The Garden

So, my wife and I are starting a garden. A modest little vegetable garden with two maybe three beds. So far we've got tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, rosemary, lavender and some other stuff planted. 

Why a garden? You I've always been kinda intrigued by gardens and plants. Not so much to make a career out of it but enough to wonder about them. Aside from not eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God put Adam and Eve in the garden to tend to it and care for it (Gen. 2:15). That was man's only job. So what's up with plants? Can we learn something about God from taking care of plants? Or was it just so we could eat?

I don't know but I've got a garden now and I'll let you know what I stumble on as I tend to it.

For the Designers

Here's a cool place to get inspired and see some tutorials. 

www.smashingmagazine.com

www.vector4free.com

Is Reality Really Real?

So I was in this discussion about reality last night and I was feeling mentally undressed, to say the least, in this conversation. We were talking about the Law of Non-contradiction, which basically says two opposites can't co-exist at the same time in the same sense. I get that. Everyone kinda has to accempt this to move on to any other discussion because if you can't then nothing really makes sense after that.

So moving on to what is real. What is actually real? Honestly I can't really get past the question because on the one hand it seems so blatantly obvious what is real but on the other hand why do we even question what is real. Really? Why is it even in us to think such an odd question as "What is reality, really?"

You can get locked up in the symbols, you know words aren't real they're words that correspond to intangible reality's with which we are just describing so words aren't real but our ideas or thoughts behind the words are. What?

You can go along with Kant's extreme view that we can't know anything about reality accept that there is a reality, but that already implies that we know something about reality so it kinda falls apart from there. But why couldn't we know anything about reality? Why do people wonder what's really real?

It seems to me that if we could figure out what's really real then we could explain things like pain and suffering or purpose and meaning. All the, "Why do I's..." of life. Why do I feel pain? Why do I exist? Why do I love or hate or just wanna sit down and watch the sun set?

At some point it seems that at the core of our being we question what reality is because we're really questioning something about ourselves. Am I really real and if so why am I?

Heaven's Bathrooms and other random places of the afterlife.

I found myself taking a break from the banter of family conversation, on a certain special occasion, some months ago, in the restroom of an esteemed Atlanta restaurant. I always find it abruptly uncomfortable and oddly comforting to walk into the restroom of such an exceeding quality as to have not only clean tiled floors and a fresh blast of cool floral scented air but to also find a gentleman waiting quietly near a sink with warm towels and mints.

I find myself pausing in the entrance, as if I'd taken a wrong turn, before forcing a casual heir back into my step and saunter toward a urinal. Decisions, decisions. Do I take a urinal out in the open for this man to stare at my back as I relieve myself or do I take a closed stall reinforcing that fact that I'm as insecure as a mouse staring at a lion?

I choose the urinal...No, the stall—because I do have to pepper the air with some of lunches chili dog (and to do that out in the open is just rude).

And so it hits me, as I drain a diet coke, how does one find himself (or herself) in the occupation of "Restroom Attendant?" Who the hell do you have to piss off to acquire the onerous duty of witnessing every bowel movement on any given evening in the life of a snob-infested restaurant? Suddenly it occured to me, "Who would be standing attendant in Heaven's bathrooms?"

And so begins this blog of random thoughts and musings of life, the afterlife and all the places inbetween.