How the actions of this poor widow challenges a slightly irreverant, Linux-using, business school educated Christian. And his money.
Thursdays nights are for swim lessons. I teach for fun at the local YMCA. Sometimes though, like tonight, I’m the one who’s taught — or reminded of — the important lessons of life.
Mateo is my four-year-old energetic curly-haired student. We were practicing our kicking by “racing” each other across the pool. I was letting him [...]
Posted on January 14th, 2010 by Ryan
Filed under: diary worthy | 1 Comment »
Some towns may call them “Food Banks” — charities that give away groceries to those in need. But in my fair city, where the SF Food Bank is a government-funded entity, us little guys are known as “Food Pantries”.
My food pantry is known as the Excelsior Community Food Pantry or ECFP for short. When I [...]
Posted on October 21st, 2009 by Ryan
Filed under: Christian tradition, charitable, chasing happiness, church, diary worthy | No Comments »
Hayley and I just got back from an incredible 10-day China trip. It was foreign, yet familiar. The country has a rich, brutal, and ancient history. It also has an ultra-capitalistic, gaudy, and messy modernity. Here are my top 10 from the trip:
1) Chinese hospitality is second to none. Upon landing on Chinese soil, the [...]
Posted on May 28th, 2009 by Ryan
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This Sunday, I saw something quite surprising at church. In the middle of church service during communion, a bunch of the grade-school children from Sunday school bounded into the sanctuary. They cheerfully danced up to the communion table. The church elder offered them the bread. The children grabbed a piece, drenched it grape juice, and [...]
Posted on May 4th, 2009 by Ryan
Filed under: Christian tradition, chasing happiness, church, diary worthy | 1 Comment »
It seems like everybody, myself included, is worrying about job security today. A number of my friends have lost their jobs. Yours and mine may very well be in jeopardy. Sure, there are some glimmers of hope on Wall Street. But the stock market is what they call a “leading indicator”. Jobs recovery will surely [...]
Posted on April 14th, 2009 by Ryan
Filed under: chasing happiness, diary worthy, economic theory | No Comments »
I have a time-honored tradition* of responding to some of Hayley’s blog posts. Our friend Rahul calls it “competing blogs”. I like to think of it as complementary blogs. But I digress…
Hayley’s recent post expressed some of the busyness that we’ve experienced recently. Like Hayley, I’m a bit tired, stressed, [...]
Posted on March 21st, 2009 by Ryan
Filed under: charitable, chasing happiness, church, diary worthy | 1 Comment »
Last year I declared January 21, 2008 to be the Most Depressing Day of the Year. Most of 2009 has been depressing, so I’m dropping that moniker. Instead I’m declaring today to be a “Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day“. That’s right. Sometimes we need to quote children’s books to [...]
Posted on February 10th, 2009 by Ryan
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Was I the only one surprised when President Obama mentioned nonbelievers in his list of religious “patchwork heritage”? In Obama’s inaugural address, he said,
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and nonbelievers.
I’m very much accustomed to this [...]
Posted on January 20th, 2009 by Ryan
Filed under: diary worthy, societal concerns | 4 Comments »
Over the years it seems like Christmas has had a lot of critics. I must admit that I have my complaints. Many of us do. What’s yours? Complete this sentence:
Christmas is too…
Divisive and Religious
Secular
Commercial and Materialistic
Stressful
Much Trouble
Cheery
Sad
Much time with family
Much time away from family
Traditional
Anything else to add to the list? I’m probably missing a [...]
Posted on December 26th, 2008 by Ryan
Filed under: Christian tradition, chasing happiness, diary worthy | 1 Comment »
Now that Hayley’s mostly done with with her PhD dissertation, she’s got time for the important stuff in life, like redesigning my logo image for this blog. Tonight, she declared my former logo, which had the old name, “hideous”:
and replaced it with this:
My new logo even has two millennia-old copper coins from the Roman [...]
Posted on December 10th, 2008 by Ryan
Filed under: diary worthy | 1 Comment »