“The RoseBouquet”

I got an email yesterday from David Z. Holmes, who says he’s a regular here. He
also has a site about succeeding with integrity, and he’s decided to offer an
award called Beneficence, to someone who has performed some great act of
kindness. See more here;
Beneficence

David wants others to submit nominations for this award. The person doesn’t
have to be a celebrity Politics or achievements is not a factor, so you could
nominate your mother, or best friend, as long as you can demonstrate in your
submission that this person has been unusually kind or generous to you or to
others.

I can think of several people, so while I’m considering this and thinking what
to say in my nomination, I thought I’d tip you off on this too.

Incidentally, if you poke around David’s site, you’ll find that he writes some
rather humorous articles.

(introducing a character from my novel, Ruthe’s Secret Roses)

Just Gord, plain medium everything, except for his dull-steel eyes. That’s how
Cathy first introduces him to Ruthe, the main character. Gord is one of a group
of three young men who do things together, mainly looking for fun, when the rich
kid, Lloyd, doesn’t have a personal date with Cathy O’Brien.

I’m leaving some parts out, so as not to spoil the surprises for you when you
read the whole book, but later when Cathy is taking Ruthe to visit the three in
Lloyd’s apartment she remembers some more about Gord’s background.

She didn’t know much about Gordon. Just that he presently boarded with an
elderly couple, the Adams. Mr. Adams had an auto wrecking concern in an
industrial section. “I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard he found Gordon one
morning sleeping in a wreck on his lot and invited him home.”

Cathy was on a roll and hard to stop. “I also heard that he has a photographic
memory. Lloyd says if Gord once sees a car or motor he has it memorized. Guess
that’s why he picked him up as a friend; he can get customizing and tuneups as
often as he wants.”

Although Gord says little, and that very seldom, Ruthe’s intuition senses his
need to be included and accepted like the others, and she urges the others to be
kind, and to stop to explain things for his benefit. They’re rewarded by
discovering how guileless and loyal Gordon truly is.

Since Gordon was tossed from one foster home to another, then group homes for
troubled teens, he has never learned to read or write, or think any deep concept
through. Because of Ruthe’s concern, Lloyd and Graham explain things to him
privately, and he even comes to her for advice on his romantic feelings for a
certain girl in his neighbourhood.

Later on Gord pays Ruthe a very big compliment by asking for a peculiar favour.

Whoops, I may be saying too much! Why don’t you get the novel and read it all
for yourself? Gord’s story is just one of many extremely interesting friendships
in this book, Ruthe’s Secret Roses.

When Jalise came about four weeks back, she brought with her some gifts from
her Mom, my younger sister Elsie, who is teaching at the shiny new university
in Qatar. Elsie was back to Canada for a month this summer, but didn’t make it
here to see us, as she’d planned. (In fact, she lost her ticket until just the
last day, so they decided Jalise could come in her place).

Besides a lovely necklace of true salt-water pearls, not cultured, Elsie had
sent a book for me called, “The Body’s Many Cries for Water,” by a Dr. Fereydoon
Batamanghelidj, M.D. It took me a few days to get started on it, as I have
books on-the-read, in various spots throughout the house.

Last week as I was reading it, I had a few days of not feeling 100%, and since
it all made such beautiful sense, with such simplicity, I started drinking more
water. Sure enough, my pain eased, and I lost another two pounds of weight, and
I began to feel great.

This week Dad is reading the same book, and although a lot of the big words go
over his head, he has caught on to enough that he’s trying to drink more water
too. That Dr. recommends two to three quarts a day, but Dad finds 8 glasses
full a day a lot, so for now, he’s measuring out just that much, and aiming to
get comfortable drinking that much.

I’ve always had trouble getting motivated too, but now that I understand all
the various symptoms that the cells of my body are so thirsty, and having read
cured of all kinds of ailments by drinking enough plain tap water - well, I’m
all gungho too!

Some health fads cost a lot of money, this simple one rings like truth and is
f r e e!

Now I’ve got to wait for Dad to finish reading that book before I can review it,
but I do have two other new reviews up on the site.

I Kissed Dating Goodbye - by Joshua Harris, and,
Avoiding the Tentmaker Trap - by Dan Gibson

As for the reno work, I may get finished with the Arbour today, as there are
only three pages to go. Last week I finished the three photo-story pages of my
niece’s outdoor wedding in 2003, and that was a huge job as I took time to
re-size the photos. When they aren’t so huge they load faster. If you missed
those the first time, check ‘em out starting here;
The wedding

Meantime, I discovered all at once that my navigation links at the bottom of
each page had no link to get to the Arbour in the first place! Wow! that won’t
do! So I’ve added that to the includes file, but some of the other pages won’t
have that. All the NEW renovated pages, have a link to the Arbour index page,
but I found I’d made that with .shtml, and the index had .html. Oh well, I
just made a duplicate of index.html and called it index.shtml. Now either way
will work.

