Home Improvements!
This is my old garage door and color scheme...
This is my front door as it was...
This is my new garage door and you can see my red front door!
I had three moons in my house, this is one.... they are all gone now.
The new foyer light - and the new red door... note the rooster knocker on the front door.
Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful.
The new ceiling fan. I think it is so pretty.
The old dining room light. eeeeesh.
My new dining room lighting. This is probably my least favorite of the new fixtures. I still like it WAY better than the old.
The old kitchen lights, two moons hanging over my kitchen. I have disliked these things since the moment I walked in here - 6 years and 2 months ago.
My new kitchen track lights (shouldn't they be called 'tract' lights?) I love the way these things open up my kitchen. And yes, that is a half an apple pie on the counter... and note the little chicken lamp on the counter.This is happy stuff. I have wanted to do all of this stuff since I moved here. But little, by little, it gets done.
posted by Mary Christine at 10:41 AM
8 Comments:
All good choices! It's amazing how some small updates can have such a big influence on the whole look! The red door is good, too.
What happened to the other half of the apple pie?
Will you get anonymous street people knocking on that red door?
Probably, but once I answer the door, they will ask for a piece of apple pie.
OMG! Change is great isn't it. Did you do all of those changes yourself. My hubby LOVES track (tract) lights. LOL!
Are you an interior designer? My hubby is...
Did you sale your old light fixtures on www.craigslist.org?
Keep in touch and come by my blogspot.
KimPossible
My kitchen cabinets and oven look zackly like yours.
STEP ELEVEN
The Heresy of the Twelve Steps
by A. Orange
Step Eleven suggests prayer and meditation. We shouldn't be shy on this matter of prayer. Better men than we are using it constantly. ...
When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. ...
On awakening, let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking...
...
Here we ask God for inspiration...
...
What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration becomes a working part of the mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely on it.
We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be...
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, pages 86 to 87.
The whole Buchmanite family partipates in the Quiet Time.
They sit quietly with notebooks in hand, ready to write down the messages that they receive from God.
* So, if we practice the Twelve Steps enough, we will supposedly end up in a state of mind where we are in constant conscious contact with God, and God is just always talking to us and guiding us and telling us what to do, all day long.
* We may get into trouble by doing all kinds of absurd things and believing all kinds of absurd ideas because we think that God is telling us to do it. We may, in fact, become totally delusional and crazy. Nevertheless, Bill Wilson says that "We come to rely on it" anyway.
Obviously, the "God" to Whom Bill Wilson is referring here is not a bedpan, a motorcycle, or the "Group Of Drunks" in Whom Bill generously declared that we could believe, if we so chose, just a little earlier.
It cannot even be a nice, vague "Higher Power" or "God as we understand Him"; It has to be Bill Wilson's fascist, willful Old-Testament dictator Who orders His followers around all day long, because teddy bears, door knobs, motorcycles, bed pans, and vague, foggy entities like "Good Orderly Direction" do not psychically dictate work orders and give power. So much for the freedom of religion that Bill promised us.
Follow the dictates of a Higher Power and you will presently live in a new and wonderful world...
The Big Book, William G. Wilson, page 100.
I saw a T-shirt today that said,
"I do what the voices in my head tell me to do."
I laughed.
And then it occurred to me that if the T-shirt was being worn by a Buchmanite, or a true-believer Alcoholics Anonymous member, that it wasn't a joke.
The same criticisms of the doctrine of Guidance that theologians and clergy leveled at Frank Buchman's Oxford Groups apply to Alcoholics Anonymous:
* The person who is under Guidance discards his rational thinking mind and just follows impulses that he receives from he knows not where. He abandons intelligent planning of his life in favor of following sudden impulses that just come from somewhere -- hopefully, but not necessarily, from a good source. His life often becomes erratic and impulsive, following now this moment's Guidance, and now that, breaking appointments and commitments on a whim.
* And of course, there is the unavoidable question of "What is the real source of this 'Guidance'? -- God? The subconscious mind? Or one's favorite demon?"
