X-mas tree for life

Just before the old closes, we started something new.
I love starting something new. And I love making it perfect.
-ah well, whatever-

We redecorated and rearranged our living room stuff: right after the last 'Sinterklaas' -giving-gifts-to-the-kids evening, we build up our fake X-mas tree, rearranged every couch and table, and put the freakin' tree in a corner of the room. The kids did a wonderful job hanging all kinds of fabric and plastic decoration materials in the lower parts of the tree. That's to prevent the glass-thing from getting grabbed by our 1.5-year old when you're not paying attention.... Especially Cd's that don't work anymore are beloved tree-hanging-things.
The top-part is my dominion: glass my-first-Xmas balls for all our kids (3), old nostalgic decoration material I got from my mom and cards with prayers or scriptures.

Why on Earth do we want a tree in the house? To hang it full with lights and glass? My goodness.
And if it's better for your health to have a non-asthma-inducing thing, we have a fake tree for crying out loud.

I love the little lights. I love candles. I love bling-bling. So cosy. We have a word for that: gezellig. That's unable to translate in English, but it has the feeling of such a decorated tree. Sitting next to it with a mug full of hot chocolate, a little fire in the fireplace. Together with soul mates.


It's time again to rethink life. To organize a reflection moment, or better, reflection day, or even better, reflection week. To get your mind empty. To listen. To talk to God. And listen again. For a long time. Reading His Word. Singing. Playing music. Listening to music. Be quiet. That kind of reflection. What your life is all about. What's your goal. What's the way to get there. Who is going to walk with you, help you, be with you. Redecorating. Rearranging the whole living. Turning it into something worth living for again. Knowing where to go for, and go for it.
We have time again to put some little lights in our life, all around.
We should decorate our life again, with something new, with something shiny, with something old that gives good memories, with something broken to laugh about, with some things that are unable to break.
But all your life decorations should be things that you love. That make you smile when you look at it, and that makes you want to look at it. You'll see: even others are trying to catch a glimpse of your tree-of-life, and others are going to love to look at it, learn from it.

Life is made to be happily lived.
Ever after.

Back in Business

That is, the slow come-back of health in our family's life is finally giving me time to give it out again. To examns on sociology. To music. To buying presents.

In the Netherlands we have a sort of competition between mr. Sint (saint) Nicolaas aka mr. Sinterklaas and his name-brother mr. Santa Claus. The first is celebrating his birthday (dec.6) on the day he passed away (dec.5) some hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and the second is his flown over ghost in the new world.
Because the real saint Nicolas was rich and as a bishop of Myra (Turkey), had christian tendencies to give it away, we also give presents to eachother. And maybe because Nicolas was a bishop, giving good advice to everybody, we write some poems that go with sertain presents, to give good advice too. Or to tell somebody in a subtile manner that he/she could do something typical a little different next time.... Whatever.
The Netherlands seem to be the only country in the world that is celebrating this event, why that is, I have no idea. It's a nice ocasion though to organize a feast with typical Dutch pastry!
(for recipies, e-mail me ;-D)

Nowadays the ghost of Sinterklaas is called back to the Netherlands by king Media, and together both Sinterklaas and Santa Claus are in service of the ruler of lifes; queen Spender.
The Sinterklaas-hype starts usually around october with all kinds of pastry in the stores, and all kinds of offers from all kinds of stores. It's a nice ocasion to get to know your citycenter updates. At the end of november the first glassballs and X-mas-green-stuff can be found in the stores. (to give at a present at Sinterklaas maybe?) Than we give bigtime attention to the celebration itself on december the fifth, or the weekend after or even better, more than once: first time mom and dad are playing Sinterklaas and giving presents, later grandpa and grandma are playing Sinterklaas. Result: a full-house, and kids with too much to play with.
Than somewhere 'round december sixth the X-mas hype starts big time. And the whole mediacircus is starting all over again to try to get your last money out of the house. And you know what? the Dutch kids are loving presents under a tree in the house also.

The power of money. The power of greed. The power of connecting 'giving presents' with 'love and real communication and celebrating life together'.

And inbetween we have something with a little baby who was the biggest King ever and after life on Earth, turned into a richer biggest King/Man ever. Try to explane that. To the world. To your kids.

Community...?

Why is it usually so easy to love the lover of my soul; when I see His artwork in my kids, or His artwork in painting skies and clouds, or the outcome of His gift in my life, the things He gives me the opportunities for, and the gifts, and the support, when I think of what He has done for me, or what He is at this very moment doing for me, the things He gives in the hearts and minds of my family and my friends, the gifts and opportunities He gives them, to be used together with eachother and together with my gifts and talents to give Him the honor He should get from His bride.

And why is it sometimes so difficult to be openminded, just standing with your arms and hands open, with nothing than myself to give, loving some other children of Him? loving the church?
Why am I not always able to see them as His beloved children, so that I love them too?

Living together as brothers???? kicking eachother around the house

Newsflash...

Isn't it funny, the things we call 'news'?

I was thinking about saying s'th in my blog about the one thing I thought whole the world was watching yesterday, and in the meantime I visited some of my friends blogs.

Great was my surprise that virtually all the blogs talked about the newest scandal in one of the churches that are world famous on the US-side of the ocean. Sexual immorality was of course the sad content of the problem. And the secular world licked their lips: 'Yeah, sure, their God is love they say.'

