I read this webpage today. [[https:/lectionarypage.netYearABC_RCLChristmasHolyName_RCL.html][Holy Name]] Without a doubt, the hearer of these texts are to concentrate on the name of Jesus and of all the ways we might engage God’s name. But being a more perverse person, that is not where my mind went. In Philippians,Paul says “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” (2:5). What does this mean? I have read these words many times and have often wondered but never stopped to think about them separately. Yes. Yes. Every knee should bow and all that, but what would it mean to have the same mind as Jesus? The point is Jesus’ servanthood, Jesus’ willingness to do God’s will, to be God with us rather than God apart from us. And so I begin the year thinking I might have a goal this year to come back to these readings and be Christ to those I meet. It’s been a Christian practice forever, but I forget it all the time. People get nervous around other people when they start spouting religion or say things like, “Jesus loves you.” I am not that sort of person. But I can channel it and act as if I had said it. I want to be mindful of having the mind of Jesus this year. Who knows. It might even become habitual. And isn’t that the point of resolutions anyway?)

For God alone my soul in silence waits; from him comes my salvation. (Psalm 62:1 BCP) Today the church remembers St. Francis Navier. He wrote to Ignatius that more evangelists were needed to tell those in Asia about Jesus. He believed there were people just waiting to hear the good news. Reading Psalm 62, I can say They are waiting for God alone. I often think of the people at the time of Jesus as waiting in silence. Perhaps this is because of Slent Night or perhaps because we have the Scripture about the people sitting in darkness which implies silence to me. In any event Francis reminds us that many are just waiting to hear our words of forgiveness, love and salvation.

I always come back to the psalms. They are problematic in many ways: They imagine a world of many gods. YHWH is one among many. YHWH is aligned with the interests of a particular state rather than the whole world. If IsraelZionJerusalem prospers, that is good. If the enemies of IsraelZionJerusalem have the upper hand, that is bad. The psalmist is often speaking as a combatant, asking for help in times of physical aggression. Defeating the enemy, bows, arrows, swords and shields come up regularly. All this being said, I come back to them. Over and over again. Why? ...

Getting back into my 250 Sweet Friday goal for writing every day. I have been greatly distracted this past week by re-imagining my /Notes to Myself/ writing site. Maybe its title is not yet configured for this? Anyway, there has been a lot of work and exploring to set the site up with a blog link and room for adding other writing links in the future. Along with this project, I have been surfacing older blog posts and starting to go through them. I found [[https:/rillonline.github.ioblog/my-blog-in-2021.html][this one]] that explains exactly what I am doing and feeling right now. The post is dated August, 2021. ...

I spent two days interacting with [[https:/claude.ai][Claude]] concerning two story fragments that were similar enough that I thought they might be combined but I wasn’t sure how. You can read about it [[https:/rillonline.github.iomulberry-bend/index.html][here]]. The interaction was a great way to brainstorm and have my ideas reflected back to me. The general outline of the story is done. I’m basically a pantser so knowing where I am going is different. I will let the story take me where it takes me. ...

As I continue to work with my files, I have been thinking a lot about this blog. I have entries that are over fifteen years old. Rereading these is entertaining. I remind myself of things that happened that I have forgotten. I suppose that is the point of writing: to make a record that I can refer to at some time in the future. But here’s the thing: Is anyone going to scroll back that far to read these entries? ...

In some ways, the title says it all. I have started writing again and the question I asked myself is where I wanted to put what I wrote. I have a love/hate relationship with my WordPress blog. It is difficult to post there and I always want to keep a copy locally. My best bet is my github site, but it would not build under my new installation of [[https:/getnikola.com][Nikola]] .It looks like I will have to edit every last post (because struggling with the =conf.py= is more than I can handle at the moment.) Revisiting old posts is not a bad thing anyway. ...

I wrote about [[https:/rillonline.github.ioposts20190828recurring-tasks-in-orgmode/p][Recurring Tasks in Orgmode] previously. Once I had this to-do working properly, I went onto the next task. I wanted to list my ideas for articles and bigger writing projects. In my opinion, I did not need to set this all up as a big list of to-dos. That certainly becomes overwhelming to me.I might just stop writing altogether because the ideas keep coming but the time and patience to write them may not be available at the moment. I do want to be sure I have a stash of ideas to choose from when I am able to sit down and write out a complete article. ...

I’m waiting for my parts list so that my Raspberry Pie can be built. Meanwhile, my USB hub and keyboard come today according to UPS. I talked with Mike on Mangler.I now understand Raspberrian is a distro for the pie based on Debian. It has a graphical user interface which doesn’t curently speak. I’m interested in the console and excited to think my skills in the console will be improved if I work steadily in Pie Land. ...