To get to the Arbour section; Author’s Arbour

I’ll go back and fix a whole bunch of previously renovated pages in a hurry,
and then move on to the Library.

STORY-TELLING - number one means of communicating anything! According to
the International Storytelling Center, there are six stories you need to learn
how to tell: who I am stories, why I am here stories, my vision story, teaching
stories, values in action stories, and “I know what you are thinking” stories:
Story Telling Center

Story-telling is an essential means of evangelism:
guide.gospelcom.net/resources/parallel.php

Oh, you want to check out the water cure?
watercure.com

[Note: In my novel, the heroine, Ruthe, stands out among her friends for her
resolve not to play the dating game, but to let God be in charge of her romance
department. The results of that resolve will show up in the sequel, which I’m
writing now. Read the following book review to see why this subject is special
to me. - Sometime I must start writing articles to discuss these ideas in more
depth].

I heard about this book long before I got to read it just recently. When my
niece was working as a counsellor at a Bible camp nearby, she would come spend
her weekends with us, and while she was unloading all her experiences of the
previous week, it came out that some other counsellors had read this book, I
Kissed Dating Goodbye and among themselves, the counsellors were having
lively debates about the points Harris makes.

Now my niece was not against dating at all, and she was sure her own personal
high standards would protect her in any kind of temptation. What softened her
towards the book was, when knowing that one particular girl had vowed to also
kiss dating goodbye, she watched as this girl was wooed by a fine young man, who
accepted that girl’s boundaries, and did use the courting approach. They were
happily married the following summer.

Watching the principles in action gave my niece a great respect for this book.
She knew I had high personal standards myself, and though I seldom found people
open to hearing them, we had some great discussions.

I’d also heard Joshua Harris interviewed on the radio, Focus on the Family, so
it was with real pleasure that I received the loan of this book recently. I
wanted to see how we lined up.

I’m happy to report that we agree heartily! Harris had given up dating after
experimenting with it for several years, whereas I had made my resolutions much
earlier. I can see where young people will sooner identify with his story. But
I really liked how he weaves such good principles and a grasp of God’s better
ways into his own story and those he tells of other young dating couples.

Harris moves beyond what feels good (dating), to what IS good, and recognizes
the negative tendencies inherent in dating. He describes five basic attitude
shifts needed to avoid defective dating.

Impatience to marry (or settling for sex), robs us of the gift of singleness. I
was so glad Harris points out that there are some great blessings to be had in
the state of singleness. It is not the slough of despond, where we must
constantly struggle to keep from sinking in the quicksand. Many of us never-
marrieds take decades to discover that, if we do at all! Those are wasted years
we will mourn afterwards. Someone has to tell this younger generation to respect
and to appreciate those single years. They are a gift from God, just as Harris
says.

Thankfully, Harris also explains how to have Jesus redeem the past and get us on
the road to righteousness. In fact, he lays out four important steps for getting
on track with God’s plan and switching to a new lifestyle. One where friends
are really “just friends,” and not sexual conquests, and thus freeing us to
enjoy them and our activities far more.

The human heart, being what it is, needs guards set all around it, to keep out
lust, self-pity, and infatuations, or foolish daydreams. Here again, he offers
some helpful counsel. What’s more, he throws in what to say when people ask you
if you’re nuts, for not dating.

What are the alternatives to dating? How do you get a husband or wife then?

Well, Harris makes a great run at this too. Besides urging readers to make the
most of singleness, he encourages a Biblical and realistic view of marriage, and
what will matter most in a life partner. Then he lays out principles that border
on the old-fashioned courting process, to guide the same reader from sound,
healthy friendships to marriage. He sees four stages of development in such
friendships, and offers pointers for each, and how he has adopted them himself.
These four are;
casual friendship
deeper friendship
purposeful intimacy with integrity
engagement

Mainly, there is prayer, and there are questions to ask, and green lights (yes
answers) to watch for, and there is the matter of respecting the other person
and his or her family, and vowing to reserve passion for marriage.

I should add, that since Harris wrote this book in 1997, he has married, and he
and his wife have a young family. He has now come out with a second book, Boy
Meets Girl, in which he describes how he got married, without the usual
dating route.

Reading some online reviews of his books, and interviews done with Harris, I see
that he is a very articulate spokesman for the Christian singles. Oddly enough,
it is the girls who respond most to his first book, although he is sure that
the males are reading the book too. I’m glad for one, that he is speaking out.
We need a few more such spokespersons.

I just learned that he has another book out, which had a title and cover change.
It started out as Not Even a Hint, then when a similar cover came out,
and his publisher realized the public didn’t know what it was about, they
re-issued it as Sex is Not the Problem (Lust is). Looks like a book to
watch for!

On his own site, JoshuaHarris.com, I see
yet another book he has out;
Stop Dating the Church. This one seems aimed at the weak and flimsy
relationship many young folks have with the church. He advises to fall in love
with the Family of God. Hmm… we’ll be kept busy reading to keep up with this
good author.

This book is available at;
ChristianBook.com