* There is simply no Biblical support for this psychic practice.
* Dr. Herbert Hensley Henson, the Bishop of Durham, said in his criticism of the Oxford Groups:
Groupism discloses in its conception of 'Guidance' precisely the same error as that which infects its conception of 'witness'. It 'seeks a sign'. It insists on something precise, concrete, calculable. Its temper of mind is rather Pharisaic than Christian. It seeks proofs of Divine action in what is abnormal, amazing, even miraculous. Its view of inspiration is mechanical, and its treatment of Scripture literalist. Thus it comes about that, even in the process of exalting the genuinely Christian conception of the 'guided life', it perverts and lowers it.
The Oxford Groups; The Charge Delivered At The Third Quadrennial Visitation Of His Diocese Together With An Introduction, Herbert Hensley Henson, D.D., 1933, page 70.
With all of his séances and spook sessions, Bill Wilson was constantly 'seeking a sign'.
* The people who advocate the practice of Guidance only use it to replace rational thought and intelligent thinking. I am reminded of a criticism of Frank Buchman's doctrine of Guidance:
"Guidance is only to be sought in those matters which are usually matters for reason and common sense or for principles and conscience. No suggestion is ever made that we should substitute 'guidance' for our eyesight and walk across a busy street under 'guidance' with our eyes blindfolded. In other words, that in man which he shares with other animals is honored and trusted to do its work. The reason, which most obviously distinguishes him from other animals, is dethroned."
-->
quoted in The Groups Movement, The Most Rev. John A. Richardson, pages 75-79.
Morehouse Publishing Co., Milwaukee, Wis., 1935.
If you really "have faith" and truly believe that God is guiding you in your every activity and inserting thoughts into your head all day long, then you should have no problem with making another "leap of faith" and walking across freeways blindfolded, trusting that the Lord will tell you when to go and where to place your feet... If the Lord is capable of giving you infallible Guidance in all important matters, then surely the Lord can be trusted to tell you how to safely cross busy highways and freeways.
In Buchmanism, the best of the human mind is thrown into the trash can, while the lower centers of the animal brain are retained. Rational thought and intelligent thinking -- the best of what separates us from the lower animals -- are distrusted and discarded, while the optical centers, which even toads and snakes have, are still trusted to do their jobs properly. If anything, Frank Buchman got it all backwards. Carried to its logical conclusion, Buchmanism would reduce us to being dumb, stupid, unthinking animals who just mindlessly obey orders, or into brainless robots that are under external control.
And so will Bill Wilson's version of the Buchmanism, where you spend your life"Seeking and Doing the Will of God".
*
I, MICKY, AM ONE OF GOD'S MARVELOUS DEEDS THAT MAKES IT KNOWN TO ALL THE NATIONS.
STEP ELEVEN
The Heresy of the Twelve Steps
by A. Orange
Step Eleven suggests prayer and meditation. We shouldn't be shy on this matter of prayer. Better men than we are using it constantly. ...
When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. ...
On awakening, let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking...
...
Here we ask God for inspiration...
...
What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration becomes a working part of the mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely on it.
We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be...
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, pages 86 to 87.
The whole Buchmanite family partipates in the Quiet Time.
They sit quietly with notebooks in hand, ready to write down the messages that they receive from God.
* So, if we practice the Twelve Steps enough, we will supposedly end up in a state of mind where we are in constant conscious contact with God, and God is just always talking to us and guiding us and telling us what to do, all day long.
* We may get into trouble by doing all kinds of absurd things and believing all kinds of absurd ideas because we think that God is telling us to do it. We may, in fact, become totally delusional and crazy. Nevertheless, Bill Wilson says that "We come to rely on it" anyway.
Obviously, the "God" to Whom Bill Wilson is referring here is not a bedpan, a motorcycle, or the "Group Of Drunks" in Whom Bill generously declared that we could believe, if we so chose, just a little earlier.
