Category Archives: Blogging101

Not Lemonade

Posted on by
5

“When life gives you lemons… make something else. Tell us about a time you used an object or resolved a tricky situation in an unorthodox way.” – Not Lemonade

The invitation brought to mind an altogether different memory. It’s unorthodox, but not what the Daily Post had in mind.

The memory is “Lemonade-on-the-Lawn” at Knox Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati. During the summer months worshipers gathered on the church lawn at the corner of Observatory and Michigan for conversation over lemonade.

Visitors frequently misunderstood the pulpit announcements to be an invitation to eliminate on the lawn. They were relieved to learn about the lemonade.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, former Pastor, Knox Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati, January 26, 2016.

 

 

 

Hermeneutics

Posted on by
3

Never heard of it? It’s not one of the big words we hear every day. But ‘hermeneutics’ is a basic activity we’re engaged in every day. It’s like breathing – one of those basic things we don’t notice until someone disagrees with us.

The word’s origins date back to Greek philosophy, long before Peewee Herman, Herman Goehring, or George Herman (“Babe”) Ruth did it. But I digress. Their names were spelled with an ‘a’; there was no ancestor named Hermen.

But Peewee, Herman, and George each engaged in hermeneutics, the theory and practice of interpretation. They interpreted life, respectively, as comedy, tragedy, and sport. They looked at the human experience through their own interpretative lenses.

Every time we read a text, watch a film, listen to a speech, or view a painting, we interpret it. We are doing hermeneutics. We put into practice the largely unconscious principles that shape how we experience the world.

The study of hermeneutics, a Latinized version of the Greek hermeneutice, reaching back to Plato and Aristotle, has been part of the great thinkers of Western civilization down to our own times. Click The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for the history of the term.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Tampa, FL, January 21, 2016.

Thanks to Wonderfulwordsblog for inviting readers to create a post on a lesser known word.

 

 

 

Looking and Seeing – Thoreau

Posted on by
Reply

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What you see, not what you look at, is what you get. Or is it?

Is something there you don’t see? Is what you see there because you put it there?

The relation between subject and object is an ancient philosophical question that’s not about to go away.

When I saw the Thoreau poster, I saw the darkness behind the words. Then it drew me to the light – the sunrise or sunset. But, which is it: a sunset preceding darkness, or sunrise bringing the light? Or are we seeing cars, pavement, poles, and signs? What would Thoreau see?

 

 

 

The Way We Eat

Posted on by
2

A prompt on Modern Families got me to thinking. 

“If one of your late ancestors were to come back from the dead and join you for dinner, what things about your family would this person find the most shocking?” 

How would you answer? Here’s my shot at the question. 

Well…for starters, most folks don’t join each other for dinner anymore.

My grandparents and parents honored a long-standing family tradition.  They ate dinner around the dining room table. ALL of them. At the same time. In the same place.

But we didn’t just eat together. We lingered together. We served each other. We passed the food in large bowls – mashed potatoes, green beans, peas, stuffing, salad – family style. No one ate until all had been served.

In their generations, the roles were clearly defined. Mom wore and apron and cooked the meal. She sat at one end of the table. Dad, sitting  at the opposite end (the head of the table) with the carving knife served the entree on plates to the other members of the family. If it was a turkey, for instance, he carved the bird in front of us at the table.

“Skip, you like dark meat.” He’d carve from the thigh or the leg. “Don, you like both white and dark.” “Bob, you like the leg and a wing.” And so it went, until we all had been served according to our liking, and we all had served each other.

Mom and Dad lived long enough to see the change in their children’s family eating habits and graciously, if sadly, accepted the fact that there was no longer a set time for dinner, there were soccer games, Little League games, concerts, and the demands of this, that, and the other that tore apart the cherished hour when the kids and parents all checked in on the day and discussed the big issues of the news.

My grandparents would be shocked by the fraying of common life, the loss of careful attentiveness to each member of the family’s preferences, likes and dislikes, the substitution of the automat for the dining room table.

If they came back from the dead, they would wonder how and why sharing and serving around the table and nightly dinner conversations have vanished, replaced by family members staring at their iPhones, texting people who aren’t in the room. They might re-frame Shakespeare’s question in Hamlet, “To be, or not to be?” They might say:

“To eat alone, quickly, or to eat at the dinner table with others, slowly?” – that is the question.

I think I’ll turn on the TV, go to the fridge to see what’s there, send a text or two, and enjoy the ballgame.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, January 18, 2016