We read the following paragraph last night, and it struck me as an interesting observation on how we perceive the world around us. It follows another traumatic period for Oliver, where he was sure he would lose to disease one of the only people who were ever kind to him, and she especially so. After she recovered, these were Oliver’s (and the author/narrator’s) thoughts:

Oliver rose next morning in better heart, and went about his usual early occupations with more hope and pleasure than he had known for many days. The birds were once more hung out, to sing, in their old places; and the sweetest wild flowers that could be found, were once more gathered to gladden Rose with their beauty. The melancholy which had seemed to the sad eyes of the anxious boy to hang, for days past, over every object, beautiful as all were, was dispelled by magic. The dew seemed to sparkle more brightly on the green leaves; the air to rustle among them with a sweeter music; and the sky itself to look more blue and bright. Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision.

The lines I emphasized were the ones that we also highlighted last night after reading them. It’s interesting to think that the world we perceive around us is more a creation of our own heart and mind and eyes than it is “reality”. (Philosophically of course, it’s difficult to then distinguish what is “reality” and what is, in fact, our reality. Whether “real” or not, it is all that we can perceive, although it is possible to change based on our change of heart and mind, I suppose.)

It reminds me a bit of what Jesus said, as told by Luke:

“No one lights a lamp, then hides it in a drawer. It’s put on a lamp stand so those entering the room have light to see where they’re going. Your eye is a lamp, lighting up your whole body. If you live wide-eyed in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. Keep your eyes open, your lamp burning, so you don’t get musty and murky. Keep your life as well-lighted as your best-lighted room.”

Luke 11:33-36 MSG

You’ve heard of rose-colored glasses. Much the same idea. The world is as we see it, and we see it as our current condition allows us to see it. Fascinating to me that we are both affected by our surroundings and circumstances, and equally able to “affect” them, even if only in our own perception of them.

May you see the real, delicate hues of your world more clearly today.

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I am reading an intriguing book titled, The Age of the Unthinkable, and I found this one little (mostly tangential) paragraph interesting enough to share with you immediately. (I’m sure a full report on the contents of this book will follow here at some later date.) It’s a neat way to think about how the transmission of information has changed ridiculously in relatively recent history.

But perhaps nothing has changed so much as the speed with which we can transmit information. A letter carried on horseback about 150 years ago would have moved information at a rate of about .003 bits per second (the average note carrying, say, 10 kilobytes of data, though of course that measure didn’t yet exist). As late as the 1960s those same 10 kilobytes might have moved at 300 bits per second. Today global telecom cables transmit at a rate of billions of bits per second, a many-billion-fold increase in speed over 150 years.

Many-billion-fold? Amazing. But very true. Definitely a completely different world, even just in my lifetime, but certainly in the last century or more. The times they are a changin’… (have changed?)

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Greatness isn’t the work of a few geniuses, it is the purpose of each of us. It is why we were born. Every person you have ever met is a genius. Every one. Some of us have chosen not to develop it, but it’s there. It is in us. All of us. It is in your spouse. It is in all of your children. You live in a world of geniuses. How can we settle for anything less than the best education? How can we tell our children that mediocre education will do, when greatness is available?

The above quote (with my emphases added) is from A Thomas Jefferson Education, by Oliver DeMille. Jen has read through it, and some companion books, and I have become familiar with it via an audio CD we have that presents some of the principles from this “leadership education” philosophy.

We really like it, and I really liked that paragraph you just read above.

I think this all the time, and it’s why we home school. That doesn’t mean we school at home. We don’t. It means that born into everyone—which includes all of my children—is the unbounded potential for greatness. All we have to do is love, observe, and help steer toward that greatness. Some think that approach to be idealistic, and perhaps too simplistic. But it seems to be working so far.

My goal as Ian, Alex, Kirsten, Julia, Emma and Cameron’s Dad is to help them see their greatness (AND the greatness of everyone else around them) and to help them know the foundational truths of life, the most important things which will be their character, their anchor… then the rest is up to them realizing the greatness that God has built into each of them. The “sky” is truly the limit.

(Although, that may be too limiting…)

Looking forward to finishing this book, and sharing more thoughts from Mr. DeMille.

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For some reason, the phrase “your eyes are much larger than your stomach” comes to mind…

In this case, my desire to sit down and read is much (MUCH) larger than my moments to sit down and do so. I am getting moments, though, and thought I’d share a couple of the titles currently in the rotation with you:

• Thomas Jefferson: In His Own Words
• Googled: The End of the World as We Know It
• The Torch of the Testimony
• Oliver Twist
• The Misunderstood God: The Lies Religion Tells About God
• Growing Kids God’s Way
• A Thomas Jefferson Education
• Fearless: Imagine Your Life Without Fear
• The Time Pirate
• The Age of the Unthinkable

OK, some of those I am only planning to read. (Like… the last four. One I don’t even have in my possession yet!) But the rest are in the current rotation and I’m reading them as much as I can in between many other things. (Some might say I have readers ADD?)

Oliver Twist is a book that I’m reading aloud with the boys. That’s been a lot of fun. Especially after we read the book about George Müller, whose orphanage was visited by Charles Dickens, as they were contemporaries, and Müller was doing simply amazing things for the orphans in England at the time.

Growing Kids God’s Way is a video course, but there’s a book along with it, so I am (along with Jen) reading through that currently.

The Thomas Jefferson books are unrelated, but both are fascinating. The “In His Own Words” book is literally that: a collection of much of the writings of Thomas Jefferson. Fascinating! And the education one is on, well, education, just in a different light. Perhaps I’ll explain more on that later.

If you’re curious… I am trying to build up the library of books I read (and/or will be reading) using a Library plugin for WordPress. You can see the full library here, or see a selected few books in the furthest right column.

