Secrets

What are your secrets? Do you have any? We all have them... some are big, and others are minor, but we all have them. Rebekah Lyons has an article on secrets that will make you think. She makes the case that secrets actually hold you hostage. She asks the question, "Do we really believe the truth will set us free?" She claims that we do not.

We often become slaves to our secrets, and act in ways unimaginable just to continue or extend life to these secrets. It is one of our enemy's strongest and most effective weapons; she writes, "The thing is, Satan DWELLS in the secret, in the haunting, hidden brokenness. The longer we keep that secret, the more power he has to speak lies into our own identity. We have a crisis of faith; we don't truly believe that God will hear and lavish us with his love upon our confession. We don't REALLY believe that we will be made new. So we keep it and hide it and cover it and die from it."

I think there are many of us who call Christ Lord and Savior and, yet, still do not believe that the truth is the right answer. Does being truthful really matter? She goes on to answer this question and more in this thought provoking article on secrets.

You can find the article in its entirety by clicking HERE or you can go to this website: Q: Ideas for the Common Good. If you have not visited Q: Ideas for the Common God, I recommend bookmarking it because once you visit the website once you will find yourself returning there often. Blessings!

TED

If you have never heard of TED, then you must visit their website. In the mean time, enjoy Sir Ken Robinson's talk regarding his ideas on education. Blessings!

Narcissism

Narcissus by Caravaggio depicts the part of us we fight every day... narcissism. We call it all kinds of things: sin, self, the flesh. Each of us is a narcissist in some way, but how will we know if it gets beyond normal. There is a great website called Q: Ideas for the Common Good that features a solid article on the issue by Dr. Allan Josephson. Click HERE to read the article. Click HERE to visit the website. Blessings!

Gas Prices

Recently, the media informed all of us that we should expect considerably higher gas prices in the next few months. My questions is this: in comparison to what?

I have been collecting gas receipts for the last three years. Here is a gander at the meteoric rise of gas prices.

11/13/08 ........... $1.98
11/20/08 ........... $1.85 (And, that was high!)
12/08/08 ........... $1.56
12/16/08 ............ $1.69
12/22/08 ........... $1.53
1/08/09 ............. $1.69
2/13/09 .............. $1.31
3/12/09 .............. $1.77
4/06/09 .............. $1.89
6/14/09 ..................... $2.43 (What happen?)
6/24/09 ..................... $2.44
7/31/09 ..................... $2.37
8/14/09 .................... $2.35
9/03/09 ................... $2.53
10/23/09 ................. $2.57
11/24/09 .................. $2.47

1/14/10 .................... $2.69
2/12/10 .................... $2.55
3/27/10 .................... $2.69
4/11/10 .................... $2.75
5/28/10 ................... $2.61
6/28/10 ................... $2.66
7/11/10 .................... $2.45
8/12/10 ................... $2.62
9/12/10 ................... $2.45
10/07/10 ................ $2.75
11/15/10 ................. $2.75

1/4/11 ..................... $2.88
2/24/11 .................. $3.25 (Wow!)
3/14/11 .................. $3.21
8/12/11 .................. $3.59
11/27/11 ................ $3.07

1/09/12 ................. $3.25
2/4/12 ................... $3.29

Hard to believe that not even four years ago we were all paying well under $2.oo a gallon. Once the price of gas went past a certain threshold it never went back down past that threshold again. Now, we sit at over $3.00 a gallon and are being told to expect another big jump in price. The last two times we had a big jump in price the price never did go back down to the price before the jump, Based on past history, expect a big jump and expect the price to stay right there.

With prices like these, it might be a good idea to take a Sunday afternoon walk instead of the Sunday drive. Blessings!

Discipline and Discipleship

My article on discipline and discipleship can now be found on the website of the Christian Educator's Journal. Click HERE to read the entire article. Blessings!

Motivation

One of the great scenes from Remember the Titans!

Grounded Theory

In 1967 two researchers, Strauss and Glaser discovered the ground theory technique when they wanted more from their research. The grounded theory approach, particularly the way Strauss developed it, consists of a set of steps whose careful execution and process is considered to "guarantee" a good theory as the outcome. In light of what we know today, there is no guaranteeing anything in research.

Strauss would say that the quality of a theory can be evaluated by the process by which that theory is constructed. This contrasts with the scientific perspective which states: the quality of a theory is determined by its ability to explain new data. Grounded theory understands the true nature of data and how easy it is to manipulate it. Ground theory, like all good qualitative research, accounts for the researcher in the research.

The basic idea of a grounded theory approach is to read a textual database several times and uncover and identify variables (called categories, concepts and properties) and their interrelationships. The ability to identify variables and their relationships is termed "theoretical sensitivity" and is directly affected by many things, especially one's reading of the literature and one's use of the techniques designed to enhance sensitivity.

Open coding is one aspect of grounded theory and an important part of the analysis; it is primarily concerned with identifying, naming, categorizing and describing phenomena found in the text that is read. Essentially, every word, line, sentence, paragraph and page is read with the primary purpose of searching for the answer to the main question of grounded theory research, "what is this about?"

These labels are suppose to identify a diverse array of things like schools, data, data collection, friendship, social groups, losses, etc. They are the nouns and verbs of the conceptual world of what is being read. Readers or researchers are to find and identify the adjectives and adverbs, or as they are known in the research, the properties of these categories. Whether these come directly from the data itself, from those responding, or from the mind of the researcher depends on the goals of the research. These decisions will be made by the researcher in the way the research is set.

It is important to have fairly abstract categories in addition to very concrete ones, as the abstract ones help to generate grounded theory that leads forward to the rest of the research. Grounded research is just one of the many methods of qualitative research, and provides, what I think, is a worthy example of what qualitative research is.

Quantitative research is rooted in numbers and dependent on them to discover truth. Quantitative is as its name implies... in need of a large quantity of research in order to identify trends. It is a macro-research methodology. Qualitative research is a micro-research methodology. It drills down into one issue and tries to get as much information from that one issue to make a statement that may or may not apply to the over-all population. This is the world of research!

Vaclav Havel on Words

I believe words and their meanings are very important to every person that walks this planet. Unfortunately, words and their meanings are becoming less important to current culture. They are being deconstructed at a rapid pace, and if there is not a stop to this deconstruction, our ability to communicate with each other will be in dire straits. And, if we can't communicate we can not exist in peace and live in unity. Vaclav Havel has a wonderful article on "words" which I have posted below. I encourage everyone to read it twice. Read it the first time just to enjoy his use of words and their meanings, and then, read it a second time for substance. Let it settle for a while before you consider your response to it. It may prompt you to go back and read it a third time. If it does, words and their meanings just became more important to you. Happy Reading!



http://vaclavhavel.cz/showtrans.php?cat=clanky&val=78_aj_clanky.html&typ=HTML