I finished a book the other day, it was not a small feat, it was the first book I've managed to get all the way through since moving into the house, it took me a month and a half. For those of you curious I am a pretty fast reader, in fact I read the last half of the book in about two hours, the first half was enjoyed in the sparse free time I've had over the past couple of months, in the last place I can find free time, yes I am talking about the bathroom. It maybe disgusting but a stomach virus wouldn't be a bad thing, I've been seeking them out. I've thought about having some Mexican water shipped here so I can experience a weeks worth of reading and free time. I could call it the Montezuma Porcelain Vacation Package.
Anyway, I feel the need to post without the overall theming that I usually place on a blog post. The book I finished was All the Pretty Horses - really good book. Didn't really want to go into the book, its a Cormac Mcarthy novel, he is not afraid of treating his characters rather brutally, but he goes a little easier on them in this book. His characters always feel very poetically real.
Something else I've squeezed in was a few shows of Kitchen Nightmares. I watch this show with my wife, its fairly enjoyable for a "reality" show. I don't know how successful this show is, but it did occur to me the reason it was even on TV was that its an example of strong male leadership. The premise of the show is family owned restaurants, in trouble, failing, about to go under and Gordon Ramsey comes in and turns the place around. Gordon Ramsey is the foul mouthed head chef from Hell's Kitchen btw, successful restauranteur.
Problems with the restaurants are numerous, but generally speaking the problems are all the same. You have a staff member or owner who is causing problems, the food is frozen and horrible, the food preparation area is nasty. What Ramsey provides is not the food itself, he doesn't begin preparing the food for them, he doesn't run the restaurant, he confronts the issues and the personnel involved and forces change. This is what leadership looks like.
Other than that I have nothing. As I write this we have a few minutes between getting home and small group. My wife is taking a nap, and I am writing away in the few minutes I have. Time is not impossible to find, it is just sparse, and spread out. Reading the book, watching a movie, watching a show, everything must be done in compressed periods of time. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed.
Life is not unconnected, there is a path, a way to go back and find a coherent narrative from every true life story. I don't know the point of that, its just what I feel right now, and what I tell myself to keep moving forward, there is a point, God has fixed a time and a place, our job is to follow him as he leads and pushes us towards it.
