Have You Seen Ruth?

In case you remember the Disney Channel cartoon Phineas and Ferb about two genius-level kids with the endless summer vacation (which finally ended with the last episode, but you have to imagine how their school years go) the subplot of every episode was what their pet platypus Perry did while Phineas and Ferb were building a Ferris wheel or creating a growth serum or communicating with animals -- and I'm trying to pick some of the least outlandish plots as examples here! It turns out Perry the platypus was actually a secret agent, who was commissioned every episode to thwart some equally outlandish plot of Heinz Doofenschmirtz -- if you didn't watch this show when it was on from August 2007 (one month after Jeffrey was born? really?) to June last year ... check it out.


Today's title is almost the catchword -- or I think will be -- for the first half of this decade. On the order of "Can you speak Bocce?", Owen's question to Threepio in the original Star Wars before he and Luke buy him from the Jawas in, oh, the late seventies/early eighties (or still now, for the sufficiently ... I don't like geeky, I prefer cultured, and maybe even connecting. Something that we all seek to be as we're entering this season of Lent beginning today. Even if you're not a Christian who practices this (and though I grew up in the church, I didn't know of Lent which begins today with Ash Wednesday for decades) you and I and all of us are seeking a closer connection to God.


It really isn't just a monotheist thing. And you don't even HAVE to give something up, though I think it's a good idea. And I am choosing to give up any time online for the next forty-seven days when I'm not at my work office. I need help being held accountable for that -- oh, if I mess up and get online over the weekend I won't burn in hell for it -- because I've noticed in myself that I get angry over really stupid things. I wouldn't mind some people taking a pledge for Lent to be nicer, but I can't control what anyone else does or doesn't pledge, only me. Trust me, it's better that way.


So this morning according to Sarah her cousin and our goddaughter Josceline has saved one life already! She's taking pledges to jump rope for the American Heart Association and fifty dollars each "saves a person". I'm not sure what that means, but then I didn't sign the pledge form and Martha did. In my opinion, I'm surprised every conceivable heart disease hasn't been cured by now or won't be in the next seven to ten years. If only people weren't more interested in vanity surgery, but I digress.


I stopped by church this morning before work and saw Pastor Gerald who'd returned Sunday night with a mission team from El Salvador, and I also checked how the Bible study that I haven't been able to come to because I volunteered as a den leader for Jeffrey's Cub Scout troop was going. I also needed a copy of the Bible translation the kids will be reading from Sunday in Parable Playhouse


for our rotation lesson on the story of Ruth. Granted, Today's English Version of the Good News Bible is not my first choice, but it's the one Bethany has stocked up on, and even I can admit some of the limits the King James Version, my personal favorite and reference, places on storytelling.


If we spend half the class on footnotes, it really won't work for the first through fifth grade classes I and the other Sunday school teachers (NOT the shepherds). And since Ruth has some customs


that may sound strange to today's kids, I'd better finish the play now!


David