you may be sure to obey all that is written in it. Only then will you succeed. I command you--be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go."

Some people say that if you hear voices you are loony, and that if you think the voice you hear is God’s, you are especially loony, perhaps even certifiably insane. I am 68 years old. I have lived a long time. I have not always acted with courage and fortitude. I have not always been strong. But in these troubled times it is not loony to follow God’s instructions as best you can, especially when what you believe He is telling you to do is to watch, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, and be strong. The world needs more people, both men and women, who are willing to do that.

And I know this also: When I admit that I am weak, that I need help, that I can’t do it myself, then I am strong, because God’s strength is made perfect in weakness. And the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

Click here to listen to a song that says it better that I can.

I have written only the first essay. The other four should be along shortly.

Fortitude, Sunshine, Admire, Pickles, Faith

Blame it on Rosezilla. The common denominator of those five words up there in the title is, wait for it, it’s coming, here it is, ta-DAH!: Absolutely nothing.

Rosezilla, who is really Tracie down in sunny Florida, received a meme from someone named Beverly who received it from someone named Heidi (and they told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on) and that selfsame aforementioned meme eventually made it all the way to l’il ol’ moi.

But before we get to that, I feel compelled to explain what a meme is, because the word is not part of my everyday vocabulary and may not be part of yours. Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly (not to mention courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent) Dictionary.com has given me three answers:

1. meme /mim/ [meem] –noun, A cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes. Origin: 1976; mīmeîsthai to imitate, copy; coined by R. Dawkins, Brit. biologist (Dictionary.com Unabridged, Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.)

2. meme (mēm), n., A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. [Shortening (modeled on gene) of mimeme, from Greek mimēma, something imitated, from mimeisthai, to imitate; see mimesis.] (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.)

3. meme /meem/ [By analogy with “gene”] Richard Dawkins’s term for an idea considered as a replicator, especially with the connotation that memes parasitise people into propagating them much as viruses do. Memes can be considered the unit of cultural evolution. Ideas can evolve in a way analogous to biological evolution. Some ideas survive better than others; ideas can mutate through, for example, misunderstandings; and two ideas can recombine to produce a new idea involving elements of each parent idea. The term is used especially in the phrase “meme complex” denoting a group of mutually supporting memes that form an organised belief system, such as a religion. However, “meme” is often misused to mean “meme complex”. Use of the term connotes acceptance of the idea that in humans (and presumably other tool- and language-using sophonts) cultural evolution by selection of adaptive ideas has become more important than biological evolution by selection of hereditary traits. Hackers find this idea congenial for tolerably obvious reasons. See also memetic algorithm. ([The Jargon File] (1996-08-11) The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2007 Denis Howe.)

There is no number 4. Thanks be to God. Do you know any more than you did before? Neither do I.

Would you look at that, kiddies? The old clock on the wall is telling us that our allotted time is up for today and I didn’t even get around to telling you how this particular meme is supposed to work. But them’s the breaks, rules are rules, and I will have to get back to all of you tool- and language-using sophonts later.