On the European side of the big barrier full of waves, most of us were glued to the screen, to see again and again Saddam Husein playing his play on the stage of the world. How could he know that the part of the world he was yelling to the most, was concerned with something that really hurts (?) He kept on yelling Allahu akhbar and death to virtually the rest of the world. Maybe he doesn't take this death sentence serious, just as the one before was never acted out.

What is on our minds? What are the things we think are important?
Messages from all over the world came in the news, with almost one thought: happiness that finally the big bad man is going to be hanged. As the newsreaders stated, isn't it strange that even countries that disgust the death penalty, said this time that it is the only righteous penalty for a dictator like Saddam? Some even said this isn't penalty enough.

No, I like the approach I heard sometimes in penalties to do right (to often Jewish cases); "Why should we want to react in the same way those terrible criminals treated us? That will make us one of them."

I wish all of us lots of wisdom (applied knowledge) in reacting on the things we hear or see for the first time. Things we call news.

Isn't all the news old? Isn't it all done before? Don't we all know from history the things we should look out for, the things my mom always warned me for?

A very interesting history book talks about throwing the first stone, and nobody did.
Not even the One who was the only one fitting the profile to throw....

Warship?

It's still very strange to read (and hear about) all the odd ways in letting eachother free (NOT) in how to praise our Lord and Saviour. For some nice thoughts about this subject, read some of one of my soulmates www.robbymac.org. (you are so right, Robby, thanx for your sharing of experiences)
An artist has a free mind, (a very nice present from our Creator) why is it apparantly so difficult for some of them, to see the same need of freedom for others? Aren't we all artists, of life? Are we not made to reflect Gods pluriformity, to show all the sides of our Almighty God? Just by having some gifts and working together?
Why is it that some of us just want to press s'b else in a frame? Is it concern about the salvation of the other? Or is it because 'our way is the only right way'?
The only thing to prevent this attitude is, living very close to God, I think: Praying and especially listening. Sometimes I think: if Jesus would be in our church, would He apply for worshipleader? And IF He did, would He fit our worshipleader-profile? Or would He thunder a 'message from God' from the stage, or try to convince all of us by sitting next to us and tell a story, as He did so often when He was still among us, to let us discover the truth ourselves? Would He apply for an elder? I sometimes get the creeps when I think of Jesus walking into our nowaday life: what would He cry about, that we have a hard time to understand?
What would He say to us?: 'well done, my dear bride!'

I pray for us, to grow in relationship with our Lover!

There's no time to think about time

I need to learn this: write down my thoughts as they appear
BUT! there's a problem, and it's NOT lack of thoughts...

ah-well-whatever

Lots of things appear to be timeless. Like the way people communicate with each other, or with God, or with themselves. Again I was stunned by the power of power. Leading to destruction of characters.
Isn't it amazing that manipulation still exists in the world? Couldn't we expect that all those generations between paradise and now, should learn the surviving fittest ones that trying to stomp other living souls into frames-made-by-ME-MYSELF-I, is killing the own souls slowly but surely? Not even speaking of the stomped souls. Yeah, well, rhetorical question: the king of lies still succeeds in fogging the way we receive messages.
Friday I learned that some 50% of audible communication isn't even understood in the way it was send, and just some 10% will be remembered. The messages sent by victims of manipulation (done by or to them) will be blocked by 100%, probably. I found some fog machines, and the big one is unbelief. Especially in our christian inner circle.
Even though we are not of this world, we sometimes awfully look like we are. Misuse of power and use of manipulation is inside churches and christian organisations just as common as outside. Why is this still happening? Why can't we talk to our brothers and sisters in an open and trust full way about anything? Why is the way-of-the-Kingdom (as is a standing phrase in the Reformed liberated churches these days) in communication so often not even in sight? Why do brothers and sisters still not believe the existence of manipulation close by (and not only in the way women treat their men...)? And why is almost everybody running away from the ones who address these problems in christian circles?

Ah, well. Our first big encounter of the manipulation-kind isn't even cold yet, and one of the subjects of my study appears to be: 'how-to-run-church', with a guest speaker (Ton Wintels, yeah, Dutch :-D) who wrote a book: "Power and manipulation ... of course nonexistent among christian leaders!??". During his lecture we received a handout with some lists of characteristics of manipulative leaders, beloved things said by those leaders, how to recognize manipulative leaders or organisations, and so on. Suddenly it struck me again that the things he told us, were the same things we encountered during half a year (recently), in a christian organisation (the ones who could do something about that situation, did it, so it won't happen again! Praise God!) But even worse, those were the same things I had very very bad feelings about last week, because I saw christian-manipulation's ugly face again.
We agreed that it looks like God prepared us (my husband and me) to be the ones who are able to recognize this coming up, and have the experience to address it. I don't like it. Whoever is reading this: please pray for this situation to be solved, and for us, because it is put right in front of us (we can't even run away :-S)

to be continued...

a very little one

Hi !!
BIG news:
My little brother just got his first child!!
Pictures will follow as soon as I have the chance to take one or two (we will try to visit them this afternoon, and I'll have my picturetaker with me...)

test

Diana will soon start