It cannot even be a nice, vague "Higher Power" or "God as we understand Him"; It has to be Bill Wilson's fascist, willful Old-Testament dictator Who orders His followers around all day long, because teddy bears, door knobs, motorcycles, bed pans, and vague, foggy entities like "Good Orderly Direction" do not psychically dictate work orders and give power. So much for the freedom of religion that Bill promised us.
Follow the dictates of a Higher Power and you will presently live in a new and wonderful world...
The Big Book, William G. Wilson, page 100.
I saw a T-shirt today that said,
"I do what the voices in my head tell me to do."
I laughed.
And then it occurred to me that if the T-shirt was being worn by a Buchmanite, or a true-believer Alcoholics Anonymous member, that it wasn't a joke.
The same criticisms of the doctrine of Guidance that theologians and clergy leveled at Frank Buchman's Oxford Groups apply to Alcoholics Anonymous:
* The person who is under Guidance discards his rational thinking mind and just follows impulses that he receives from he knows not where. He abandons intelligent planning of his life in favor of following sudden impulses that just come from somewhere -- hopefully, but not necessarily, from a good source. His life often becomes erratic and impulsive, following now this moment's Guidance, and now that, breaking appointments and commitments on a whim.
* And of course, there is the unavoidable question of "What is the real source of this 'Guidance'? -- God? The subconscious mind? Or one's favorite demon?"
* There is simply no Biblical support for this psychic practice.
* Dr. Herbert Hensley Henson, the Bishop of Durham, said in his criticism of the Oxford Groups:
Groupism discloses in its conception of 'Guidance' precisely the same error as that which infects its conception of 'witness'. It 'seeks a sign'. It insists on something precise, concrete, calculable. Its temper of mind is rather Pharisaic than Christian. It seeks proofs of Divine action in what is abnormal, amazing, even miraculous. Its view of inspiration is mechanical, and its treatment of Scripture literalist. Thus it comes about that, even in the process of exalting the genuinely Christian conception of the 'guided life', it perverts and lowers it.
The Oxford Groups; The Charge Delivered At The Third Quadrennial Visitation Of His Diocese Together With An Introduction, Herbert Hensley Henson, D.D., 1933, page 70.
With all of his séances and spook sessions, Bill Wilson was constantly 'seeking a sign'.
* The people who advocate the practice of Guidance only use it to replace rational thought and intelligent thinking. I am reminded of a criticism of Frank Buchman's doctrine of Guidance:
"Guidance is only to be sought in those matters which are usually matters for reason and common sense or for principles and conscience. No suggestion is ever made that we should substitute 'guidance' for our eyesight and walk across a busy street under 'guidance' with our eyes blindfolded. In other words, that in man which he shares with other animals is honored and trusted to do its work. The reason, which most obviously distinguishes him from other animals, is dethroned."
-->
quoted in The Groups Movement, The Most Rev. John A. Richardson, pages 75-79.
Morehouse Publishing Co., Milwaukee, Wis., 1935.
If you really "have faith" and truly believe that God is guiding you in your every activity and inserting thoughts into your head all day long, then you should have no problem with making another "leap of faith" and walking across freeways blindfolded, trusting that the Lord will tell you when to go and where to place your feet... If the Lord is capable of giving you infallible Guidance in all important matters, then surely the Lord can be trusted to tell you how to safely cross busy highways and freeways.
In Buchmanism, the best of the human mind is thrown into the trash can, while the lower centers of the animal brain are retained. Rational thought and intelligent thinking -- the best of what separates us from the lower animals -- are distrusted and discarded, while the optical centers, which even toads and snakes have, are still trusted to do their jobs properly. If anything, Frank Buchman got it all backwards. Carried to its logical conclusion, Buchmanism would reduce us to being dumb, stupid, unthinking animals who just mindlessly obey orders, or into brainless robots that are under external control.
And so will Bill Wilson's version of the Buchmanism, where you spend your life"Seeking and Doing the Will of God".
*
I, MICKY, AM ONE OF GOD'S MARVELOUS DEEDS THAT MAKES IT KNOWN TO ALL THE NATIONS.
Very pretty. Must feel wonderful.
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