Having Fun with the Calendar on December 22nd

 

Each morning as I take my vitamins, I tear off a page on the calendar, a way of reminding myself later in the day that I actually had taken my vitamins.  I get to read a short bit of trivia, something that takes up half a moment and then get on with my day.

Today’s calendar moment, “I am.” is the shortest complete sentence in the English language. I then had to wonder if that were true in, let’s say, Hebrew, referring to the passage of scripture found in the book of Exodus 3:13-15 where we find out what Moses was told on his trip up to the top of the mountain where he met with God.

“And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?

And God said unto Moses, I Am That I Am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you.

And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.”

I’d leave it right there, except… you got it…in Hebrew the name I Am is a bit different. I’ll add what was posted on Facebook sometime back, author was not credited at that time.

“The Name of God YHWH

There was a moment when Moses had the nerve to ask God what his name is. God was gracious enough to answer, and the name he gave is recorded in the original Hebrew as YHWH.

Over time we’ve arbitrarily added an “a” and an “e” in there to get YaHWeH, presumably because we have a preference for vowels.

But scholars and Rabi’s have noted that the letters YHWH represent breathing sounds, or aspirated consonants. When pronounced without intervening vowels, it actually sounds like breathing.

YH (inhale): WH (exhale).

So a baby’s first cry, his first breath, speaks the name of God.

A deep sigh calls His name – or a groan or gasp that is too heavy for mere words.

Even an atheist would speak His name, unaware that their very breath is giving constant acknowledgment to God.

Likewise, a person leaves this earth with their last breath, when God’s name is no longer filing their lungs.

So when I can’t utter anything else, is my cry calling out His name?

Being alive means I speak His name constantly.

So, is it heard the loudest when I’m the quietest?

In sadness, we breathe heavy sighs.

In joy, our lungs feel almost like they will burst.

In fear we hold our breath and have to be told to breathe slowly to help us calm down.

When we’re about to do something hard, we take a deep breath to find our courage.

When I think about it, breathing is giving him praise. Even in the hardest moments!

This is so beautiful and fills me with emotion every time I grasp the thought. God chose to give himself a name that we can’t help but speak every moment we’re alive.

All of us, always, everywhere.

Waking, sleeping, breathing, with the name of God on our lips.”

 

 

Say What?

 

I was in the kitchen helping test a batch of Gingerbread Cookies that had recently come out of the oven when Lucy mentioned that it was time to get the next tray of cookies out of the oven since the buzzer on the oven had gone off.  She opened the door to the oven and extracted the tray while letting them sit for a few minutes atop the stove prior to placing them individually onto the cooling racks.

I hadn’t heard the buzzer go off even though I was standing within a foot or so.  Lucy thought I was joking as she explained that the buzzer had gone off twice.

“You really didn’t hear the buzzer?”  Lucy was busy switching trays while resetting the timer on the over for ten minutes while closing the oven door.

“No, I never heard the buzzer”.  It should be noted that the buzzer on our oven is super quiet and I don’t depend on that one; instead, I bought one at the store that makes a decent amount of noise when it goes off.

This reminded me of the hearing test I took prior to joining the Houston Police Department.  I’d gone through the preliminary steps of the application process and had been scheduled for a hearing test given by the City of Houston at one of their offices downtown.

The woman assigned to give the hearing test remined me of my grandmother, a sweet little old lady who smiled warmly as she placed a set of headphones over my head to cover both ears. 

She explained I was to listen for a ping that would sound in either ear. Upon hearing that sound I was to raise my hand.  I listened intently as the test began and noticed the expression on the little old lady’s face, her eyebrow raising occasionally as if she were the one taking the hearing test.  I hadn’t heard anything yet; but when her expression changed my hand raised up as if I had heard something. She smiled back and even nodded that my hearing was normal.

The rest of the hearing test was completed in much the same way, my watching this sweet little grandmotherly lady’s facial expressions to indicate that I should be hearing something, my hand going up as if I had, and a nod of approval for having finished that portion of the test. I passed the hearing test and, after going through the interviews that followed, was accepted into the Houston Police Department.

I managed to ignore the minor limitations on being able to hear insignificant noises while completing twenty years of service as a police officer.  Now, had I signed up to work in the kitchen, dependent on some silly buzzer, that would have been something altogether different.

Ground Fog, Yeah…Right

 

It was a bit chilly during the night; temperature this morning was 38 degrees.  It was time to light a fire and warm things up as I prepared a small stack of wood in the wood burning stove.  There’s a trick to getting things going, something I’ve yet to master.

The fellow who installed the wood burning stove, Ron Weathers, showed us how to prepare a loosely balled piece of newspaper inside kindling wood and top that off with a piece of newspaper so that the flash of heat will start air flowing upwards into the flue. He reminded me to leave the door to the stove open a bit to permit air to enter the combustion chamber and let the firewood catch properly.

Let’s just say that this morning’s attempts at lighting a fire didn’t go smoothly.  For some reason the paper didn’t catch, at least not entirely.  It put itself out, mostly.  The combustion chamber filled with smoke and began seeping out into the living room.  Opening the door to the stove, an attempt to ignite the partially burned paper, proved to be a mistake.  A ball of smoke rolled into the living room.

I hurriedly opened one of the living room windows, turned on a fan hoping to push the smoke out through the window.  I then grabbed another fan from my office and opened the window enough, so the edges of the window acted like a vice to hold the fan against the screen, sucking a stream of smoke out the window.  It was working so I turned on other fans, directing air flow to the open window. After a few minutes, maybe half an hour or so, most of the smoke had been pushed out the window.

I then went about getting the fire properly lit, another cloud of smoke escaped; but this time a river of air had been established so the smoke exited the house without filling the living room. Thankfully the wood actually caught fire and created a proper draft which went up the flue as it was supposed to.

After things returned to mostly normal, and looking out the window prior to removing the fan and closing the window; I’ve lost my train of thought, I looked out the window and noticed a blanket of ground fog on my neighbor’s field.  I say it was ground fog; perhaps it was smoke from my earlier attempts to start a simple wood-burning stove.