Monday, March 14, 2011

My Bucket List...For Now



Hire a weekly maidservice
Go to Italy, France and Germany
Be published and sell copies internationally
Live to be a great=grandmother
Waltz again
Act in a Shakespearean play
Hear Keane in concert
Meet Sir Ken Robinson, Julia Cameron, Ray Bradbury, Jerry Lewis and Martha Stewart
Have my house finished, walls and floors
Get a masters degree in literature
Become debt free
Get my nails done
Work on a BBC film
Have a girl’s weekend with my best friends/daughters
Take Mom to the Shakespeare Fest in Ashland
Go to dinner and a movie complete with popcorn and soda
Visit the Hearst castle
Go to Solvang
See the Getty museum
Review (do anything that gets published) for Wall Street Journal
Pay for a vacation for my mother
Christmas shopping in San Francisco
Cruise the Caribbean
Wear a sequined dress, well
Have all my teeth fixed, while sedated
Drive through Ohio Amish country in late September

Sabbath: The Perfect Day


If seven is the perfect number, then the seventh day should be the perfect day.
That’s the point Dan B Allender is trying to make in his book Sabbath. Far from the dry scolding I expected, Allender’s nearly scandalous prose paints a picture of a day spent in the delight of the presence of the One who created us for wonder. Calling us from the busy, despairing grind of a workaholics anonymous existence, God’s purpose for the Sabbath was never to bore us, Allender insists.

Posing the idea that many of us prefer the predictability of sorrow to the serendipity of mysterious delight, the book may turn off the traditionalist who may insist, “Sundays were made to focus on God”, Allender reminds of Jesus’ words, “the Sabbath was made for man.”
At one point he even describes a Sabbath as more like hanging out in a French Bistro with the Savior than what most of us envision for the Lord’s Day. Ways to spend your Sabbath are suggested, and they vary from foot washing to smoking a stogie with a friend. Most center on food and time with people you care about.

This book should be read by every person who has ever spent a Sunday in drudgery, whether in church, or anywhere else. I won’t spend the seventh day of my week the same as I used to. This gentle voice has transformed my thinking!


I received a complimentary copy of this book from Thomas Nelson Publishers in return for my honest opinion of the book.