All of the books in the collection are linked to Amazon, where you can purchase if you’d like. (Of course, check your local library first, as that’s a fantastic way to read lots of books, then buy the ones you want to read again!) As an associate of Amazon, however, I of course do appreciate any time you click through an Amazon link and make a purchase.

So… enough typing. Time to get back to reading!

Hope you’ll join me.

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I’d say there are more than three ways to “home school”, but found this CBS news video to be fairly interesting as we are currently listening to and reading about a “method” called “A Thomas Jefferson Education.” A friend of ours got us a two-hour CD with the ideas behind the book, and then we just ordered the book this week. (You’ll notice it’s in the “currently reading” column to the right…) Will undoubtedly have more to say on that here later this month.

Stay tuned…

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Now is such a time!

Between books I want to read for my web business and a few personal interests, I have been busy searching our library catalog and, well, check out this stack of books currently next to my reading chair…

• Oliver Twist (planning to read with the boys, in conjunction with another book we’re just about to finish, George Mueller)
• Googled: The End of the World As We Know It
• Prioritizing Web Usability
• Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
• WordPress For Dummies
• Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites: How to setup, configure and customise this powerful PHP/MySQL based Open Source CMS
• JavaScript, A Beginner’s Guide
• Thomas Jefferson: In His Own Words

Guess I better get reading!

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“The Grace Commission,” Created by Ronald Reagan

This commission was tasked to work “like tireless bloodhounds” looking for ways to get the government “off the backs” of the American people. their report to President Reagan summarized their findings:

“We came up with 2,478 separate, distinct, and specific recommendations… for practical purposes, these savings if fully implemented, could virtually eliminate the reported deficit by the 1990s versus an alternative deficit of $10.2 trillion in the decade of the 1990s if no action is taken.

Equally important, the 2,478 cost-cutting, revenue-enhancing recommendations we have made can be achieved without raising taxes, without weakening America’s needed defense build-up, and without in any way harming necessary social welfare programs.”

And? What happened? Hellooooo? Was anyone in Congress listening or were they all too busy looking for ways to spend more money?

How sad. The book has given example after example of any business that government is financially responsible for failing miserably. Losing millions and even billions of dollars. The post office, AmTrak, etc. The biggest failure perhaps being the ridiculous deficits and ever-growing debts.

Over the years, many attempts were made at eliminating some of the bureaucracy that at best slows down (usually cripples) the federal government and its programs … but they failed, or were not even attempted. (Never made it through the system they were attempting to correct, I suppose.)

The author concludes with this:

I think it might be time for Grace Commission Part II… and I nominate Ted Nugent and Chuck Norris to head it up. I dare Congress to get in their way.

Bonus! We could rework some of those famous Chuck Norris facts to be “Nugent/Norris Committee Facts.” For example: “There’s no such thing as government bureaucrats—just a list of politicians Nugent and Norris have allowed to live.”

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Joe Boyd is a friend of ours from college, and today he announced that his book, Between Two Kingdoms is available for pre-order, and I thought I might spread the word for him here at GregsHead.net as well. Joe is currently employed as a teaching pastor at the Vineyard church in Cincinnati. But he also produces movies, and is an actor, and now a published author. (Also, he was the one who inspired this website! I thought I had that written somewhere, but all I found was this.)

Joe is, under all of that, a great lover and teller of stories. So I’m sure his written story will be more of the same! Click the book to the right to pre-order a copy of his book at Amazon.com, and while you’re at it, click his name at the top of this post to visit his blog and subscribe to his RSS feed, too.

[NOTE: If you're reading this on Facebook, rather than on GregsHead.net, click here to get his book at Amazon.com.]

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Purchase @ iTunes
Song | Album

What I’m Askin’ For
Today’s song is one of my favorites both because of what it says and how it musically says it. The song is very sad sounding in parts, lamenting. But in the angst of that lament, the truth of God’s unchanging love for me becomes the one thing I can hold on to. We can get so confused by the stuff that happens around us, wondering, “God, do you still love me? Then why is my life falling apart?” No one has an answer for all the bad-to-horrible stuff that happens in life, but we do know and trust God’s love (for us!) is the anchor we can hold on to through any of life’s storms.

What I’m Askin’ For is a piano song, and as I said before features pretty cool dynamics. Starts and ends very quietly, but builds up in the middle… have a listen, you’ll see. And don’t miss the lyric, because it’s true. “I have known your love before – and I know it doesn’t change – I know that what I’m askin’ for – has really always been the same.” This song reminds me of the message of one of our favorite books, “He Loves Me“. Also worth checking out!

LISTEN HERE (for RSS feed only) | lyrics @ basicmm.com

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The main way people “discovered” our creative works before was when we were touring the country and performing our music (and even speaking on occasion) at various events. This was certainly the best way. But with the addition of a child or two (or six) we have taken a major break from that and such venues are no longer an option.

We have websites. (Here and here, primarily.) We have sold our music via iTunes. That’s cool. But sitting here in my attic office are boxes and boxes of CDs, tapes (yep! we have tapes!!) and books.

So how do we get those out of storage and into grateful hands, hearts, and minds? Any ideas?

I’d be willing to listen to any ideas as I really do think people will still enjoy any and all of our products. We have 5 different albums of our original music (well, one is a Christmas CD with mostly original arrangements of familiar songs) and I have three books of collections of writings that are mostly short anecdotal writings on various life topics that will make you smile, and often make you think.

If you are a marketing or sales wizard, please drop me a line and let me know what you think might work. You can leave a comment here at this post, too. Any and all ideas are welcome

If you’re interested in getting your own copy, click the links above, or you can search for our stuff at Amazon.com as well… usually better to just buy from us at basicmm.com or, for just the books, here at gregshead.net/bookstore.

Thanks in advance for your help!

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